INDUSTRY UPDATE Hurricane Damages Carolina Ag Reports show that North Carolina’s agriculture industry sustained significant damage from Hurricane Matthew. State agriculture officials do not have damage estimates, but the 48 counties affected by the storm are North Carolina’s largest agricultural counties, accounting for more than $9.6 billion of the $13.5 billion in farm cash receipts in 2014. According to the state’s agricultural commissioner, the eastern counties represent 71% of the state’s total farm receipts. “While many crops were harvested before the storm, many crops such as soybeans, sweet potatoes, peanuts and cotton, were in the early stages of harvest.” Additionally, the extensive flooding from the hurricane has reportedly killed five million chickens.
New Budget Spreadsheet Available The University of Wisconsin has released a new Excel-based cow-calf budgeting tool which can be downloaded from the university’s website. The tool can be used to establish benchmark data, which provides information that can be used to identify strengths and opportunities within the herd.
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It can also be used for doing projections and is designed to calculate profit or loss on a whole herd, per cow, and a hundredweight basis for feeder calves.
Nuns Want Antibiotics Shunned The Congregation of Benedictine Sisters of Boerne, Texas, a shareholder in the Oak Brook, IL, based burger giant, are pushing for McDonald’s Corporation to expand its policy to prohibit the use of medically important antibiotics in its US poultry supply chain and all other meats that it serves around the world. Not only do the Sisters want McDonald’s to expand its current policy to its global poultry supply chain, but also to establish timelines for global shifts to pork and beef raised without medically important antibiotics.
Brucellosis Found in MT Herd Two bulls on a Beaverhead County ranch within Montana’s Designated Surveillance Area (DSA) have tested positive for Brucellosis. The infected bulls were identified during a voluntary whole-herd test. The animals were euthanized, and the infections were subsequently confirmed through tissue cultures. CONTINUED ON PAGE 75
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