American Ag Today- 10/17/24

And welcome into a new episode of American Ag today produced by the American Ag Radio Network. I'm your host Jesse Allen. Thanks for joining us here today. While there is still pushback against the USDA proposal for modernizing the federal milk marketing orders. Chris Gala, the CD Vice President of Member Services and Governance for the National Milk Producers Federation says much of the pushback has to do with class one pricing.

I would say for the most part, the things that farm organizations wanted, dairy farm organizations wanted were reflected in that proposal. So one of the things though that I know dairy farmers are concerned with is the class one pricing and how they're treated in that. So that was one of the things that we asked USDA to take a closer look at and to adjust the folks from the Department of Agriculture are aware that there are some unhappy campers there. He says modernizing the FMMOs is a tough job.

When they're trying to do a national program like class one pricing is just more federal orders overall. It's hard to squeeze the balloon evenly so that there's no one who's kind of feeling the squeeze in a disproportionate way, even if it's just one county or a few counties in one part of the country. So USDA is going to try to make everyone happy. Hopefully they will address at least the most serious concerns.

That's Chris Galen with the National Milk Producers Federation. Well, back-to-back hurricanes in the southern United States are taking a tremendous toll at everyone involved. One of the few places that likely won't feel as big of an effect is the price of gas. Patrick the Hahn of GasBuddy.com says Milton, the latest hurricane, likely won't have a big effect at the pump.

Well, thankfully the path in the storm is not one that would be over refineries or any other critical infrastructure that comes to gasoline and supply. So the flow of gasoline is going to continue. This storm is not going to affect any refineries in any way. So the flow of gasoline, the supply of gasoline should continue.

Most Americans probably will not see any impacts in most in terms of supply. Places, however, have started to inch up, but it's not due to the storm itself. It's due to the fact that oil prices last really did climb about $10 a barrel on some of the tensions that are occurring in the Middle East. So, Milton, for its part, is not going to be any impact on gasoline prices, but rather than Middle East tensions from the last year, are likely to play a role in pushing gas prices up.

Dahan talks about fuel supplies. Well, supplies are looking at other outlets for this time of year. This is the time of year when we do start to see diesel, which is also meeting oil supplies. Generally start to decline. According to the under the information administration, we did see a 3 million bill decline.

and just in the inventory is that diesel heating oil over the last week. And that's likely due to the harvest season that's happening. And ahead of the colder months, those people are filling up the home heating oil tank. So supplies look fairly good. But in the weeks ahead, we likely will see supplies for at least diesel start to seasonally decline. For gasoline, it's very much a different story. This is the time of year that gasoline demand tends to decline. And so supplies generally start to build for the gasoline over the winter.

For more information, go to gasbuddy.com. Well, enrollment is now open for the practical farmers of Iowa and rate risk protection program. Both farmers who are experienced and farmers who are new to reducing rates are eligible to lower their financial risk due to reduced nitrogen application. Chelsea Ferry, PFI's field crops viability coordinator says the program allows farmers to test out a lower rate to see what makes the most economical sense for their farm.

Yeah. So the in-rate risk protection program is aimed at reducing that, you know, potential revenue risk when making cuts in your nitrogen application. So it's a way to help safeguard kind of testing out maybe a more economical and ecological rate for your fields. Faerie says the program works by offsetting yield losses that might happen after farmers reduce their nitrogen. In role, we kind of go through what a reduction would be. And then as you

Go apply the nitrogen through the plan and then come fall time, you'll harvest. And if you see a yield loss from that lower nitrogen rate, that's below 95% of your 10 year average PFI pays out $35 per acre to help kind of cover some of that loss of revenue. On top of the reduced input cost, Ferri said there are environmental benefits to reducing nitrogen rates in the Des Moines area. We're very familiar with that lawsuit that happened a couple of years ago.

But there's potential of excess nitrogen to flush through our system and contaminate our waterways. And also just nitrogen synthetic nitrogen takes a lot of energy to produce. So we want to use it as efficiently as we can. Ferri added that enrollment for the end rate risk protection program is free and there are no penalties for dropping the program. You get enrolled. You'll also get a free membership to PFI. So you'll have that lovely access to other members to kind of talk through what's worked for them.

you know, how you can incorporate some of those things on your own farm. And also there's no, like the cover crop program, there's no penalty for dropping. So if you enroll in this program and you plan to reduce your nitrogen, but something comes up and you're just not able to make that cut, there's no penalty for dropping this program.

For more information, visit practicalfarmers.org slash n-rate-risk-protection-program.

Big iron. Tell me a little bit about what you guys brought here today. Yeah, we have a lot of different things. We've got the egg recover, roll tech electric conversions as well as the SRT, electric conversion and manual. We have low max here, snow sport, access. We've got many different products in our booth today to show people.

Awesome, and tell me a little bit more about some of the new features on these. Yeah, sure. So what we're featuring here mainly is the roll tech electric conversion because of the farm market and the roll tech electric conversion has a universal mounting bracket so it fits just about any

brand on the market today. It's got a rotating telescoping arm for ease of use, powerful worm drive motor, especially on a windy day like today. You've got to have some torque behind that as well as roll detection straps to hold the tarp down again in windy conditions like this. Comes with a remote or just a switch.

for easy and convenient operation. We also are featuring the RollTech electric hopper conversions with the three-point

mounting bracket for stability made of mostly stainless steel highly in a highly corrosive environment it's really nice to have that so we're also showing the snow sport pro electric blade and basically what that is it's our snow sport which we got GM product of the year we've had it in the auto market for a long time and last year we tested it and now we're introducing it to the

subcompact, compact tractor and skid steer market. So you get more out of your machines on the farm or at the lake or wherever it's at. Easy, quick attach and an aluminum extruded blade and a one inch rubber cutting blade on the bottom. So for easy convenience.

and you can learn more online at agrecover.com. We're out of time here on American Ag Today. I'm your host Jesse Allen. Have a great rest of your day.