American Ag Today- 10/21/24

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. Well, as we take a look at Ag news headlines, John Deere is laying off more workers at facilities in Iowa and Illinois. The company confirmed this past week additional layoffs at its Quad Cities facilities, harvester works in East Moline, Davenport works and Moline's seating. Now,

To this date, more than 900 workers have been laid off this year in the Quad Cities alone. Now, deer stated the layoffs are not related to overseas moves, but to decreased orders and tractors and farm equipment in a statement to KWQC TV on Wednesday. The company said in part that it is important to note these layoffs are due to reduced demand before the products produced at these facilities. They are not related to production moves.

as we have repeatedly stated layoffs this fiscal year due to the weakening farm economy and a reduction in customer orders for our equipment. Now, just this year alone, the company's laid off more than 2,500 workers across multiple states, including Iowa and Illinois, citing the downturn in the ag economy. A few weeks ago, former President Trump threatened the company with a 200% tariff on goods coming into the U.S., a mid-talk of shifting some production to plants in Mexico.

Now, again, John Deere attributing the reduction of workforce to a 20% drop in sales. The company's stock price is down around 16% from last year. Now, affected employees will receive benefits, including supplemental unemployment and health care coverage.

Well, as we're rolling through a harvest, especially across the corn belt and into Illinois in particular, farmers are thinking about fall fertilizer applications. Now, even though the state of Illinois is experienced and abbreviated window of chilly temps here in the last several days, it's going to be a while before soil temps consistently get below 50 degrees and stay there. That's something DTM ag meteorologist John Baranek is following.

Yeah, it's going to take a while, I think. It's nice to get if you're looking to put out some fertilizer applications here. Getting down into the 30s in the mornings is kind of what you need. But we still have a little bit of a sun angle there to us yet. If you get some sunny skies, it actually warms up that so pretty quickly. We're still hanging onto that heat from the summer. And it's going to take a while for that to really start going away, especially when we look at the long-range forecast here for the rest of the month. It looks pretty warm.

Honestly, we don't see any below normal temperatures until maybe the beginning of November and even then it's probably going to come in bursts again. It's probably going to be a while until you can safely do that when we finally see temperatures sticking below that 50-degree mark. Probably my guess is right now, probably mid-November. It's going to be a while.

Soil temps are also top of mind for pioneer agronomist Jason McVicker. And I know last week there were some discussions about the cooler weather coming in the first half of this week and possibly starting some anhydrous applications. And I start asking a few questions in the fact that

Number one, just because we get two to three days of, I would consider it normal weather conditions, what impact is that truly going to make in that soil profile from a temperature perspective? And ideally, I want that ground at 50 degrees or cooler for it.

an extended period of time. So more than just a little blurb on the radar, but have some consistency. And then you bring up a good point, Jim, and the fact that we need to look at that forecast as well. The other thing that I'm looking at is we're abnormally dry this fall. I referenced the fact that we haven't had any rain breaks to kind of catch our breath. And with that, that is a critical piece to

fall and hydrocemonia application. We got to have some moisture in the soil to keep that and hydro is where we want it. McVicker's territory is the Interstate 80 corridor in northern Illinois from the western part of the state to the eastern edge of the state. While also far in biofuel groups are pressing the administration for answers on a key tax credit for biofuels, including a promising new market in sustainable aviation fuel.

American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall urged the Biden administration at a White House meeting to prioritize U.S. crops over foreign feedstocks for sustainable aviation fuel or SAF tax credits. But Renewable Fuels Association head Jeff Cooper says many other questions are still unanswered about the so-called 45 Z credits. What will the carbon intensity modeling look like?

How will climate smart ag practices be integrated into carbon intensity scoring and just so many other questions? Questions that might not be answered until after November. The elections, of course, will have some significant influence on how these issues are ultimately addressed and how the next administration and the next Congress approaches these topics.

RFA and growth energy are pressing for a November Treasury Department rule with 45 Z set to take effect next year. But Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley isn't encouraged by early guidance. The bureaucracy cherry picked three growing methods that farmers had to implement all at once. If their corn was going to qualify as a feedstock.

RFA's Cooper says farmers felt limiting those to cover cropping no till and certain fertilizers was impractical. The reaction from farmers was that that's a non starter. Nobody's going to be able to do that or very few folks will be able to do that. So we've.

been advocating for a much broader suite of climate smart ag practices. Growth energy has made a similar request to the IRS since farming needs change based on location, types of crops and soil and weather. A group seeks the use of a full scope of low carbon biofuel production technologies.

And finally, here on this episode of American Ag Today, a team of agricultural research service and university scientists released two new oat germplasm lines to shore up the crop's defenses against the devastating fungal disease called crown rust.

The team specifically created the outline so that they can be crossed with elite commercial varieties to fortify them with new genetic sources of resistance to crown rust. The disease can be a plague upon oats worldwide and inflict grain losses of up to 50% in unprotected crops.

Now, the Crown Rust fungus is a genetically diverse pathogen and highly adept at evolving into new virulent forms called races. Now, this can happen so quickly that the average productive life of an oat variety with seedling resistance is between three and five years necessitating the use of chemical fungicides in conventional production systems. Sturdy oat lines have been propagated for their seed, which is available for a variety of development programs.

And with that, we are up against the clock. We're out of time on this episode of American Ag Today, produced by the American Ag Radio Network. Thank you for joining us. As always, if you have story ideas for the program, you can send them to me via email Jesse Allen at americanagnetwork.com, J-E-S-S-E-A-L-L-E-N at americanagnetwork.com. This has been American Ag Today, produced by the American Ag Radio Network. I'm Jesse Allen. Have a great rest of your day.