Coahoma County Renewable Energy, LLC, (CCRE) announced that it has selected a 100-acre site at Clarksdale, Miss., to build a 100-million-gallon-a-year fuel-grade ethanol plant. Estimated cost of the facility: $183 million, according to an article posted on today's Mississippi Business Journal web site.
Click here for more details.
Linda Benedict with LSU's Ag Center sent us the following report this morning:
After nearly five years of hard times for sugarcane farmers, this year’s crop looks like it will be much better than the crops of the past few years, according to LSU AgCenter sugarcane specialist Dr. Ben Legendre.
"After three consecutive years of diminishing yields since 2002, following Tropical Storm Isidore and Hurricane Lilli, it appears that the 2006 crop will be comparable to the better crops of 1997 through 2001 – not a record crop like the one of 1999, but a near normal crop with average sugarcane yields of 32-33 tons," Legendre said.
Rene Schmit, the LSU AgCenter county agent in St. Charles Parish said the quality of the sugarcane crop is measured by the sucrose level of the crop, and this year’s crop is equal to and in some cases higher than last year’s.
"I’m not saying that we have a record-breaking crop this year, but we do have on average a much taller, thicker-barreled, higher-population crop for the 2006 harvest season," he said.
Legendre said growers will harvest nearly 425,000 acres of sugarcane over the next 90 days.
He said a good 2006 crop will help sugarcane farmers out the financial rut that the bad years have caused. The expenses of fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides – in addition to equipment – make it extremely tough on growers when the yield is low.
Some of these costs, like the cost of harvesting equipment, are unique to Louisiana because in sugarcane-producing states like Florida and Texas, they are absorbed by the mills and cooperatives.
"Today, the cost of a new combine is about $250,000. And then you need about three wagons, which cost $30,000 each, plus three tractors at $70,000 each. So these costs are making it really hard on our smaller growers," Legendre said.
Schmit said the reduced cash flow of the past five years is just one of the reasons that some farmers are getting out of the business.
"In addition to the bad economic situation that growers have faced, some have been forced out by landlords selling land to developers," Schmit said, "As the land goes, whether to residential developments, business or industry, so will go the Louisiana sugarcane industry and the sugarcane farmer."
These and other issues are always on the mind of Legendre, who has the responsibility of taking information from the LSU AgCenter researchers and relaying that information to the LSU AgCenter county agents. They in turn present the information to the farmers through personal contacts, grower meetings and field days.
He said the official numbers are not out yet for how many sugarcane farmers left the business during the past year, but he estimates the number to be somewhere around 25.
Legendre said there are about 700 sugarcane farmers in the state and each year there’s normally a loss of five to 10 growers either to retirement or because it’s not profitable any longer.
"What we’re seeing are the smaller farmers getting out and their farms being bought by large farms that are becoming even larger. So we have fewer farms and farmers, but larger operations that do a better job of surviving the tough times," he said.
Schmit said another plus for the growers this year is that they are having fewer problems with brown rust, a disease that has reduced yields over the past few years. He attributes this to having more bright, sunny days during the growing season.
Bonnie Coblentz with Mississippi State University's Ag Communications Department sent us the following report Friday afternoon:
MISSISSIPPI STATE -- Mississippi sweet potato farmers were not expecting a good crop after this year’s drought, but producers are pleasantly surprised as harvest nears completion.
Benny Graves, executive secretary of the Mississippi Sweet Potato Council, said the crop should be fair to good overall. The drought should make the potatoes sweeter than normal.
“We’re not going to have a bin-buster because of the drought stress, but quality is good,” Graves said.
Rains in early October helped fill out the crop that survived the drought, and then heavy rains across the sweet potato-growing region of the state in mid-October softened the soil for harvest. Summer drought conditions delayed planting and pushed back harvest.
“Setting the crop out was a struggle because we were waiting on moisture,” Graves said. “It is amazing that our farmers were able to get them in the ground and up.”
Sweet potatoes are planted in fields as transplants. While a transplanting machine does the bulk of the work, it is a labor-intensive process as each of the 12,000 transplants per acre must be readied by hand. Mississippi planted 16,500 acres of sweet potatoes this year, which was the industry’s goal and matched the acreage planted in recent years.
“We normally have our crop in the ground by July 15, but this year we finished up by Aug. 10,” Graves said. “It takes 90 days to grow a sweet potato, so we need November to be warm with no big freezes or we’ll lose some acres.”
Bill Burdine, sweet potato specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, said he expects producers to lose much of the late-planted crop to cold weather.
“We had about 4,000 to 5,000 acres planted in late July and early August, and a lot of those acres won’t mature before frost,” Burdine said. “If the potatoes don’t receive enough heat units, they won’t grow to market size.”
Burdine said the drought kept disease and insect pressures to a minimum, but the resulting hard ground has reduced the quality of some of the crop.
“The dry soil does not give the sweet potatoes as uniform a shape, but the slow growth did make the sweet potatoes sweeter,” Burdine said. “Producers were expecting a bigger loss than what they have seen, so they are pleased with what they are taking out of the fields.”
Graves, who is also a sweet potato specialist with the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce, said consumption and market demand are up.
“Our biggest area of growth is in food service,” Graves said. “We’re selling a lot of sweet potatoes into Canada, and we’re shipping some to the United Kingdom and mainland Europe.”
New products and venues are part of the increased consumption of sweet potatoes. Graves pointed to MSU’s new sweet potato ice cream, sweet potato fries in some restaurants and the freezer section of grocery stores, and a pilot effort in the Southeast that is serving sweet potatoes in the school lunch program.
This was posted today on USDA's soybean rust web site:
Asian soybean rust was detected from samples collected on October 10 from a commercial field in Chesapeake and from the Suffolk sentinel plot. After incubating the leaves for 3 days in moisture chambers, Dr. Pat Phipps examined the leaves under a stereoscope on Saturday, October 14 (see photos below). The Chesapeake sample of 100+ leaflets showed only seven leaflets with pustules which ranged from one per leaflet up to 7 or 8 per leaflet. Most (in the Chesapeake sample) had either one or two pustules. The Suffolk sample of 100+ leaflets had pustules on only two leaflets; two on one leaflet and one on another leaflet. Samples from Southampton County were negative for soybean rust.
Although Virginia is no longer at risk to soybean rust, we will continue to scout and track the movement of the disease through the Commonwealth.
USDA reported early Thursday morning that Asian soybean rust (ASR) had been confirmed in seven Arkansas Counties: Ashley, Chicot, Desha, Jefferson, Lincoln, Lonoke and Prairie. No further details were available. The notification was sent by email, and no updates were available for the state on the USDA ASR web site.
It is doubtful that any soybeans in the state remain vulnerable this late in the season.
Note: Since the initial posting, four more counties have been added to the list: Arkansas, Drew, Lawrence and Monroe.
Soybean rust forecasts - along with disease forecasts for tobacco and cucurbits - will no longer be available from North Carolina State University's North American Plant Disease Forecast Center. The center announced on its web site Tuesday that the 2006 season will be its last, and the final forecasts will be made on October 20.
No specific reason was given for why the program was being discontinued. The following is the center's announcement:
At this time, it is our regrettable duty to inform you that the 2006 growing season will be the last for operations at the North American Plant Disease Forecast Center. Forecasts for 2006 will end October 20, 2006.
Over the past eleven years we have been pleased to provide our users with thousands of forecasts for the spread of tobacco blue mold, cucurbit downy mildew, and soybean rust. We hope these Web-based forecasts have provided growers, industry, media, and others with useful and timely information in their attempt to manage these important plant disease epidemics. The eyes and ears of many have made our effectiveness possible. We want to thank all of the people and agencies involved for their support and cooperation in this endeavor.
The Plant Pathology Department is studying new and better ways to provide you information. Forecasting is a rapidly developing area of disease management and we are sure you will hear more about it in the future. We at the Forecast Center have enjoyed and valued the role we have played in this area of science and communication. Our best wishes to those who will continue to make efforts in the disease management arena.
Dr. Charles Main, Professor Emeritus
Thomas Keever, Lead Forecaster / Meteorologist
From the USDA soybean rust web site:
A recent find was observed in Yazoo County, Mississippi on October 18, 2006. This find was on soybeans that were at maturity. This find poses no threat to our soybean crop. However, this find will aid in development of predictive models. Scouting will continue on what few soybeans are in the state as well as kudzu. Other legumes will be monitored throughout the overwintering areas.
Asian soybean rust (ASR) was confirmed today in three West Tennessee counties: Gibson, Obion and Weakley.
The following is from USDA's ASR web site:
Soybean rust was confirmed in additional areas of Alabama, including in Limestone County, which borders southern Middle Tennessee. This follows confirmation of finds in seven counties in Kentucky. So far, soybean rust has not been found in Tennessee.
The following is from Alabama's posting today on USDA soybean rust web site:
On October 10, soybean rust was confirmed on leaves collected from soybean sentinel plots in Lee County in east-central Alabama and in Limestone County in north Alabama on the Tennessee border. The disease was detected at both locations at low levels on soybeans at the R8 growth stage.
On October 6, soybean rust was confirmed from leaves collected from a soybean research plot in Headland, Alabama in Henry County in the southeast section of the State. The soybeans were at the R6 growth stage. Rust was also confirmed on leaves from a commercial soybean field in Sumter County in west-central Alabama. The field had already been harvested but leaves were collected from plant "escapes" at the edge of the field.
On October 5th, soybean rust was found in a soybean variety trial on a Auburn University Research Station in Brewton, Alabama in Escambia County. The small trial was at the R7 growth stage. Disease severity was low. Numerous kudzu patches in neighboring counties were scouted for rust but the disease was not detected.
Soybean rust was confirmed in several Kentucky counties today. It is expected to have no real impact on the state's crop due to the advanced stage of the crop, overall, and the lateness of the finds.
This is from USDA's soybean rust web site, filed by UK Extension:
Soybean rust was detected on soybean for the first time ever in Kentucky on Friday, October 6, 2006. The find was in the corner of an otherwise mature sentinel plot located at the UK Research and Education Center in Princeton. Incidence was about 40-50% and severity around 10%. Then between Sunday October 8 and Tuesday October 10, SBR was detected at various levels in six additional counties (Christian, Hopkins, Lyon, Marshall, Todd, and Union Counties). All of the finds, thus far, are in the lakes region of west Kentucky. Finds were in "mobile plots" except for the Caldwell and Union County finds, which were in sentinel plots. Incidence in additional counties was generally low (0.1-10%). With the exception of the Hopkins County find, which had extremely low severity (<0.1%), severity in the other finds was around 5-15%. For all finds, the stage of pustules was mostly uniform. This suggests to me that a large number of spores blew in sometime over the past 2 weeks and cut a pretty large swath in west Kentucky. We are in the process of looking to the west and east to see if an even larger area of spore deposition and infection may have occurred.
This find will have absolutely NO impact on the 2006 soybean crop in Kentucky or anywhere else for that matter. In fact, soybean rust will "go away" from Kentucky as soon as there is hard frost. It simply cannot survive this far north. However, these finds are of great importance to the soybean rust predictive models. Thus, we are making great effort to know the extent of infection before the frost hits (maybe tonight) or until there are no soybean leaves in which the rust can survive (the disease has NOT been seen in kudzu here). I am hoping to find a location that has decent infection that would provide for an educational opportunity or two.
The bottom line is this: The soybean rust finds will not impact Soybean in Kentucky or the US this year. But, they will help us to refine soybean rust predictive models, which will help greatly with SBR management in future crops.
From this afternoon's Daily from the USA Rice Federation:
Arkansas Rice Prices Fully Recovered, State Ag Secretary Says
Rice cash and futures prices in Arkansas have recovered from their September slump, Arkansas Agriculture Secretary Richard Bell told a joint session of the state’s House and Senate agriculture committees today.
“We have fully recovered on a cash basis, in my judgment, what we had lost earlier,” Bell said, citing a current cash price of $3.71 per bushel, as rice is measured in Arkansas.
Bell also told the joint committee that the cause for the trace presence LLRICE601 likely resulted from mechanical co-mingling, but noted that USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Service investigation was likely to not be completed until late December.
This is from a Syngenta press release we received this morning:
BASEL, Switzerland, Oct. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Syngenta announced today that its corn rootworm trait, Agrisure RW, has received registration approval from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Syngenta will launch for sale corn seed containing Agrisure RW for the 2007 growing season in the USA, the world's largest corn market.
"The approval of Agrisure RW in this fast-growing biotech market is a major step in our strategy to bring all three of the leading input traits to the corn market," says Jeff Cox, Head of Syngenta Global Corn and Soybeans. "This new high-performing trait offers growers industry-leading control of rootworm while delivering full yield potential."
Agrisure RW will be available to US growers as a single trait and stacked with glyphosate tolerance through elite hybrids from Garst, Golden Harvest and NK. Syngenta also plans to market the trait for use in other leading seed brands through its GreenLeaf Genetics joint venture. U.S. registration is pending for its Agrisure RW trait stacked with corn borer enabling the commercialization of the triple stack of glyphosate tolerance, corn borer and rootworm resistance.
MBJ reported on its web site that:
Vision has retained a consultant to inspect the facility, which has a capacity of 60,000 gallons per day.
Production has only been 20,000 gallons per day but can be increased with additional w working capital.
Subject to its consultant's final report being favorable, Vision said it plans to make an offer to purchase and take over operations "as soon as possible."
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