NEWS FROM THE COFFEE SHOP

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Nominate your public school district for a grant of up to $25,000

The Monsanto Fund is proud to announce America’s Farmers Grow Rural EducationSM which allows you to nominate your public school district to compete for a grant of up to $25,000 to enhance the areas of math and/or science.

The program is available in 1,245 rural counties across 39 states. The Monsanto Fund will award 199 grants this year – totaling over $2 million dollars – to rural public school districts:

• 177 grants of $10,000 will be awarded in each eligible USDA crop reporting district.
• 22 grants of $25,000 will be awarded to one eligible school district in each state and designated region.

Visit GrowRuralEducation.com for a list of eligible states and regions.

Grants will be awarded based on merit, need and community support. The more farmers to nominate a school district, the more community support is demonstrated, and it strengthens the school district’s application. So feel free to share this exciting opportunity with other farmers in your area! Nomination deadline is April 15.

The most important thing we can grow is the next generation. Nominate your rural public school district today at GrowRuralEducation.com.

Entrants must be 21 years or older and actively engaged in farming a minimum of 250 acres of corn and/orsoybeans and/or cotton, and/or 40 acres of open field vegetables, or at least 10 acres of vegetables grown in protected culture. Entrants must reside in eligible counties where a minimum of 30,000 acres of corn and/or soybeans and/or cotton and/or vegetables are planted each year. Visit GrowRuralEducation.com for a full list of eligible counties and school districts. ©2012 Monsanto Fund.

More NH3 going on!

We got back in the field yesterday afternoon! Pulling NH3 as we speak. Its great to get going again. -- Kyle Mehmen (@mbsfamilyfarms)

Twitter Feed

It's a big day, Tweeps! The Mega Millions jackpot rolled to $476 MILLION, the highest lotto jackpot in history. Get your tix!! -- Iowa Lottery (@ialottery)

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I love life!! -- Landon Kane (@LJKane_10)

Applying NH3

From Scott Hingtgen, Jackson County IA

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Grain Marketing Wisdom

Morgan Stanley advocating buying new-crop #corn or #soybean contracts on any weakness following Prospective Plantings report Friday. -- Tregg Cronin (@tmcronin31)

Monday, March 26, 2012

From John Holst

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in Montana when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni(r) suit, Gucci(r) shoes, RayBan(r) sunglasses and YSL(r) tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

Bud looks at the man, who obviously is a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell(r) notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3(r) cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop(r) and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany ...

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot(r) that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL(r) database through an ODBC connected Excel(r) spreadsheet with email on his

Blackberry(r) and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet(r) printer, turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with

amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then Bud says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government", says Bud.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about how working people make a living - or about cows, for that matter. This is a herd of sheep.

Now give me back my dog.

AND THAT FOLKS IS WHAT THE PROBLEM IS ALL ABOUT.

Cattle Market Highlights

Overall the feedlot inventory showed that we continue to have more cattle on feed but high break evens on those cattle will continue to make feedlots reluctant in aggressively marketing cattle.

April will be critical for feedlots as retailers and food service operators get in gear for the start of the grilling season. It remains to be seen if all the negative stories about LFTB have any lasting impact on ground beef demand. Ground beef accounts for between 40-45% of all beef consumed in the US. Cattle carcass weights are now record large for this time of year and on Friday USDA pegged cattle carcass weights at 792 pounds, about 23 pounds or 3% higher than a year ago.

As seen on marketwatchonline.com

Beans Gaining Acres

The U.S. soy/corn ratio has been moving in favor of soybeans in an effort to encourage producers to allocate more of the acres to soybeans versus corn, Brugler Marketing said Monday morning. The bean/corn ratio for new crop finished the week at 2.37:1, just above the traditional tipping point for acreage shifts.

As seen on marketwatchonline.com