Malden airport to receive $110K USDA grant

COLUMBIA, MO (KBIA) - Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack announced $14 million in new funding Wednesday to help stimulate rural job growth. Small businesses across the country will get money, including a tiny airport in southeast Missouri. 

Malden, Missouri, with just five thousand residents, wants to update its World War II era airport.

Airport manager Barbara Crayne. She says the $110,000 grant from the USDA for renovations will help attract more aircraft.

"We have an air-evac helicopter comes in. We have a lot of crop dusters because we are in an agricultural-based area," Crayne says.

But a she says a retrofitted hangar will attract corporate clients.

"The spinoff in the community is that they’re going in to the restaurants and to the shops, driving in possibly to get their aircraft, so they’re stopping at the gas stations," she says.

Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack says rural small businesses in particular often have trouble getting credit from commercial banks. These loans and grants are aimed at closing that gap.

"These small businesses will be prepared to have the credit they need to buy equipment that allows them to expand operations, which in turn allows them to hire workers," Vilsack says.

The agriculture department grants and loans will go to 69 recipients in 40 states.

Jacob Fenston, KBIA

Photo courtesy of the City of Malden.

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Agriculture production and demand are both down

CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO (KRCU) - The United States Department of Agriculture released its August supply and demand estimates Thursday. The report reinforces what many already knew: It’s been a bad year for Missouri’s farmers.

The USDA’s World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates report shows projected corn yields are down by nearly 6 bushels per acre from last month’s estimate.

Soy bean projections are also down.

Michael Aide chairs Southeast Missouri State University’s Agriculture Department. Aide says soy beans are flowering and setting pods at the university's David M. Barton Agriculture Research Center. A good yield is still possible if certain conditions are met.

"What we need is favorable weather from this point out to keep the pods on the plant, to continue the flowering, to continue the grainfill of the pods that we have," Aide says. "We should have a respectable yield. But once again, we are irrigated. If you weren’t irrigated, you may have already had some yield reduction."

Aide says only about 45 percent of the Bootheel’s farmland is irrigated.

While supply is down in the U.S., global economic and political uncertainty are driving down demand.

Aide says this week’s downgrade of the U.S.'s AAA credit rating is adding even more uncertainty.

"I think there’s going to be less yields in the Missouri Bootheel and the prices may not be there that we had last year," Aide says. "Simply because if you watch the commodities lately, everybody is fleeing commodities with the stock market issues and so forth. And so prices are down a little bit in some places."

Production is up in Brazil, Ukraine and the European Union, thus driving down demand even further for U.S. corn.

The USDA estimates rice yields will increase slightly.

Jacob McCleland, KRCU

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USDA grants $14M to Mizzou, Texas A&M for cattle research

COLUMBIA, MO (KBIA) - The U-S Department of Agriculture is giving 14 million dollars in grants to the University of Missouri and Texas A&M in hopes to find the most efficient ways to breed cattle.

Farmers aren’t getting the most out of the feed they’re shoveling into their troughs. That’s the basic hypothesis behind the grant. It will pay the University of Missouri to map the genes of cattle and examine bacteria and microbes in the animals’ stomachs.

Director of the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, says this will help identify the all-star cattle. “We’re gonna get a view of what the diversity of all the animal population is and through that they’re going to be able to select those breeds that are higher-use efficiency. By doing that, we will produce more with less,” Beachy said.

Dr. Jerry Taylor in the College of Agriculture is heading the project at MU. He believes that within 5 years this research will lead to technologies that can increase feed efficiency at farms across the U.S.

“Animal agriculture has less funding available to it than, for example, if you’re a human disease researcher and have access to NIH funding. So when you do get a grant like this, these grants don’t come along every day. You have to make the money go as far as you possibly can,” Dr. Taylor said.

Taylor says his work will overlap with the research that will be done at Texas A&M, which will focus on studying Bovine Respiratory Disease. Researchers say the disease costs farmers in the U.S. almost $700 million a year

Ryan Famuliner, KBIA.

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Vilsack: South Korea free-trade pact would benefit Missouri farmers

ST. LOUIS, MO (ST. LOUIS PUBLIC RADIO) - Missouri farmers stand to benefit under a free-trade pact currently before Congress.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was in St. Louis on Monday to urge Congress to pass the South Korean Free Trade Agreement.

He says Missouri exports large amounts of pork and soybeans. There products that have a ready market in South Korea.

“So it makes sense for us to be here in St. Louis because a good deal of those crops basically find their way to St. Louis and past St. Louis on the great Mississippi,” Vilsack said.

Vilsack is urging Congress to adopt the agreement before July. If that happens he says South Korea will eliminate 60 percent of its tariffs currently levied against U.S. imports.

“The average tariff currently assessed in agricultural products today is about 53 percent. So you can tell that when 60 percent of those tariffs are reduced immediately American products become far more competitive on the open market,” Vilsack said.

He also noted that Missouri has the most farms of any state in the country with 108,000.

Vilsack attended a ribbon cutting for the new operations center for National Agricultural Statistics Service located in Overland.

Adam Allington, St. Louis Public Radio

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Funding available for specialty and organic farmers

The Missouri Department of Agriculture announced that new funding will be available through the USDA for specialty farms.

The funds will be available to farmers who want to venture into new specialty crop production or to obtain organic certification, according to a Missouri Department of Agriculture press release.

About $200,000 will be available during fiscal year 2011.

Specialty Crops are defined by the USDA as fruits and vegetables, dried fruit, tree nuts, maple syrup, honey, horticulture and nursery crops, including floriculture.

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U.S. corn reserves at lowest level since 1996

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is reporting that reserves of corn have hit their lowest level in over 15 years. The high demand for corn could put upward pressure on food prices in 2011.

The USDA says demand for corn in the ethanol industry is up 50 million bushels after record-high production in December and January. That has left the United States with the lowest surplus of corn since 1996.

Scott Gerlt is a Crop Analyst with the University of Missouri. He says high corn prices could increase the cost on everything from ethanol to food and feed.

“The corn market is definitely a changing market. With ethanol policy we have a lot more demand and so we are going to have a lot more pressure on prices. Because even though we have a lot of supply there’s just so much demand a lot of that supply is getting used up and we’re just not left with much at the end of the day,” Gerlt says.

Corn prices have already doubled in the last six months, rising from $3.50 a bushel to more than $7 a bushel.

Adam Allington, St. Louis Public Radio

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