DAIRY

The company still won’t use beef from animals that had been given antibiotics to prevent disease and promote weight gain.

Grants up to $5,000 are available to farmers in the Animal Welfare Approved program.

Producers need to protect their manure storage facilities as well as their home and livestock during a flood.

Program includes expedited review for drought-related loan requests, support for affiliated associations’ local drought-assistance efforts.

Facility resumes operations a week after USDA closed it down amid video allegations of dairy cow abuse. Company still is suspended from supplying meat to federal food programs.

The following information was released by the Nebraska Corn Board:While the drought is having a profound impact on crop production, thanks to ethanol production there is a larger and more flexible corn supply than was available during previous droughts of this magnitude.Today’s USDA report confirms what we already knew that the drought’s impact on supply and price will be felt by corn consumers around the world, stated Iowa Renewable Fuels Association (IRFA) Executive Director Monte Shaw. Yet, the ag sector has seen droughts before, and it will survive again. This is a time when all of agriculture should pull together. Unfortunately, national livestock trade associations have chosen to politicize the on-going drought as part of their multi-year effort to return corn prices to $2 per bushel.* (see below) At times like this, it is important to look past the rhetoric to the facts. And the fact is that ethanol production provides a benefit to Midwestern livestock producers in many ways.

Lawmakers and activist groups are calling on the U.S. government to lower the ethanol quota in the face of a possible domestic and international food crisis.

The border cattle gate at Columbus, N.M., that was shut down two months ago over safety concerns will reopen.New Mexico’s U.S. Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall announced that the White House agreed to resume cattle crossing operations contingent on some changes.

An inspection group from Taiwan was scheduled to arrive in Washington Sunday to monitor beef safety in the United States after a case of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), was found in a dairy cow in California last month.

The discovery of mad cow disease in the US this week could be a boon for Australia’s beef export industry but it is too early to make predictions, industry leaders say.

A BIGGER than expected drop in the US herd may offer a small reprieve for Australian beefexporters facing falls in Japan and Korea, analysis suggests.The US industry is still reeling after a USDA report counted beefcattle numbers at their lowest in 60 years.In its twice-yearly cattle report, the USDA pegged cattle and calves in the US as of January 1 at 90.8 million head, 2.1 per cent below the 92.7m a year ago and the lowest January 1 inventory of all cattle and calves since the 88.1m on hand in 1952.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the United States’ cattle herd has shrunk to its smallest size in 60 years, mostly because of a severe drought that has ravaged the southern plains. Beef prices have gone up 17 percent as a result. In the pastures near Hallsburg,Texas, ranchers are hanging on desperately, hoping for rain.

Pavilion D will be home to beef and livestock exhibitors, seminars, live cattle demonstrations and a ranching and livestock competition, Feb. 14-16 in Tulare, Calif.

U.S. Draws Opposition with Plan for Replacing Cattle brands with ID Tags.

Low cattle supplies in 2012 are expected to drive up beef prices for the second year in a row, stretching consumers still coping with high unemployment and only modest wage increases.

The nation’s cattle inventory, scorched by a record-breaking drought in Texas, has plummeted to a 60-year low, triggering concerns that beef prices will spiral higher for consumers.

Logan Bower is one of four recipients of the Beef Quality Assurance Award.

SAN ANTONIO - The searing drought has forced members of the largest livestock association in Texas to reduce their herds by almost 40 percent, but it has not shaken their confidence in the future of the industry.

FORT WORTH - This week, rancher Donnell Brown will do something he never thought his family’s spread would consider.The 106-year-old R.A. Brown Ranch will ship hundreds of beefcows, bred heifers and bulls 1,300 miles to Montana.Like a latter-day version of the 19th-century cattle drives by Charles Goodnight and Jesse Chisholm, tens of thousands of dogies are moving north.

Cattle and sheep herds are being culled or completely liquidated on West Texas ranches as drought and heat bake away vegetation on the rocky hills and once fertile valleys.

EPA Region 7 announced today that it has issued administrative compliance orders to six concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska, directing those operations to correct a range of violations of the federal Clean Water Act.

Hay Hotline to offer hay pricing, listings for donated forage, transportation information and available grazing lands.

BRIAN WILLIAMS, anchor: Now we turn from politics to food prices, specifically a noticeable rise in prices. They’re way up in some cases, and the experts who watch these things say they’ll keep going up over the coming months as farmers struggle with bad weather and lousy harvests as a result. But is there any relief in sight?

Listen up, urban dwellers. The Ohio State Fair opens today in Columbus, so here’s your chance to pretend you know a thing or two about agriculture. To help out, we’re offering a brief cattle primer to help you sort Holsteins from Herefords.

A record amount of corn was planted in Ohio this year, providing a sharp turnaround from a month ago when many farmers thought the entire season might get washed out by weeks of heavy rain.Some excellent weather in early June and increasingly advanced growing methods are credited with the change in fortunes.The amount of corn produced per acre isn’t expected to be at record levels because of the late start, but farmers and experts now think yields could at least be average.

The 2011 wheat crop has resulted in mainly low yields as harvest winds down for another season throughout the Lone Star State. Because of extreme drought conditions, the Kasberg Grain Co. in Miles, 73 miles southwest of Abilene, handled approximately 25 percent of normal volume compared with years with adequate rainfall.

New Mexico State University is partnering with Texas A&M and other universities across the country on a $9.75 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to research bovine respiratory disease and how to reduce its prevalence in beef and dairy cattle.

Texas’ farmers and ranchers are coping with their eighth drought in the last 13 years, and this one, while still young, has a chance of slamming producers with their biggest losses ever, officials said.

The Agriculture Department would be barred, under language in a House appropriations bill, from proceeding with proposed marketing regulations opposed by major meatpackers and livestock trade groups.The House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee approved the draft fiscal 2012 spending bill, including the provision, by voice vote on Tuesday. The bill would provide $17.3 billion in discretionary funds to the Agriculture Department, Food and Drug Administration and related agencies, a $2.6 billion cut from fiscal 2011. The measure also includes $108 billion in mandatory funding, almost 3 percent more than in fiscal 2011.The policy rider would bar the Agriculture Department’s Grain Inspection Stockyard and Packers Administration (GIPSA) from producing a regulation requiring meatpackers to report and justify pricing agreements with livestock producers. The proposed rule, unveiled last year, was written in response to a 2008 farm law (PL 110-246) directive to review marketing and competition issues in the livestock industry.

The Aberdeen-Angus Cattle Society said yesterday it had nothing to fear from a new US beef brand being sold in the UK.Black Angus is being stocked by Tesco at a small number of its UK stores.