The Cass County Conservation Board is holding a Bat House Workshop. Cass County Naturalist Lora Kanning says the workshop will be held at Outdoor Educational Classroom in Massena, on Saturday November 14th, beginning at 9-a.m. A suggested donation per house of $10 is appreciated. All ages welcome, but children must be accompanied by an adult. Learn all about Iowa’s bats, and build a small bat house or purchase a kit, during the workshop.

Please pre-register by Tuesday, November 10th by calling 712-769-2372 or email lkanning@casscoia.us.

(Radio Iowa) – A new Stanford University study finds drought-tolerant seeds, soil management practices and other high-tech tools help most when the weather is good. Study leader, David Lobell, analyzed soil properties and crop yields in Iowa and eight other corn belt states and says farmers can’t count on innovation to save them from bad weather. “People look to technology to do too many things at the same time, and ignore to some extent, the critical role of reducing the amount of drought that we’re seeing or that we’re likely to see in the future,” according to Lobell.

Lobell says there’s still not a good way to overcome poor growing conditions. “What we’ve seen with new technologies is that more than anything they help you take advantage of good weather. And so we can’t look to technologies to save us from bad weather,” Lobell says. He says broad climate change mitigation, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions beyond the farm, will help improve growing conditions. His study appears in the journal Nature Food.

(By Amy Mayer, Iowa Public Radio)

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s largest manufacturing employer is sponsoring an online country music concert next month to benefit a charity that helps struggling farmers. Nate Clark of Bettendorf, president of the John Deere Foundation, says the show is called “The Farm Must Go On” and it will feature a string of country music’s rising stars who are raising money for the Farm Rescue organization. “Farm Rescue helps farmers and ranchers bridge crises so their operations and livelihoods can continue,” Clark says. “For farm and ranch families who have experienced an injury, an illness or a natural disaster that prevents them from operating, Farm Rescue provides planting, haying, harvesting, and livestock and feed assistance.”

Founded in 2005, Farm Rescue serves farmers in Iowa and six other states. The group’s goal is simple, Clark says, as it bands together neighbors and strangers to help those in need. “Farm Rescue shows up with the volunteers,” Clark says. “There are over a thousand of them across the United States who help. It brings the machines and we’re lucky to provide some of the machines for Farm Rescue to operate. And then it provides the compassion that is so special about our rural communities.”

The concert will be broadcast live from the Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville. There is no admission charge to watch the show, though viewers will be encouraged to donate, even a few dollars. Since it’s the first time Quad Cities-based John Deere has been involved with a virtual benefit concert, Clark says there’s no specific fundraising goal. “Currently, Farm Rescue is serving seven Midwest communities,” Clark says. “We want to see them grow and expand and have their capacity to improve the lives of farmers grow and expand, so anything that guests to the concert are willing to donate, that’s welcome.”

The concert will air the evening of December 9th on YouTube. The headliners include Dustin Lynch, Mickey Guyton, Maddie & Tae, Travis Denning and Tyler Farr.
(More at JohnDeere.com/TheFarmMustGoOn)

(Radio Iowa) – The 2020 Harvest is speeding toward completion. Ninety-seven percent of soybeans have been harvested. Iowa Ag Secretary Mike Naig says about one-and-a-half MILLION acres of corn was left to be combined when the week started — that’s equal to just 13 percent of this year’s corn crop.

“We’ve had a historic pace in terms of getting the crop out here, several weeks ahead of the five year average,” Naig says. “We’re well ahead of pace and we’ve got plenty of time here, but it’s especially nice when the weather cooperates as it has here when we flipped the calendar into November.” It’s not unusual at this point in the season to have crop still standing in southern Iowa fields.

The growing season is longer in southern compared to northern Iowa. In the fall of 2019, there was a propane shortage as Iowa farmers were using the fuel to power the driers in grain bins. “This year hasn’t been nearly as much of a demand for propane because the corn has dried down in the field and just simply hasn’t needed it as much, so that’s been a bright spot for farmers,” Naig says. “They’ve been able to save some on that drying cost and that’s always appreciated.”

Up to four million acres of corn was damaged or destroyed by the August 10th derecho. Naig says that contributed to a slower harvest pace in fields where farmers were trying to harvest damaged stalks.  “They’ve had to literally go slower or maybe even go one direction in a field,” Naig says. “We also know that there were the compounding issues of grain storage that was damaged due to the wind storm.”

Naig says some farmers had to opt to pile corn on the ground because their grain bins were hit by the derecho.

(Radio Iowa) – Far fewer Iowans are expected to travel for Thanksgiving this year due to the pandemic which will likely mean smaller gatherings around dinner tables — and a potential drop in sales for Iowa turkey producers. Gretta Irwin, executive director of the Iowa Turkey Federation, says many consumers will still be gobbling up turkey, just in different ways.

“This year, we anticipate we’ll have ample supply of turkeys in all variety of sizes, just like we normally do,” Irwin says. “If a group of friends and family are getting together and it’s a smaller group, they can still cook the large turkey and have lots of great leftovers, or they could choose turkey breast options or turkey tenderloins.” The global COVID-19 outbreak forced the cut-back of some turkey production in the Midwest earlier this year and some producers decided to stop raising turkeys for at least six months.

“Some farmers here in Iowa did not place turkeys and will not be processing turkeys come the first of the year,” Irwin says. “Those turkeys never would have been Thanksgiving turkeys. Those would have been turkeys that all would have been further processed so that does not have an impact on the holiday market this year.” The pandemic kept many people home from work and school for several months this year, which meant they were also eating out less frequently. That, too, hit the turkey industry.

“Mostly this summer when a lot of the quick service restaurants stopped serving turkey, places where you buy deli sandwiches and schools, those types of settings,” Irwin says. “That really impacted our ability to keep moving all of our products, specifically, the deli meats, the tenderloins, the breast meat.” Iowa ranks 7th in U-S turkey production, with about 12-million birds raised in the state every year.

WADENA, Iowa (AP) — Environmental officials in Iowa say a fertilizer spill near a creek in the northeastern corner of the state has lead to a fish kill-off. Television station KCRG reports that tons of farm fertilizer spilled Monday evening south of Wadena when a truck operated by Nutrien Ag Solutions of West Union overturned there. Officials with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources say some of the fertilizer entered a small stream that feeds into Brush Creek.

Officials located dead fish and sampled high ammonia content in the water near the spill. Cleanup continued Tuesday, and the DNR was monitoring for any effects downstream from the spill.

(Radio Iowa) – Export markets helped Iowa pork producers sell some animals this past spring when their usual processing paths were disrupted by the pandemic. Iowa State University economist Dermot Hayes says a key aspect of overseas markets is that they like parts of the pig that most Americans don’t have a taste for — like feet and offal. Hayes says, “We need those export markets to eat the pieces that we’re not as interested in and in so doing, they reduce the break-even price of producing the loin, the rib and the belly for the American consumer.”

U-S pork producers had high hopes for 2020, in part because China was still re-building its swine herd after a massive disease outbreak. However, a Sino-American trade war that had barely cooled suggested over-reliance on China could backfire. U-S Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Ted McKinney says some trade bailout money went into developing new markets. “We’re leaving no stone unturned,” McKinney says. “If we can sell an extra container of pork somewhere, that’s an extra container of pork that came from somebody’s farm or ranch and that’s what we want to do.”

McKinney sees promise in a pending trade deal with Kenya and says other African and Southeast Asian countries are also on his radar. China, Mexico and Canada are the largest buyers of U-S pork.

(By Amy Mayer, Iowa Public Radio)

The Iowa Cattlemen’s Association, this month, will host 10 cattle marketing meetings across the state to provide important updates to producers and solicit grassroots input to help shape the discussion in the coming months.

Matt Deppe, CEO of ICA, says the organization has been keenly focused on price discovery, market transparency, and producer leverage for nearly a decade, but even more so within the last year due to extreme market disruptions. According to Deppe, “Producers from each sector in the beef cattle industry rely on price discovery and transparency. We need more information to help us better negotiate marketing agreements with buyers.”

Cattle marketing meetings will be held in this area:

• November 19, 10 a.m. at Dunlap Livestock Market, Dunlap, IA
• November 19, 7 p.m. at Creston Livestock Auction, Creston, IA

Members of the ICA staff and board of directors will lead discussions centered on cattle market reform, to include: the Grassley-Tester 50/14 bill, the Cattle Marketing Transparency Act of 2020, and NCBA’s voluntary proposal.

For more information, contact the ICA Membership Staff, Tanner Lawton at tanner@iacattlemen.org; Lane Eads at lane@iacattlemen.org; or Jennifer Carrico at jennifer@iacattlemen.org.