FARGO, N.D. – CoBank announced a $250,000 donation to North Dakota State University’s new Commodity Trading Laboratory and the Quentin Burdick Center for Cooperatives.

Everett Dobrinski, Makoti, N.D., board chairman of the Denver-based CoBank, made the announcement on April 2 in Fargo at a regional customer meeting in the North Dakota region at the Ramada Plaza Suites in Fargo.  Among CoBank’s customers in the region include American Crystal Sugar Co., Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative, and numerous other cooperatives and companies.

Dobrinski noted that CoBank will give $250,000 to NDSU over the next five years. It is part of a $5 million national fund CoBank announced Feb. 12, 2013. The fund is for Land Grant and other universities across the country.

The $250,000 donation will support both the Quentin Burdick Center for Cooperatives and the Commodities Trading Room laboratory at NDSU’s Department of Applied Economics at Barry Hall, to help train students in the understanding of trading on commodities exchanges that are important to customers in rural America, Dobrinski said. That’s on top of $100,000 CoBank gave to the Burdick Center in 2012.

“The mission of the Burdick Center, as well as NDSU’s position as one of the nation’s leading agricultural schools, makes NDSU a perfect university partner for CoBank,” Dobrinski said. NDSU President Dean Bresciani thanked Dobrinski for the donations, saying the goal is “about the success of the people we serve.” He noted that business partnerships have helped NDSU become one of the top 100 research universities in the nation, both public and private.

David Kragnes of Felton, Minn., who is also a board member at CoBank, announced that Dobrinski who was selected Director of the Year by the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives for 2012, was also designating  the honor’s $5,000 scholarship award to the QBCC.

CoBank is a national cooperative bank involved with loans, leases, export financing and other financial services to agribusinesses and rural power, water and communications providers in all 50 states. It is a member of the Farm Credit System.

In addition to serving direct retail borrowers, the bank also provides wholesale loans and other financial services to affiliated Farm Credit associations, serving 70,000 farmers and other borrowers in 23 states. CoBank announced $853.9 million in net income in 2012, up from $706.6 million in 2011.

The CoBank meeting continues April 3 with speeches on April 3 by Bob Engel, CoBank’s chief executive officer, as well as economist Marci Rossell, who speaks on economics, culture and media.

In its April 2 customer banquet, speaker  Jim Morris, the high school teacher turned major league baseball pitcher, the subject for the movie, “The Rookie,” urged people in the audience to mentor young people to follow their dreams and do more than they thought they could.

Mitchell (S.D.) Livestock Auction officials tell Agweek there’s strong interest in the company’s new hay sales. The auction reports that it had 18 loads of hay on their weekly, Tuesday hay sale on March 26. The company started running for the first time since January. The market is affected by last year’s drought and the lack of local carryover stocks.

“We have more buyers than sellers,” owner Don Stange told Agweek this week. Good, green hay this week was running $240 to $245 per ton, while “ordinary” hay is running $200 to $225. He had three loads out of North Dakota that brought $210,” he said.

For information, contact Stange at 402-316-6125, or at 605-996-6543. Sales are Tuesday at 1 p.m. For details, go to http://www.mitchelllivestockauction.com/

Nick Lapaseotes, Bridgeport, Neb., is chairman of the Western Sugar Cooperative, with its operations in Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado.

Will the big U.S. sugar beet crop in 2012 be repeated in 2013? Not necessarily, says Nick Lapaseotes, Bridgeport, Neb., chairman of Western Sugar Cooperative, based in Denver, Colo. The large production from 2012 is one of the factors overhanging the 2013 sugar market.

“Three out of four of our states are facing water issues – lack of water,” Lapaseotes said, recently in Fargo at the International Sugarbeet Institute.

 The co-op has nearly 1,100 shareholders and 135,000 acres, with sugar processing plants at Billings, Mont.; Lovell and Torrington, Wyo.; Scottsbluff, Neb., and Ft. Morgan, Colo. Everybody relies on irrigation.

The company had a dry year last year and ended up with a record-high crop, says Lapaseotes, who was named chairman about three months ago. “Of course with no rain you get no hail, but in our situation we may not have enough water because a lot of the areas have wells and we’re in a pumping restriction. We can pump ‘X’ amount of water each year. And if you over-pump it goes against your allocation for the next year.”

Some of the other growers rely on river flows. “If you don’t have snow pack in the mountains they’re not going to have river flow, they’re not going to have ‘X’ amount of days to water their crops for this coming year.”   Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming are the shortest on water.

Colorado has different irrigation situation than the other states, he says. Restrictions are different and producers must augment back to the river. In Nebraska relies more on the river on how many inches can be pumped in a year. Wyoming is more based on river flows.

Western Sugar is facing the same sugar price challenges in 2013 and beyond that American Crystal Sugar Co. growers are.

Otherwise Western Sugar Cooperative has been doing well. The Roundup Ready beet development in the past five years has helped make weed control more effective, Lapaseotes says. Sugar tonnage has increased every year. Companywide, the yields average 27 to 28 tons per acre, with some areas with 40 ton averages. “We had our best crop ever in Nebraska, and that was right at a 29-ton crop,” Lapaseotes says.

Lapaseotes owns one of the Ropa self-propelled sugar beet harvesters that was attracting attention at the show.  Four companies had representatives at the trade show, but only Ropa brought a machine.

“We’ve run it for three seasons now,” Lapaseotes says, of the Ropa. He says four of them are operating in Nebraska. “We have a little bit of everything — sandy soil, some heavy ground,” he says. “This machine has allowed me to load all of the trucks in the field. Now, using this machine and using a beet cart, I can now rotate 100 percent of my acres into beets. Before, the hills were too steep or too sandy, to (the point) where you could never get trucks up and down the hills.”

He says the machine also leaves the ground behind the machine pretty smooth behind it, and a lot of the beet tops are still there to keep it from blowing. “A lot of times we’ve just plant wheat or rye as a cover crop behind the machine, and never worked the ground. It’s eliminated one pass for me on the working the ground after harvest, to smooth it off and plant wheat.”

Lapaseotes says he often is asked whether the new harvester means he can go with fewer employees. “Not really, for me, because we run 24 hours a day,” he says. “We always had two guys running the defoliator, two guys running the beet digger. Now, with the self-propelled, two guys are still running the digger and two others are running the beet cart. I’m using the same number of guys as I was before.”

The difference is that one person running the harvester can make all the adjustments he wants.

Kids at the show were running the $126 toy model of a machine that costs about $720,000 to own.

A boxed Ropa sugar beet harvester is on display at the International Sugarbeet Institute. The scale models cost $126 while the real machine is about $720,000.

Anybody hear how NBC funnyman Jay Leno piled it on the sugar program last night? Sugar went from headline to a national punchline, along with the GOP the U.S. Senate “fighting” to keep open a barbershop from sequestration. “It’s only losing $350,000 a year; do you know what that makes it? The most successful government program ever,” Leno said. The Senators argue they need the barbershop, Leno says, because of the “unusual hours they work,” and any hours they work would be “unusual.”

Regarding sugar, Leno commented about the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s potential plan to deal with plummeting sugar prices and the prospect of sugar loan program defaults.

“I saw this in the paper today,” Leno said, “the Department of Agriculture wants to use our tax money to buy 400,000 tons of sugar to limit supply and boost prices so sugar producers so can pay back government loans that they could default on: Do you follow me here, on this?

“We loan them money and now we’re giving them more money so they can pay back our loan. Do you still wonder why we’re $16 trillion in debt? Any questions?”

Luther Markwart, executive vice president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association in Washington, D.C., who described the peril of plummeting prices at the International Sugarbeet Institute in Fargo last week, says this isn’t the first time a comedian has targeted sugar.

“He pokes fun at everybody,” Markwart says, of Leno. “I think anybody that’s serious about this looks at the whole situation. The department is looking at all of the alternatives. The Mexican harvest is not done yet. Everybody wants to get out and say this is what’s going to be done. People have to be patient to see how they work through this.”

The Wall Street Journal piece (March 12: “Big Sugar Set for a Sweet Bailout”) that probably prompted the Leno story was wrong on a number of accounts, Markwart says. The WSJ story confused the raw and refined sugar markets and didn’t put the U.S. prices in their proper context, Markwart says. It tied U.S. sugar surpluses solely to domestic sugar production, which is only one reason for a surplus. “It’s all this sugar coming from Mexico, which exports more to us than the rest of the rest of the countries under the WTO ship to us,” Markwart says. WTO countries bring in 1.25 million tons a year, and Mexico has at times exceeded that since 2008. Markwart had said that the USDA had made a decision on the market that used information about the Mexican exports to the U.S. that turned out not to be correct.

As for the “feedstock flexibility” option of buying stocks that the USDA is consider, it may be cheaper than a forfeiture, Markwart says. Allowing the forfeitures to go forward could turn a one-year problem into a multiple year problem, with the possibility of more forfeitures in a subsequent year.

 

 

 

Luther Markwart, executive vice president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association, had some pretty sobering things to say about the sugar market when he spoke at the 51st International Sugarbeet Institute in Fargo this week. (See chart.)

The charts show the market heading into forfeiture country. Farmers at the meeting were asking questions about the value of sugar going through an ethanol process. (Answer: 5-10 cents, possibly 6-7 cents per pound, but who knows?) We haven’t heard much of that kind of talk since the early 2000s.

 

The result? There seems to be some slippage in values of beet sugar cooperative share values in the Red River Valley (although still strong) and farmers are weighing values of joint venture (limited partnership) arrangements. See Agweek 3-18-2013, for details on all of this.

 

With a prospect for an actual cost to the no-cost sugar program, 2013 (or 2014?) is likely to be more challenging to pass a sugar program than it would have been in 2012. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

 

 

 

 

During the Christian season of Lent, and the approach of Easter on March 31, I am often reminded that there are many farmers and ranchers out in Agweek country who are driven, uplifted and preserved by their religion.

I enjoyed a recent CropStop visit with Lauren and Pat Russell at their farm and ranch headquarters seven miles south of Selby, S.D., on Highway 83. Russell Farms is diversified in cattle and farming. Russell is helped by his father, Everett, who farmed on a separate place six miles away, as well as a key employee, Rocky Moxley. Lauren and Pat have four children who are not yet involved in the business.

The Russells clearly enjoy a progressive farm business life with their family and home, but also a hope. Lauren Russell emphasizes his family has enjoyed success in farming, but “it’s not something we’ve done: God has blessed us with good crops and an ability to work, and we’re thankful for that.”

You can see a CropStop feature on the Russells and others from Strasburg, N.D., and Elgin, N.D., at Agweek.com.

FARGO, N.D. — The North Dakota Soybean Growers Association has a new executive director — Nancy M. Johnson.

Organization officials on Feb. 19 at their annual meeting in Fargo introduced Johnson as their choice as a full-time executive to replace Jeff Hamre of Leonard, N.D., who had been part-time executive. She started work on Monday, Feb. 18.

Johnson, 59, has worked in agricultural magazines and in advertising agencies where she worked about 20 years working on accounts including agricultural chemicals, fertilizer and seed.  Most recently she has been in a corporate writing business, working for farm magazines – Corn and Soybean Digest. She grew up on a farm in southern Minnesota. She and her husband, David, raise corn and soybeans north of Hillsboro, N.D.

The grower group is member-based and works on policy advocacy, while the North Dakota Soybean Council uses checkoff funds to work on research and promotion.

Johnson says one of the issues the organization is working on is making sure North Dakota non-oil roads are supported as a vital infrastructure to move soybeans and other crops to market. The state group also will work with the American Soybean Growers Association to put an adequate farm bill in place. She says the two groups are in agreement about federal soybean policies.

There are 6,000 soybean growers in North Dakota, all of whom pay the checkoff.  The grower group has about 550 members. “That’s one of our focuses for the next few years is to increase the membership support,” Johnson says.

The North Dakota State University’s  87^th Little International on Feb. 7-8 is history, and Daven Dockter of Medina, N.D., is the Overall Showman Champion. Dockter also was sheep division winner.

Reserve Overall showman was Laura Compart of Nicollet, Minn. She also won the horse and pig divisions. David Larson of Clearbrook, Minn., won the beef division and Jake Aanden of Fertile, Minn., won the dairy division.

The event is sponsored by the NDSU Saddle & Sirloin Club and its 300 members, and is the largest student-run event on the campus every year.

Nick Austin of Westhope, N.D., manager of the Little International 2013, run by North Dakota State University’s 300-member Saddle and Sirloin Club, is flanked by sheep showmanship competition. The photo was taken Jan. 9, on the second and final day of the event.

Nick Austin is manager of the 87^th Little International  – one of the prestigious responsibilities at North Dakota State University on behalf of the Saddle and Sirloin Club. The over 300-member club manages the biggest student-run event on campus.

Austin, a senior crop and weed sciences major from Westhope, N.D., about 60 miles north and east of Minot, N.D., hopes to graduate and work in his home area in agronomy consulting. He was on-board at Shepperd Arena as Saturday morning Little I events. The 2013 Little I has had pretty good crowds, he says, despite a snowstorm expected late Saturday night and into Sunday, threatening to dump 6 inches to 10 inches of snow in the Fargo-Moorhead area.

“Normally the night show is better-attended than the morning show” on Saturday, but “it’s really filled in pretty nice for the morning show,” he says. Austin hopes the weather holds off for Saturday evening, and says no schedule changes were expected. The honors banquet was held Friday night, honoring Lyle Warner of Baldwin, N.D., a agricultural educator at Bismarck State College, formerly at North Dakota State College of Science. The showman competition will be awarded tonight. Then it’s dancin’ in the chips – the wood chips in the livestock arena.

Anna Isaacson of Edgeley, N.D., a sophomore social work major (left) and Dani Buskohl of Wyndmere, N.D., a sophomore elementary education major, on Feb. 7 work on sheep fitting for the Saturday, Feb. 9, competition on Saturday at the Little International in Fargo at North Dakota State University. This photo was taken at about 4 p.m. at Shepperd Arena on the NDSU campus.

The 87^th Little International, a kind of homecoming for the animal science department at North Dakota State University.

Eric Miller of Mandan, N.D, a junior in agricultural economics, is the assistant sheep superintendant for the sheep showmanship this year. He says there are about 32 contestants in the sheep area. There are about 175 total contestants, including the sheep, hogs, dairy and beef cattle divisions. “We usually try to keep each class from 7 to 10 or 12 at the most animals,” he says. There are four classes of each species, except horses has two classes.

On Feb. 8 the Little I starts with the 4-H and FFA judging contest, one of the ways NDSU puts out the welcome mat for prospective students. That runs 8 a.m. to about 2 p.m. On Saturday the show starts at 8 a.m. and to about noon. The “night show” starts at 6 p.m., going to about 7:30 p.m.

Eric Miller, assistant superintendant for sheep, 87^th Little International, Fargo. Photo taken 4 p.m., Feb. 7, 2013, at Shepperd Arena, North Dakota State University

Other notes from the event:

The Little International Livestock Show is the largest student-
sponsored event on the NDSU campus involving over 300 students.
The show features showmanship classes of horse, beef, dairy, sheep,
and swine as well as ham curing and public speaking. The Little
International also honors an Agriculturist of the Year; this position
commemorates an individual who has not only excelled but also
contributed substantially to the agriculture industry.

Theme: Our Roots Run Deep

Agriculturist of the Year: Lyle Warner

Tickets:
Hall of Fame Banquet: $20.00
Showmanship Events: Morning Show- Free of charge
Night Show- $5.00
Dance in the Chips: $9.00 in advance, $10.00 at the door
Hotel: Ramada Plaza Suites

Princess Christine Wanner of Wishek, ND, Queen Mandy Peine of Vermillion,
MN, and Princess Calli Lemm of Hillsboro, ND.

February 8th, 2013

8:00 a.m. – 4-H and FFA Livestock Judging Contest
Shepperd Arena
8:00 a.m. – Hippology Contest
Horse Park
8:30 a.m. – FFA Agriculture Sales Contest
Memorial Union
9:00 a.m. – 4-H and FFA Crops Judging Contest
Bison Sports Arena
9:30 a.m. – FFA Small Animal Care Contest
Memorial Union
2:00 p.m. – Contest Awards
Shepperd Arena
5:00 p.m. – Hall of Fame Social
Ramada Plaza Suites
6:00 p.m. – Hall of Fame Banquet/Meal
Ramada Plaza Suites

February 9th, 2013

8:00 a.m. – Showmanship Preliminaries
Shepperd Arena
8:00 a.m. – Photo Competition
Loftsgard Atrium
9:00 a.m. – Ag Engineering Show
Ag Engineering Building
12:30 p.m. – Alumni Luncheon
Loftsgard Atrium
6:00 p.m. – Showmanship Finals
Shepperd Arena
11:00 p.m. – Dance in the Chips with “Dude Walker”
Shepperd Arena