USDA Crop Forecast & Milk Producers Endorse Plan

USDA Crop Forecast & Milk Producers Endorse Plan plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

On Friday, USDA released their latest crop forecasts which included a cut in expected corn production. USDA's Gary Crawford has a recap.

CRAWFORD: Agriculture analysts in Friday's new reports did not raise their forecast for conn production in fact despite nearly perfect weather, USDA cutting the forecast 75-million bushels based on new acreage numbers. Record yields still expected but production at 13-8 billion bushels would be about 65-million below last year's record. Corn prices, analysts taking them down by 20-cents with an average expected of 4.10 a bushel.

The National Milk Producers Federation yesterday endorsed a draft plan for allowing the U.S. and Canada to cope with an outbreak of a serious foreign animal contagion, such as foot-and-mouth disease, suggesting the plan is a template for similar plans involving other important dairy export markets. The plan, drafted by the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, calls for the United States and Canada to recognize each other's efforts to control an outbreak, while regionalizing how the outbreak is handled, so as to allow continued trade with disease-free areas of the country.

Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray.

The Subcommittee on Horticulture, Research, Biotechnology and Foreign Agriculture recently held a public hearing to discuss the benefits of biotechnology. Witnesses who spoke in front of the committee included three highly esteemed persons with PhD's and one first generation farmer, Joanna Lidback. The witnesses spoke informatively, eloquently, and in Lidback's case, passionately about the benefits of agriculture biotechnology to farmers and consumers. But perhaps Lidback's testimony stood out the most because she and her husband have the day to day hands on experience of running a small 45-cow dairy farm. In other words her family's livelihood depends on the "science and capability of biotechnology". Lidback said during her testimony that to her and her husband "the use of GMOs is important to the economic sustainability of their farm" and that "sustainability means living and farming in a way that meets today's needs while ensuring that future generations also can meet their needs." She also pointed out that without the technologies that allow them to raise crops that have shorter growing seasons, improve and enhance their animal's health, and control production costs their small farm would quickly go out of business.

Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.