Another of the neighborhood farmers was back at it last night, doing his best at combining that remaining corn still standing on the hillsides of his northern Driftless Area farm.
Seeing the progress made in those fields leaves many of us with questions about what the 2019 growing season — extended into an early 2020 harvesting season — might do to the fields as planning is started for the coming spring’s planting. The day’s news could bring about more questions if the long-term wetness washed away soil nutrients for next year’s crops.
If that’s the case, the expanding soil-nutrient availability could be a benefit to farmers. That issue is among those stories we reported today:
— The global demand for fertilizers is increasing. Increased grain production around the world has been putting pressure on fertilizer, but DTN is reporting that the capacity has been rising to meet those demands. During a recent fertilizer outlook and technology conference in Georgia, it was reported that the world’s fertilizer capacity will have grown by about 66 percent between 1990 and 2022. That includes increases of nitrogen by 56 percent, phosphoric acid 90 percent and potash 78 percent.
— Growing conditions have been primarily favorable in South America during recent weeks, according to reports. Favorable weather patterns have been reported in Brazil, and beneficial weekend rain has fallen in Argentina. Crops from those countries are in competition for export markets traditionally dominated by U.S. producers. In the U.S., meanwhile, weather forecasts are reported for the southern and eastern areas of the Midwest, presenting adequate to surplus soil moisture conditions and some local flooding conditions around the soft red winter wheat belt.
— Brazil has taken control of the Chines soybean export market during the past year. China last year imported about 77 percent of its soybean supply from Brazil, with about 10 percent of China’s imports being from the United States. The U.S. had been the world’s largest exporter of soybeans to China during the 1990s, but Brazil caught up with the U.S. in 2002. Brazil’s and the United States’ shares of exports to China had gone between 35 percent and 50 percent until late 2017, when China started placing tariffs on U.S. soybean imports in response to U.S. tariffs on other Chinese products.
The retiring National Farmers Union president is saying he has concerns about trade, climate and agribusiness. Roger Johnson told reporters last week that the National Farmers Union’s financial position is strong as he prepares to leave office, but that he’s concerned about the effects of issues such as international trade wars. He’s questioned the strategy of using heavy tariffs to get trade negotiations under way, saying those tariffs will have long-term negative affects on U.S. trade markets. Johnson said history will show that the Trump Administration will have done what he calls enormous damage to agriculture. The NFU president announced earlier this year that he’ll be leaving the organization’s presidency after having served 11 years there.
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