Robert Pore's Ag Blog

Up to a third of our food supply depends on pollination by domesticated honeybees, but the insects are up to five times more efficient when wild bees buzz the same fields, according to a study published Aug. 28 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.

"As honeybees become more scarce, it becomes more important to have better pollinators," said Sarah Greenleaf, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis and first author on the study.

As a graduate student at Princeton University, Greenleaf carried out a two-year study of honeybees used to pollinate sunflower crops on farms in Yolo County, Calif., near UC Davis.

Compared to honeybees, wild bees did not contribute much directly to crop pollination. But on farms where wild bees were abundant, honeybees were much more effective in pollinating flowers and generating seeds, Greenleaf found.

There appear to be two reasons for that. Male wild bees, probably looking for mates, will latch onto worker honeybees, which are sterile females, causing them to move from one flower to another. Secondly, female wild bees appear to "dive bomb" honeybees, forcing them to move. Frequent movement between flowers spreads pollen around more effectively.

Greenleaf and her co-author Claire Kremen, now a professor at UC Berkeley, calculated that wild bees contributed about $10 million of value to the $26-million sunflower industry alone.

All the fields in the study were conventionally farmed, but varied in their proximity to natural habitat, Greenleaf said.

Re-authorization of the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act by the senate this week will benefit Nebraska livestock producers, said an agricultural economist for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Azzeddine Azzam said according to research, the only place where mandatory reporting has really had an impact in making the market more competitive is in Nebraska.
“The structure of the cattle feeding industry in Nebraska is much more dispersed than in other states,” Azzam said.

He said when there is a dispersed cattle feeding industry there are more small cattle feeders.

Azzam said when there is less frequency of marketing during the time when reporting was voluntary there was less information being reported in Nebraska by both packers and cattle feeders.

“Now what happens is that you have made it mandatory and you have more information than you have before,” Azzam said. “The quality of information and volume information has increased in Nebraska more than it has in states that had concentrated feedlot industries during mandatory and voluntary price reporting. Now, in Nebraska, cattle feeders had more information that they had before.”

Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said the senate passed a 5 year re-authorization of the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act, previously passed by the House on September 14, 2005.

He said this legislation requires packers, processors and importers to provide information on price, contracting, and supply and demand to the United States Department of Agriculture. The law expired on September 30, 2005, and as a result producers have been voluntarily reporting to USDA.

Hagel said that in the absence of a federal program Nebraska law directs the Nebraska Department of Agriculture to administer a state price reporting program, which would have been costly and time-consuming.

Nebraska would have had to establish a state reporting program by October 1, 2007, if this federal law was not passed.

“This is important news for the Nebraska livestock industry,” Hagel said. “In the absence of this law, states like Nebraska would have been forced to implement costly and time-consuming price reporting systems of their own.”

He said livestock producers across the country need the reliable and timely information provided by USDA to make sound marketing decisions.

The legislation will now go to President Bush’s desk for his signature.

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., also supported a five-year reauthorization of the act.
The legislation, which had bipartisan congressional support and backing from the animal agriculture industry, also includes three enhancements to the pork reporting provisions: 1) Adding more sows to the pricing reports; 2) Changing the timing for data reporting; 3) Allowing USDA to publish price distributions for net prices.

“The mandatory price reporting law is an important tool that helps producers make business and production decisions,” said National Pork Producer Council President Joy Philippi, a pork producer from Bruning.

National Cattlemen Beef Association President and Missouri cattle producer Mike John said the reporting process is important to U.S. cattle ranchers.

“Making price reporting practices mandatory by law assures cattle producers are getting the marketing information they need about their beef products,” John said.

Mandatory Price Reporting requires meat packers to report to the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) daily price and volume information on negotiated and non-negotiated purchases of cattle and boxed beef sales.

In addition, companies are also required to report beef exports and imports. The Mandatory Price Reporting law expired September 30, 2005, after the Senate was initially unable to agree to the bill passed by the House.

“We will also continue to work with USDA to improve the mandatory price reporting process, so that it will better serve the needs of all cattle producers,” John said.
Mandatory price reporting originally went into effect in April 2001.

R-CALF USA applauds the bipartisan support that Mandatory Country-of-Origin Labeling (M-COOL) enjoys from both Montana Senators. Independent cattle producers from across the state are hopeful that the leadership of Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., will help put M-COOL implementation
back on track.”

R-CALF USA commends Burns, who recently sent the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) a letter which stated in part, that the agency had overestimated – by a wide margin – the costs of implementation. In the letter, Burns requested that USDA, as soon as possible, provide a new cost estimate for full implementation of the program, which was signed into law on May 13, 2002, as part of the 2002 Farm Bill.

“We’re now labeling fish and shellfish, and that doesn’t appear to have many problems,” Burns pointed out. “I’ve asked USDA to look at the fish rules and see if we can learn from that program to make the beef rules less burdensome.

“I’ve also asked the USDA to revise its initial cost estimates for COOL based on the new information we have from fish labeling,” he continued. “I think the USDA’s initial estimates were way off base, and hopefully with some real-world experience, we can get a more reasonable number.”

Burns also said he has received a verbal commitment from USDA to issue a revised cost analysis of M-COOL.

“COOL is the law of the land,” Burns concluded. “The folks in the countryside need some assurances that we’re going to get COOL implemented.”

Baucus also is appreciated for consistently advocating quick implementation of M-COOL. Last November, he and Burns proposed legislation that would have restored M-COOL’s implementation date to Sept. 30, 2006. Opponents of M-COOL successfully delayed the program’s launch date to 2008.

Baucus said he has fought hard to implement Mandatory COOL.

“Montana’s ranchers produce the highest quality meat in the world, and it is vital that consumers know where their meat comes from so they can choose the highest quality product,” Baucus said. “I will continue to fight for COOL to make sure Mandatory COOL is not delayed any further. Congress passed it, the President signed it, and now it is time to implement it.”

“Country-of-Origin Labeling is an extremely important tool for U.S. cattle producers, and it’s time to implement this law,” said R-CALF USA President and Region V Director Chuck Kiker. “We look forward to working with Senator Burns and Senator Baucus, and other members of Congress, to encourage the Administration to quickly implement Mandatory COOL for U.S. cattle producers.”

August was a meaty month for Nebraska, according to a livestock slaughter report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Friday.

Commercial red meat production in Nebraska during August was 664.3 million pounds, which was up 1 percent from a year before and 9 percent more than July.
Behind Nebraska as the nation’s leading red meat producer was Kansas and Iowa, respectively.

Nationwide, commercial red meat production totaled 4.24 billion pounds in August, up 4 percent from the 4.10 billion pounds produced in August 2005.

Beef production, nationwide, at 2.44 billion pounds, was 5 percent above the previous year. Cattle slaughter totaled 3.13 million head, up 5 percent from August 2005.
The average live weight was up nine pounds from the previous year, at 1,275 pounds.

In Nebraska, 664,000 head of cattle was slaughtered compared to 633,200 head in August 2005. Nebraska was second in the nation in cattle slaughter behind Kansas.
Nationwide, pork production totaled 1.77 billion pounds, up 1 percent from the previous year.

Hog kill totaled 9.09 million head, nationwide, 1 percent above August 2005. The average live weight was 1 pound above the previous year, at 263 pounds.

Nebraska saw the number of hogs slaughtered during August climb to 658,600 head compared to 634,500 head a year before. The average liveweight was 263 pounds both in August of 2005 and 2006.

Nebraska was sixth in the nation in hog slaughter behind Iowa, North Carolina, Illinois, Minnesota, and Indiana.

Nationwide, lamb and mutton production, at 14.6 million pounds, was down 5 percent from August 2005.

Sheep slaughter totaled 227,000 head, 1 percent below last year. The average live weight was 129 pounds, down 5 pounds from August a year ago.

Veal production totaled 14.2 million pounds, 4 percent above August a year ago. Calf slaughter totaled 66,700 head, up 2 percent from August 2005. The average live weight was unchanged last year, at 347 pounds.

January to August 2006 commercial red meat production was 31.3 billion pounds, up 4 percent from 2005.

Accumulated beef production was up 7 percent from last year, veal was down 3 percent, pork was up 2 percent from last year, and lamb and mutton production was up 1 percent.