June 15, 2023

A five-minute summary of AAI, regulation, and industry activities for members of the largest state agribusiness association in the nation.

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EDUCATION & TRAINING EVENTS

Get Registered, Dust Off The Clubs, And Join Us For A Great Day (Or Three) Of Golf!

July 13 - Okoboji, Iowa

Emerald Hills Golf Course

Aug. 24 - Amana, Iowa

Amana Colonies Golf Course

Sept. 13 - Ames, Iowa

Coldwater Golf Links

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Have something you'd like to contribute for the raffle drawings? Email Tyler Teske

June 19

AAI Drone Workshop

10:00 AM | Agriculture Renewable Energy Center, Iowa Falls

June 21

AAI Animal Industry Committee Meeting

11:00 AM | AAI Main Office Board Room

June 27

Nurse Tank Testing Workshop

8:00 AM | CNH Ag Industry Information Center

Nevada, Iowa

June 29

AAI Board of Directors Meeting

10:00 AM | AAI Main Office Board Room

GOLF OUTINGS - REGISTER ONLINE

July 13

Emerald Hills Golf Club

Noon Shotgun Start | Okoboji, Iowa

August 24

Amana Colonies Golf Club

9:00 AM Shotgun Start | Amana, Iowa

September 14

Coldwater Golf Links

10:00 AM Shotgun Start | Ames, Iowa

Republican governors from 11 states are calling on Congress to allow pork producers to bypass California’s Proposition 12. The controversial law sets minimum space requirements for breeding pigs, veal calves and egg laying hens. It also bans sales of meat and eggs from those animals if their confined spaces fail to meet minimum size criteria.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld Proposition 12, effectively forcing producers from other states to adhere to California law in order to access that state’s market.

Californians consume approximately 13% of all pork produced in the U.S. However, less than 1% of the nation’s pork comes from the Golden State.

The 11 Republican governors would like to see the Exposing Agricultural Trade Suppression Act re-introduced this congressional session. It was last introduced in August 2021 by Sen. Robert Marshall, R- Kan., Chuck Grassley, R- Iowa, Joni Ernst, R- Iowa, John Cornyn, R- Texas, and Cindy Hyde-Smith, R- Miss. Their bill would have restricted state and local governments from imposing agricultural laws or standards on items produced in other states. It would also prohibit states from enacting additional requirements to existing federal law or to state laws where the product is produced.

“Despite California’s reliance on its fellow states for food, Proposition 12 threatens to disrupt the very system Californians depend on for their pork supply,” the governors say in their June 13 letter. “Its strict, activist-drafted requirements for pig farming sharply depart from the practices which are lawful in our states.”



[...] Read Full Story

The lack of seat belt use among truck drivers is grabbing the attention of federal regulators concerned about the latest fatality data.

“One thing we’re seeing in trucking and other sectors is that seat belt usage is going down,” said Polly Trottenberg, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, speaking at a DOT safety forum last week. “And when we look at the fatality numbers they are extraordinarily disproportionately people who are unbelted.”

In 2021, 64% of truck drivers killed in crashes of large trucks were not wearing a seat belt, according to the latest data compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That compares with 59% in 2019 and 44% in 2020.

Data on deaths of large-truck occupants (drivers or passengers) reveals that 42.6% were wearing a seat belt. Of those who were not, nearly 75% were totally ejected from the truck.

“This is a trend that we’re really focusing on, because it’s pretty clear the numbers are increasing,” said Jessica Powell, a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration statistician who presented the data on Tuesday during a meeting of FMCSA’s Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee (MCSAC).

[...] Read Full Story

A full 84% of Iowa farm ground is owned debt-free, and increasingly owned by baby boomers, many of whom are non-farmers who like fixed cash-rent contracts and are highly unlikely to sell their ground to someone outside the family.

Those are a few takeaways from the Iowa Farmland and Ownership Tenure Survey, which took a 40-year look at Iowa land ownership from 1982 to 2022.

Prof. Wendong Zhang left most of his work at Iowa State University last July for a position at Cornell University's Dyson School of Applied Economics & Management. Zhang completed his ISU Extension work by releasing the survey results Thursday.

Zhang said the survey, conducted every five years, is a "one-of-its-kind survey in the nation." ISU started collecting information on farmland ownership in 1949. Iowa lawmakers passed a law in 1989 for ISU to conduct a survey every five years. The survey of 705 parcels of 40 acres each that have been tracked since 1988 is a "statistically representative of owners and farmland," Zhang said.

"It paints a much more accurate picture," Zhang said.

[...] Read Full Story

A biodiesel refinery in Crawfordsville that was capable of producing about 10 million gallons of the fuel each year has ceased operation.

“We would have loved to have kept it going, and we really tried — we just need more certainty,” said Roy Strom, chief executive of W2Fuel.

To keep the facility in operation would require investments in equipment that might not pay off, he said, depending on how federal policy changes toward the industry. Specifically, it’s unclear how long a $1-per-gallon federal tax credit for biodiesel production might be extended into future years and whether federal mandates for the use of biofuels will expand.

The facility is among 11 biodiesel refineries in the state that last year produced a total of about 349 million gallons of the fuel, according to the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association. That was a production increase of about 3% over the previous year but was less than the 365 million gallons produced in 2018.

That year, the per-gallon tax credit for biodiesel production lapsed. The Crawfordsville facility ceased production temporarily in September 2019, according to Iowa Department of Natural Resources records.

However, later in 2019 the tax credit was reinstated and retroactively applied to the fuel produced in 2018 and 2019.

[...] Read Full Story

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