News Update
May 16, 2016
CAB in Russia
The Certified Angus Beef® (CAB®) brand began production and sales in Russia this spring, through licsensed partner Miratorg Agribusiness Holding.
Cattle were sourced mainly from the United States over eight years and spurred by Russian subsidies aimed at building a modern food supply chain. The world’s leading brand of fresh beef became a logical end target for the North American-style plan Miratorg announced in 2009, while it began to build up dozens of cattle ranches south of Moscow in the Bryansk Region.
Two 50,000-head feedyards and a 400,000-head annual-capacity processing plant were completed in the last two years, according to Certified Angus Beef LLC.
CAB President John Stika says the decision to expand beyond North America for the first time was not taken lightly: “From a brand standpoint, it’s definitely not something that’s evolved quickly. Certified Angus Beef has been sold in Russia since 1998 through our licensed network of food distribution, primarily in the Moscow and Saint Petersburg area, being their desire to become more food self sufficient.”
Watch more of the story in this week’s episode of The Angus Report. You can also catch the show at 1:30 p.m. CST Saturday and 7:30 a.m. CST each Monday morning on RFD-TV.
Three Little Words
Bovine viral diarrhea (BVD). Those three words have been leaving big question marks over the heads of producers, veterinarians, cattle feeders and animal health experts, and big holes in the pockets of cattle-market players since the 1980s.
Cattle industry professionals agree: BVD is a problem, and we still haven’t fixed it.
Dan Grooms, veterinarian with Michigan State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, said as much at the National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA) BVD Forum April 7 in Kansas City, Mo.
Grooms’ message was that we should continue to educate the industry about BVD, continue dialogue within the industry focusing on control methods and implement cost-effective control programs for the disease. BVD is an RNA virus and can mutate and change rapidly, Grooms reminded his audience.
The virus can present itself in a variety of ways, or not at all. Transient, or acute, infection can cause immunosuppression, leading to secondary problems such as respiratory disease. Conversely, a transiently infected animal may show no signs of infection at all.
Continue reading in the complete Angus Media news article online.
Senate Announces Hearing on State of Livestock Industry
The U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry formally announced it will convene a hearing on the state of the U.S. livestock industry. “A Review of the U.S. Livestock and Poultry Sectors: Marketplace Opportunities and Challenges” will be heard on Thursday, May 26, at 10 a.m. in the Hart Senate Office Building.
On Wednesday, May 11, United States Cattlemen’s Association (USCA) sent a letter to Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts and Ranking Member Debbie Stabenow requesting a hearing be convened to investigate the current state of the market. The letter outlined multiple contributing factors to the collapse of the livestock market in the latter half of 2015, leading up to its current volatility today.
For more information, access the USCA news release online.
Farm Ownership, Ag Finance Workshop
U.S. agriculture is in the midst of a large transfer of farmland to the next generation. This transfer has raised concerns about the ability of young operators to access land and is driving changes in land ownership patterns, including an increasing number of investors adding farmland to their portfolios.
What will these changes mean for farmers, local agribusinesses, lenders and rural communities? What are the implications for agricultural policy? These are among the topics to be explored at a workshop June 6 and 7 at the Brown Hotel, Louisville, Ky.
The workshop, Changing Dynamics in Farm Ownership and Agricultural Finance, is a collaboration of Farm Foundation NFP, USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS), and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The program is posted on the Farm Foundation website.
The program will feature a panel of farmer landowners, who represent a variety of farm business sizes and structures.
For more information, view the Farm Foundation news release online.
Field Day Looks at Multiple Uses of Small Grains
One crop, multiple profit options? Farmers who grow small grains can find additional uses for them, including as cover crops and as alternative or supplemental livestock forages, besides using them as a cash grain crop, says an Ohio State University Extension educator.
Small grains — including cereal rye, wheat, oats and barley — can be planted and put to use to fulfill a variety of needs, said Rory Lewandowski, an OSU Extension agriculture and natural resources educator.
A Small Grains Field Day June 14 will highlight some of the current research in this area. “That’s the nice thing about some of these small grain crops — they can offer multiple purposes depending on what the market is doing in a particular year,” Lewandowski said.
For more information, view the complete news release online.
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