Sorghum Crop Insurance Price Election Goes Higher

The USDA’s Risk Management Agency has set the sorghum crop insurance price election for reinsurance year 2022 at 99.6 percent of the price of corn, compared to 96 percent for 2021. The price election means that farmers can insure grain sorghum at a price almost identical to that of corn. “This price election gives sorghum producers their largest amount of price protection relative to corn in the history of the federal crop insurance program,” says National Sorghum Producers CEO Tim Lust. “”We are pleased that farmers will have the protection they need to meet the demand currently driving historically strong prices in the marketplace.” The sorghum crop insurance price election formula is based on a 10-year rolling average of actual sorghum bids at elevators across the U.S. A change to the formula in the early 2000s added $98 million in value to U.S. sorghum producers through increased crop insurance coverage.

American Cheese Producers and Dairy Farmers Get Court Win

The U.S. District Court in eastern Virginia issued ruling that “gruyere” (groo-YAIR) is a generic style of cheese that can come from anywhere. The decision says all cheesemakers, not just those in France and Switzerland, can continue to create and market cheese under that common name. The Consortium for Common Food Names, the U.S. Dairy Export Council, the National Milk Producers Federation, and a coalition of dairy stakeholders prevailed in their battle to use the generic name. “This is a landmark victory for American dairy farmers and cheesemakers, and it sets a vital precedent in the much larger, ongoing battle over food names in the United States,” says Jaime (HY-me) Castaneda (Cast-ah-NAH-dah), Executive Director of the CCFN. The court says in its ruling that the arguments of the French and Swiss were insufficient, and that CCFN presented overwhelming evidence that cheese buyers in the U.S. understand gruyere to be a generic term with no correlation to where it’s produced.

Pork Industry Grooms Future Leaders

The National Pork Producers Council and the National Pork Board kicked off the 2022 class of the Pork Leadership Institute. The institute is a jointly-funded and organized training curriculum designed to develop future leaders in the U.S. pork industry. The year-long program consists of five learning sessions between February and November. Participants will learn about the legislative and regulatory processes, the importance of international trade, the roles of national and state pork associations, and issues facing producers. They are also trained to be spokespeople for the pork industry and grassroots advocates able to disseminate pro-active, targeted messages about the industry. “PLI is vital to the success of pork producers because it develops knowledge advocates for the pork industry, and most importantly, future industry leaders,” says NPPC CEO Bryan Humphries. “Graduates are able to tell the pork industry’s story from Main Street to the nation’s capital.” Each year, between 15-20 producers are selected for the program.

Monday Watch List

Markets

Traders will return from the weekend Sunday evening with eyes on the latest weather forecasts from South America. USDA may or may not have an export sale announcement at 8 a.m. CST and the weekly grain inspections report is due out at 10 a.m.

Weather

An arctic trough over the Eastern U.S. is providing for some below normal temperatures to many places east of the Rockies on Monday, but it is also dry outside of lake-effect snow around the Great Lakes. A warmup is starting in the High Plains today but will spread throughout much of the country on Tuesday and Wednesday, lasting through the rest of the week.

Food Price Index Falls in December

The latest Food Price index declined 1.2 points in December but remained 23 percent higher than a year ago. The index from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations averaged 133.7 points in December. Except for dairy, the values of all sub-indices registered monthly declines. For 2021 as a whole, the index averaged 125.7 points, as much as 28.1 percent above year-ago levels, with all sub-indices averaging sharply higher than in the previous year. The Cereal Price Index averaged 140.5 points in December, down 0.9 points from November. The Vegetable Oil Price Index averaged 178.5 points in December, shedding 6.1 points from recent record highs. The Dairy Price Index averaged 128.2 points in December, up 2.3 points and 17.4 percent above its December 2020 value. The Meat Price Index averaged 111.3 points in December, 17.4 percent above its year-earlier value. And the Sugar Price Index averaged 116.4 points, down 33.1 percent from November and a five-month low.

Grocers Allege Pork Price Fixing in Lawsuit

Leading grocery store operators ended 2021 with a lawsuit against the pork industry for allegedly conspiring to control the industry and raise prices. Kroger, Albertsons, Hy-Vee and others filed the lawsuit against Hormel, JBS USA, Seaboard Foods, Smithfield, Triumph and Tyson, among others last week. Law Street Media reports the plaintiffs alleged the defendants and Indiana Packers Corporation entered “into a conspiracy from at least 2009 to the present to fix, raise, maintain, and stabilize the price of pork.” And the grocery store operators are seeking damages to the maximum extent allowed under law. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court of Northern California. The petitioners claim Agri Stats, an ag industry data provider, held a central role in the conspiracy. The complaint claims that beginning in 2008 or before, Agri Stats proposed a series of benchmarks to the pork industry to monitor pork production as a way to "increase their profits in the sale of pork and not to increase their pork production."

New Insurance Option for Conservation-Minded Corn Farmers

Corn farmers who split-apply nitrogen have another option for insurance coverage. USDA’s Risk Management Agency this week announced the details of its Post Application Coverage Endorsement, or PACE, in certain states for non-irrigated corn. The program provides coverage for producers who split-apply nitrogen to save money, a practice also considered better for natural resources. PACE provides payments for the projected yield lost when producers are unable to apply the post nitrogen application during the V3-V10 corn growth stages due to field conditions created by weather. PACE is offered in select counties in 11 states, including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. It is available as supplemental coverage for Yield Protection, Revenue Protection, and Revenue Protection with Harvest Price Exclusion policies. To split-apply nitrogen, growers make multiple fertilizer applications during the growing season rather than providing all the crop’s nitrogen requirements with a single treatment before or during planting.