One of the roles I fill is the International Programs Consultant for the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation. In that role, I support IFBF in their international trade relationships. Recently, IFBF participated in a meat trade mission to Colombia to help create new opportunities for Iowa meat exports to Colombia.
From our previous article, we compared the attitudes from the different perspectives of American and Chinese regard to the trade war (trade talks) since March of 2018. After the last round negotiation on February 15th, 2019, President Trump has delayed tariffs scheduled for March 1st on Chinese goods because they are “moving along nicely with Trade discussions”, said in his tweet.
In this month's article, we look at pure biodiesel production and its feedstock usage for 2018. A previous update covering pure biodiesel production can be found in the April 2018 Report from the AgMRC Renewable Energy Report.
This report presents the latest information on U.S. ethanol production and exports to leading destinations and highlights Iowa's ethanol industry and the importance of this industry in supporting corn prices.
I remember way back in October when I saw an email from my department at Iowa State University about a Marketing-Communications Internship with Decision Innovation Solutions. I was immediately intrigued and thought to myself, this sounds like the perfect position for me! I was definitely correct and am very happy and grateful that DIS offered me the position back in November.
In this month's report, we look at the ethanol crush spread. Ethanol crush spread is a dollar value calculated as the difference between the combined sales values of ethanol, distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) and corn distillers oil (CDO) and the cost of corn in producing ethanol.
Within the past twenty years, the flow of information has exponentially increased, largely due to advancements in technology and adoption of social media. The speed at which issues are first manifested to when they are noticed on a large scale has increased.
Farmers face challenging market prices in 2019 and diminished (or negative) returns due to costs of production that are not decreasing as rapidly as the projected Iowa crop values this year.
It has been quite wet across a wide swath of the US corn production area this year. Planting progress has been slowed by relatively frequent and relatively heavy rains throughout April and May. Combined with cooler than normal weather in April and May and flooding along a number of rivers in the Midwest, it has been difficult, to say the least, to get corn planted.
