Nearly 250,000 Fewer Cattle | Flytraps, NASA & Harvest | Daily Farm Brief

Nearly a quarter million fewer cattle entered America's feedlots in September than a year earlier. It was the lowest September total in 30 years. Good morning, Farm Nation and Hello Truck City. This is FarmTale's unplugged daily farm brief for Wednesday, October 28th. I'm Rick Portonova. USDA's report released Friday shows 12% fewer cattle coming into those feedlots, and fewer finished cattle went out to processors, too. Those shipments fell 7%. Yet the number already on feed stayed close to 11.4 million, slightly lower than below last year. That's the interesting part. Nearly the same number in the yards, but fewer coming and going. Those incoming cattle help tell us what beef supplies could look like months from now. A smaller group entering today can mean fewer animals ready for market later. Can you take a second and hit like or follow or share? Great. Sarah Hunter bought her husband a Venus flytrap. Now they take live crickets to sales events so customers can watch their plants eat. Sarah and Ross Hunter had moved to South Carolina when she discovered fly traps were native to the Carolinas. She bought one for Ross. It thrived. They bought more. Eventually, their collection grew big enough that they started selling plants outside their house. But customers wanted more than a pot to take home. Sarah says a sale could turn into a half-hour conversation about keeping the plants alive. They opened an online shop, figured out how to ship the plants safely, and began breeding their own fly trap varieties. Today, their family business, hunter fly traps, also grows sundews and pitcher plants. And the trap itself is part of a leaf. An insect disturbs tiny trigger hairs, the two halves snap shut, and the plant digests its catch. One gift became a family nursery and a sales demonstration where the merchandise catches its own lunch. Your crop can still look green while it's running short on water. NASA has a way to spot that trouble from space. An instrument called EcoStress measures the heat coming from the ground, including farm fields. Plants cool themselves by releasing water through tiny openings in their leaves. When water gets scarce, those openings close. Cooling slows and the plants warm up. NASA says those temperature changes can reveal stress before you see obvious damage. That could help a farmer decide where water is needed while there's still time to help the crop. The instrument is already operating. The new development is a broader NASA USDA agreement signed Saturday and announced by NASA on Monday. The agencies want to improve crop monitoring, drought assets, and estimates of acreage and yield. Those improvements still have to be delivered, but measuring a thirsty field's temperature from orbit is already real. America's combines brought in another 16% of the corn crop in one week. Monday's USDA report put harvest at 60% through Sunday. A week earlier, it was 44%. That's a strong week, but the usual pace by now is 66%. Iowa shows why the national average needs a closer look. Less than half of its corn was harvested, 47%, when the normal pace is about two-thirds. Soybeans have caught up faster. Nearly four-fifths of that crop is harvested nationally, slightly ahead of average. Winter wheat planting has also moved along, reaching 66% just behind its normal pace. Some hawks that hunt America's farm fields make a round trip of more than 12,000 miles. The birds circle upwards in columns called thermals, then glide towards the next one. Those swirling gatherings are called kettles. Most migrate to Argentina. The birds nesting farthest north can log 12,000 miles round trip. And the menu changes along the way. While raising young, they eat plenty of rodents. Outside breeding season, they feed almost entirely on insects, including grasshoppers and dragonflies. They'll even run along the ground chasing them. These are birds you might see on a fence post or irrigation rig, watching your fields. To watch the migration, try a sunny mid-morning once the warming ground starts producing those rising currents. A bird that looks like it's circling aimlessly may be gaining altitude for the next leg of its very long trip. Here's our Tuesday, October 27th market snapshot. These are indicative quotes, not confirmed closing prices. December corn, $4.53.5 per bushel. November soybeans, $12.49.5 per bushel. December Chicago wheat, $6.16 per bushel. January feeder cattle, about $345.93 per 100 pounds. Local cash bids will differ. And there you have it. That's your FarmTales Unplugged Daily Farm Brief for Tuesday, October 27th. There's a matching blog on our website, farmtailsunplugged.com. Brought to you by World Trade X empowering farmers. I'm Rick Portanova, and I'll see you Thursday morning.