Who Gets the Vet? Flying Hay, Hidden Bugs, Poisoned Pouches & Marfa Lights — Daily Farm Brief

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Here's your quick farm headlines, just the essentials. Where does 941 billion pounds of manure go? That's Food and Water Watch's yearly estimate for U.S. factory farms. Over the previous decade, America lost small farms and gained giant cattle, chicken, and hog operations. Now EPA has shelved a plan to estimate livestock farms air emissions, citing outdated data. Next, Mexico booked about 68 million bushels of American corn. USDA announced the sale Monday, deliveries stretch across this marketing year and next. Tennessee is the first of 18 major corn states to finish harvest. Across those states, about one acre and four was still waiting on a combine Sunday. Good morning, Farm Nation and Hello Truck City. This is Farmtail's Unplugged Daily Farm Brief for Wednesday, November 4th. I'm Rick Portanova. Today's show: Who answers when a cow needs a vet at 2 in the morning? We'll drop hay bales over Nevada, hear what's eating the wheat, and find out how lead got into your kid's applesauce. Then it's the Mystery Lights of Marfa, Texas, and we close with the markets. And if you enjoy our show, would you give us a follow, a like, or a share? So grab your coffee, fire up whatever you're driving, and let's find out what was happening while you were busy actually working. Farm News, who's on call? Say you've got a heifer struggling to deliver her first calf. The vet picks up on the first ring. Trouble is she's already on a farm call two counties over. Take five counties around Larnad, Texas. The state counted 14 vets there who work with livestock. Their territory covers nearly 3,800 square miles. By the state's count, that's about 28,000 head of cattle per vet. RFD TV reported Tuesday that more than 500 U.S. counties were short of large animal vets last year. Dr. Todd Gunderson at Kansas State says young vets need help figuring out how to keep a clinic profitable and how to get a night off. Imagine getting a Sunday off when half the county has your cell phone. Kansas helps vet students pay for school in exchange for working in rural communities. And when their required time was up, Kansas State says 86% stayed in a qualifying county. My own daughter is one of those vets, and she operates out of Kansas today. Farm History, the flying feed wagon. Bob Walker was 200 feet over Nevada with a rope around his waist and a hay hook in his hand. He and two college buddies had volunteered to feed cattle. It was the winter of 1949. Snow had stranded entire herds. Ranchers climbed aboard Air Force cargo planes to show the pilots where to find them. When Walker's plane reached a herd near Eureka, the cargo's doors swung open. Now that rope mattered. The boys dragged bales of hay to the door, then kicked them out on the crewman signal. The bales burst when they hit the ground. Cows standing belly deep in snow could nose right into the loose hay. Back home, Walker's mother had cooked a big rib roast. The three of them made sandwiches out of the whole thing. They'd already decided to fly again the next day. USDA has a recording of a young rice weevil eating its way through wheat. The whole meal is taking place inside the kernel. Now try hearing that in a working grain elevator. Back in 1996, USDA scientists shielded their sensors from the noise at a terminal near New Orleans. In some grain samples, they could locate and count the young insects in as little as 10 minutes. This year, researchers put a sensor inside a sample container and a microphone outside. The outside mic picked up background noise, like somebody talking. The software could then filter that out of the inside recording. In their test, they picked up a single insect, even with the outside noise above 100 decibels. All that racket and one little bug still gave itself away. And now the risks of processed foods. How did lead get into the kids' applesauce? Four kids in North Carolina homes had high lead levels. None looked sick. Routine blood tests caught it in 2023. What had all four eaten? Cinnamon applesauce from a squeeze pouch. The FDA found lead chromate in the cinnamon. That pigment gives spices a brighter color and adds weight. A heavier sack brings more money. Investigators suspect that was the motive. The pouches were recalled. This and numerous other examples are pushing people towards organic. Ask a backyard gardener what keeps moths off her cabbage, and she can lift the netting and show you. At the grocery store, people care how their food was grown too. USDA says organic shoppers often cite pesticide residues and concern for the land. Americans spent nearly $23 billion on organic produce last year, up about 5%, and the trend is continuing. Farm folklore, the Marfa Lights. Nine miles east of Marfa, Texas, there's a pullout on Highway 90 where people park after dark and wait. Out across the flats, a light appears. It splits in two. Then both halves wink out. An old ranching story traces the Marfa lights back to 1883. A young cowhan named Robert Ellison saw a flicker on a cattle drive and figured somebody had built a campfire. Folks went looking, the story goes, and couldn't find so much as a pile of ashes. Years later, some Texas physics students went out to test the story. They flashed headlights on Highway 67. Sure enough, their partners at the lookout saw the flashes. That explained what the students saw. What Ellison saw is anybody's guess. So Truck City, if you're driving 67 after dark, somebody nine miles outside of Marfa may be admiring your headlights. On Tuesday morning, December corn was 445 a bushel, down three and a quarter cents. January soybeans were 12.15 and a quarter, down a cent and a half. December Chicago wheat slipped 6.3 quarter cents to $5.99 and three-quarters a bushel. December Class 3 milk was $17.20 per hundredweight up a dime. For cattle, here's Monday's clothes. December live cattle fell $125 to $12.19.70 per hundredweight. January feeders went the other way, up 90 cents to about $332.68. And if you'd like more information about any of the topics we've covered, there's a detailed matching expanded blog for every episode we release. You'll find it on our website, farmtailsunplugged.com. And there you have it, that's your FarmTales Unplugged daily farm brief for Wednesday, November 4th. Brought to you by World TradeX empowering farmers. I'm Rick Portanova, and I'll see you Thursday morning.