According to the closing report, the Iowa hog base closed $0.09 lower compared with the Prior Day settlement ($90.00-$101.00, weighted average $99.81).

St. Joseph, MO    Tue, June 18, 2013    USDA Market News ServiceAfternoon National Slaughter Cattle Review as of 2:00 pm TuesdayTuesday trading has been inactive on very light demand in all major feeding regions.Not enough sales for a market trend. Last week i...

The Senate last week passed the Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013, S. 954, by a vote of 66-27. The $955 billion rewrite passed by a larger margin this year than last year’s 64-35 vote on similar legislation. Most of the increased votes were credited to Republicans who found a compromise on rice and peanut subsidies for southern states.

Last week saw donut-like activity in the cash fed market. Light trade occurred on Monday and Tuesday in Iowa at $193.50-195 dressed and $122-124 live. This was called clean-up trade from the previous week by Troy Vetterkind of Vetterkind Cattle Brokerage.

The House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources advanced the Grazing Improvement Act (H.R. 657) on a bipartisan vote of 27-15. The legislation, which seeks to improve the livestock grazing permitting processes on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.

In a move that drew applause from livestock groups and vigorous protestations from environmental activists, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced June 7 that it aims to delist the gray wolf throughout all of the lower 48 states in the coming months.

It sounds like it ought to be a simple matter, to label meat products with their country of origin, but when you take it to the level of where it was born, where it was raised and where it was slaughtered, things get a bit more cumbersome and expensive for processors and distributors.

The unpruned plant probably will look long and scraggly with a few flowers on it. The pruned plant will look robust and full of new leaves and additional flowers. Good gardeners spend all summer snipping, pinching and pruning their selected plants to make them more vigorous, full and gorgeous.

Recently, the Public Lands Council (PLC) has had witnesses testifying before Congress on some of our priority legislation, including the Grazing Improvement Act and the Catastrophic Wildfire Prevention Act. Not surprisingly, the topic of taxpayerfunded litigation by radical environmental groups came up at each of these hearings.

Canada’s Agriculture and Agri-Food department released a long list of U.S. ag products that could be affected in the ongoing dispute over U.S. Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) rules. The potential retaliation list has 38 lined items, including cattle, pigs, beef, pork, cheese, pasta, some fruits and vegetables, chocolate and even maple syrup.