Membership renewals were mailed several weeks ago. A big Thank You to those companies who have already renewed for 2023! Please check the mail for your membership renewal and member certificate and renew your support for the Texas Seed Trade as soon as you are able.

2023 Annual Membership Meeting Registration & Hotel Reservations

We are excited to return to Horseshoe Bay Resort for the 2023 Texas Seed Trade Association Annual Meeting, February 12th through February 14th. Join us for the 2nd Annual Scholarship Corn Hole Tournament and annual Super Bowl Party Sunday afternoon. Monday’s General Session will feature officer and board elections, a report on the state of the association, industry speakers and topics important to our business. The president for 2023 will host a dinner and auction that evening. The TSTA board will meet Tuesday morning and is open to all members in good standing.

Our room block is full. If you need a room please call the association office and we'll do our best to get the group rate for you! This is actually a good thing as it means we are looking forward to excellent attendance at our annual meeting!



We look forward to seeing you!

Please Click Here for the draft agenda

Participants & Sponsors Meeting Registration & Sponsorship

Hotel Room Block: Texas Seed Trade Assoc. Annual Conference 2023

Our Costa Rican Growouts earlier this month

In an effort to update and maintain our membership records we request you take a few moments and fill out the very brief info request at the following link.

https://forms.gle/SC6QDSgqUVixUqAo8

The link is secure and the information will be used internally by the Texas Seed Trade Association and never shared without your permission. This request is on behalf of your association's board of directors and officers and we greatly appreciate your cooperation. Thank you!

1/26/2023 - If you have not updated your information please take a moment and do so now. We appreciate it! We continue to update this database and need your input!

News Bits

By Russ Quinnn , DTN Staff Reporter

OMAHA -- Most average retail fertilizer prices were lower the third week of January 2023, according to sellers surveyed by DTN. Prices have moved considerably lower in recent weeks.

Seven of the eight major fertilizers are lower in price compared to last month. Of these seven, the prices of six fertilizers were significantly lower, which DTN designates as a change of 5% or more.

Both potash and anhydrous were down 9% compared to last month. Potash had an average price of $721 per ton, while anhydrous had an average price of $1,238/ton.

Both UAN28 and UAN32 were down 7% compared to last month. UAN28 had an average price of $536/ton, while UAN32 was $634/ton.

Urea was 6% less expensive, and MAP was 5% lower. Urea had an average price of $712/ton, while MAP was at $865/ton.

One fertilizer was just slightly lower in price compared to a month earlier. DAP had an average price of $859/ton.

One fertilizer was slightly higher in price compared to last month. 10-34-0 had an average price of $755/ton.

On a price per pound of nitrogen basis, the average urea price was at $0.77/lb.N, anhydrous $0.76/lb.N, UAN28 $0.96/lb.N and UAN32 $0.99/lb.N.

To read the entire report click here.

The Illinois Fertilizer and Chemical Association is keeping a close eye out for any pesticide related legislation being introduced in the new General Assembly.

President KJ Johnson tells Brownfield he expects there to be debates about atrazine, chlorpyrifos and Round-Up, but based on congressional action last year, he thinks a ban on dicamba and neonicotinoids could move quickly this year.

"I think they will try and make a major run at those pieces of legislation. The other ones I think they will throw at the wall and see what sticks, but the dicamba and neonic bans are the ones we are really watching right now."

He says a complete ban on these agronomic tools, being pushed by environmental groups, would not be good for Illinois grain farmers.

"Dicamba is used in soybeans, but when talking to retailers we are hearing more people switching it to a corn product. If we lose those two products in corn, dicamba and atrazine, we are in really tough shape."

The 103rd Illinois General Assembly was sworn in on January 11th and bills are being introduced in the coming weeks.

Editor's Note: What could go wrong? Ban crop protection products in the nation's number one producer of soybeans and number two corn producing state?

SUPPLY CHAIN EXPERT SAYS CALIFORNIA DAIRIES MAY MOVE TO MIDWEST FOR CHEAPER FEED, WATER

Agri-Pulse reports:

Some California dairy producers are looking to move to the Midwest to lower their production costs, according to Katie Burgess, director of risk management at Ever.Ag, an ag technology company.

California producers face costs $2 to $3 per hundredweight higher than their Midwest counterparts pay, Burgess says. "If you put yourselves in the shoes of a dairy producer, the outlook for the next 12 months is as dim as it has been," Burgess says. She spoke on a panel at the Dairy Forum.

The I-29 corridor in particular is a "hotspot" for dairy farm expansion, she says.

Bottom line: Sara Dorland, managing partner for Ceres Dairy Risk Management, says dairies will move to where water and feed are available. In the late 1980s and early '90s, there was a great migration of dairies to the West because of expansive amounts of land, water and inexpensive feed.

"I don't think that means we're going to turn the lights off on the West. But I do think it just means we could see a bit more consolidation," Dorland said. California's dairy production will help service the growing demand for dairy exports to China and southeast Asia.

Adapting growing seasons to climate change can boost yields of world’s staple crops - New research estimates impact of farmer adaptation to climate change on maize, wheat, rice, sorghum and soybean

Read the study: Global crop yields can be lifted by timely adaptation of growing periods to climate change

Rising global temperatures due to climate change are changing the growth cycles of crops worldwide. Recent records from Europe show that wild and cultivated plants are growing earlier and faster due to increased temperatures.

Farmers also influence the timing of crops and tend to grow their crops when weather conditions are more favorable. With these periods shifting due to climate change, sowing calendars are changing over time.

Over thousands of years of domesticating and then breeding crops, humans have also managed to artificially change how crop varieties respond to both temperature and day length, and in turn have been able to expand the area where crop species can be grown. Farmers can now choose varieties that mature at different rates and adapt them to their environment.

Including farmers’ decisions on when to grow crops and which varieties to cultivate are vital ingredients for understanding how climate change is impacting staple crops around the world and how adaptation might offset the negative effects.

In a ground-breaking study, a team of researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the Technical University of Munich and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) investigated how farmers’ management decisions affect estimates of future global crop yields under climate change.

“For long time, the parametrization of global crop models regarding crop timing and phenology has been a challenge,” said Sara Minoli, first author of the study. “The publication of global calendars of sowing and harvest have allowed advancements in global-scale crop model and more accurate yield simulations, yet there is a knowledge gap on how crop calendars could evolve under climate change. If we want to study the future of agricultural production, we need models that can simulate not only crop growth, but also farmers’ management decisions.”

Using computer simulations and process-based models, the team projected the sowing and maturity calendars for five staple crops, maize, wheat, rice, sorghum and soybean, adapted to a historical climate period (1986–2005) and two future periods (2060–2079 and 2080–2099). The team then compared the crop growing periods and their corresponding yields under three scenarios: no adaptation, where farmers continue with historical sowing dates and varieties; timely adaptation, where farmers adapt sowing dates and varieties in response to changing climate; and delayed adaptation, where farmers delay changing their sowing dates and varieties by 20 years.

The results of the study, published last year in Nature Communications, revealed that sowing dates driven by temperature will have larger shifts than those driven by precipitation. The researchers found that adaptation could increase crop yields by 12 percent, compared to non-adaptation, with maize and rice showing the highest potential for increased crop yields at 17 percent. This in turn would reduce the negative impacts of climate change and increase the fertilization effect of increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.

They also found that later-maturing crop varieties will be needed in the future, especially at higher latitudes.

“Our findings indicate that there is space for maintaining and increasing crop productivity, even under the threat of climate change. Unfortunately, shifting sowing dates – a very low-cost measure – is not sufficient, and needs to be complemented by the adaptation of the entire cropping cycle through the use of different cultivars,” said Minoli.

Another important aspect of this study, according to Anton Urfels, CIMMYT systems agronomist and co-author of the study, is that it bridges the GxMxE (Gene-Management-Environment) spectrum by using crop simulations as an interdisciplinary tool to evaluate complex interactions across scientific domains.

“Although the modeled crops do not represent real cultivars, the results provide information for breeders regarding crop growth durations (i.e. the need for longer duration varieties) needed in the future as well as agronomic information regarding planting and harvesting times across key global climatic regimes. More such interdisciplinary studies will be needed to address the complex challenges we face for transitioning our food systems to more sustainable and resilient ones,” said Urfels.

CRISPR gene editing is in clinical trials to treat sickle cell disease, cancer, HIV/AIDS and some rare inherited diseases.

Genetic Literacy Project Brian Owens | Chemistry World

Examples of Crispr’s promise arrive frequently, as new clinical trials report their results. Most are still at an early stage, but the sheer breadth of diseases targeted, and the mainly positive results so far, mean it is easy to be optimistic about the future of this technique.

The furthest along the clinical pathway is a treatment for the blood disorders sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia. Both of these are caused by a defective form of the gene that produces haemoglobin in red blood cells, and a Crispr-based drug called exa-cel, developed by Crispr Therapeutics and Vertex Pharmaceuticals, has shown great promise in curing both diseases with a single dose.

Crispr is also being developed into treatments that target not faulty versions of our own DNA, but foreign invasions as well. Excision Biotherapeutics is testing a treatment for HIV that has the potential to cure the infection with a single dose. ‘We’re using Crispr for the same purpose it evolved in nature, to defend against a virus,’ says Daniel Dornbusch, the company’s chief executive

There are more than 5000 diseases caused by mutations in a single gene, and Crispr could help deal with a huge number of them.

This is an excerpt. Read the full article here

Editor's Note: It is interesting to see some of the myriad of advances coming forth from CRISPR technology. Next time you experience opposition for new plant breeding techniques it may be handy to remind critics of the benefits of the technology that may be easier for them to understand than plant breeding.

Clemson University receives FFAR grant to promote sorghum health benefits

Clemson University press release

Sorghum has long been a staple crop that provides numerous health benefits for people, pets and livestock.

It is climate resilient and can be grown with fewer fertilizers and chemicals, saving farmers money. Certain sorghum varieties contain polyphenols and tannins that offer health benefits to humans yet produce negative effects for animals when used in pet food/animal feed.

To help establish sorghum as a tool in helping meet the demand for nutritious, affordable and sustainable food and feed, a Clemson University research team led by plant breeder and geneticist Richard Boyles has received an $846,991 Seeding Solutions grant from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) to study sorghum plant properties that will allow breeders to enhance these properties in commercial sorghum while preserving the crop’s dual use as animal feed. Matching funds were provided by Clemson University and Carolina Seed Systems for a $1,721,129 investment.

The researchers are studying specific substances present in the grain that have beneficial health properties for people and do not cause negative outcomes in animals. Once identified, the researchers will use non-GMO breeding methods to develop new sorghum hybrids that have these value-added properties.

The final step will be to measure impacts of the enhanced grain sorghum hybrids on poultry growth as well as their capability to reduce harmful diseases within the poultry gut.

“Spanning across plant breeding and genetics to animal sciences, this interdisciplinary project will use sound science and product development to create a more sustainable and prosperous U.S. grain and protein market,” said Boyles, who is stationed at Clemson’s Pee Dee Research and Education Center near Florence, South Carolina.

“Once we fully understand what and how plant-based metabolites are conferring health benefits, we can optimize their concentrations and availability through molecular breeding,” he said. “This objective will run in unison with ongoing efforts to increase sorghum grain yield and stress resilience.”

Jeffrey Rosichan, FFAR Crops of the Future collaborative director, noted this research is especially important as sorghum is a climate-resilient crop that could boost crop diversity to strengthen the global food supply. Increased sorghum consumption would open economic opportunities for United States growers.

“Sorghum is a productive crop that can be grown in extreme environments,” Rosichan said. “By investigating the sources of sorghum’s health benefits, this research will unlock the crop’s full potential.”

FARM FUTURES' GROWER SURVEY: PLANTED ACREAGE OF MAJOR CROPS TO INCREASE

by Jacqueline Holland, Grain market analyst, Farm Futures magazine

The 2023 acreage battle is already underway, but this year a surprise player could upend corn and soybean acres. A surge in projected wheat acres and pricey inputs will likely keep a lid on corn and soybean acreage in 2023 according to 560 farmer respondents who participated in the January 2023 Farm Futures survey, conducted from November 28 to December 30, 2022.

The survey also found that most growers finalized 2023 acreage decisions before the end of 2022. About 70% of farmers reported being locked in on 2023 acres by late December 2022. Barring any major market upheaval in the coming weeks, growers have much less incentive to deviate from rotations than last year.

Farm Futures readers indicated that 2023 corn and soybean sowings will increase, but only minimally compared to past projections for this time of year due in large part to shrinking profit margins for both crops. Our survey finds that 90.5 million and 88.9 million acres of corn and soybeans, respectively will be planted this spring.

Two consecutive seasons of wheat production shortfalls in the U.S. (spring wheat in 2021, winter wheat in 2022) sent Chicago winter wheat futures trading nearly 25% higher in Fall 2022 than in the previous winter wheat planting season. The higher prices encouraged a surge in winter wheat planting last fall - a move that will likely take away acreage from corn and soybeans in 2023.

Soaring input costs for corn last fall was another market dynamic that likely bought more wheat acreage for the 2023 growing season. Wheat production typically requires less nitrogen than corn, and as anhydrous ammonia prices retailed around $1,400/ton last fall, many farmers opted for less nitrogen-intensive crops for the 2023 crop year.

To read the entire article click here.