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Farm

  • Corn growers behind E-15 plan

    "Dividing the approval of E15 among model year segments has the potential to make fueling decisions unnecessarily confusing at the pump, especially considering the labels that EPA has proposed," said Illinois Corn Growers Association president and corn farmer Jim Reed.

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  • Farm Bureau applauds EPA's E-15 approval for 2001 and newer vehicles

    Illinois Farm Bureau representatives welcomed the recent announcement by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that it has approved a higher blend of ethanol in gasoline for use in cars and trucks produced since 2001.

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  • USDA survey to assess farms' financial health

    Starting in January, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) will contact farmers and ranchers across the nation to conduct the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS). This survey will provide farmers and ranchers with an opportunity to provide accurate, real-world data that will help shape the policies, programs and issues that affect them.

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  • USDA releases final 2010 crop summaries

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s final fall crop summary and grain stocks report was issued recently. The highlights for Illinois follow.
    Corn
    Production of corn for grain totaled 1.95 billion bushels in 2010, 5 percent less than was produced in 2009. The final yield was a disappointing 157 bushels per acre, 17 bushels below the previous year. There were 12.6 million acres planted to corn in Illinois in 2010, with 12.4 million acres harvested for grain.

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  • Lambing Time

    Though the weather hasn't been exactly welcoming, this year's lamb crop has begun arriving during the past couple of weeks. These lambs were born about a week ago on the Lynn Wollerman farm northwest of Vandalia. Wollerman, who has about 80 ewes scheduled to deliver lambs this year, uses a camera in the barn to monitor the ewes' progress. Even with that, he's up several times a night to check on them and help the newborns get started nursing.

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  • Farm Briefs

    Jan. 31 is deadline  for livestock losses

    Qualified Illinois livestock owners with 2010 losses must file an application for payment no later than Jan. 31, according to Farm Service Agency officials.

    The Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP) provides assistance to eligible livestock owners and contract growers for eligible livestock deaths in excess of normal mortality due to adverse weather,  including losses due to floods, blizzards, disease, wildfires, extreme heat and extreme cold.

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  • Webinars to show value of social media

    Farmers and agri-business professionals in Illinois are invited to participate in a series of free, online training seminars to learn how to best use social media to engage in conversations about farming.
    Whether they are brand new to social media, or have already started using applications like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the Illinois Corn Marketing Board (ICMB) hopes that farmers will  participate in upcoming webinars.

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  • Illinois corn stocks down while beans stocks up

    ILLINOIS
    Corn stocks in Illinois on Dec. 1 totaled 1.72 billion bushels, down 8 percent from a year earlier. On-farm stocks, at 980 million bushels, accounted for 57 percent of the total stocks. Off-farm stocks, at 741 million bushels, were up 9 percent from 2009.
    Early harvest and higher prices for corn gave farmers the incentive to move the corn to market faster than usual. This was true for all grains and oil seeds this quarter.

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  • A step above the competition

    A Mercer County man has earned two awards at the American Farm Bureau Federation annual meeting in Atlanta.
    Rory Frick of Aledo took home the “most innovative” and “most widely usable” awards at the Farmer Idea Exchange competition at AFBF’s 92nd annual meeting for a new kind of multi-functional ladder. Each award comes with a $500 prize.

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  • USDA reports more diversification in the nation's horticulture operations

    The sales of food crops grown under protection in the United States more than doubled in the last decade as U.S. horticultural operations are becoming more diverse and taking advantage of newly emerging agricultural trends, according to results of the 2009 Census of Horticultural Specialties released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.

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