Archive - 2016

posted by Jing Tang on Friday, December 30, 2016 The Chinese government recently indicated that the expected ethanol production will be 4 million tons (1.2314 billion gallons) per year for the next five years. Current ethanol production in China stands at 2.1 million tons (0.646 billion gallons) per year.

posted by S. Patricia Batres-Marquez on Friday, December 23, 2016 U.S. net cash income (gross cash income minus cash expenses) and U.S. net farm income (total gross income minus total expenses) in the 2016 calendar year are forecast to decline year over in response to low commodity prices. The latest USDA-ERS's Farm Income and Wealth Statistics data published on November 30, 2016, indicates that compared with the previous year, U.S. net cash income is expected to fall 14.6% to $90.1 billion.

posted by Decision Innovation Solutions on Wednesday, December 7, 2016 Brazil and Argentina play a large role in world corn and soybean markets. Brazil has seen a significant rise in corn production over the past 10 years, and soybean production has also been increasing steadily since about 1996 in both of these countries.

posted by Decision Innovation Solutions on Tuesday, November 22, 2016 This past summer in-between semesters at Iowa State, I spent my time working as an intern with Decision Innovation Solutions (DIS). Having an internship is a requirement for my major of Agriculture Communications and I was lucky enough to land an internship as the company's Agriculture Communications Intern for 2016.

posted on Wednesday, November 16, 2016 The Weekly Petroleum Status Report released November 9, 2016 by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) indicates weekly U.S. refiner and blender net input of fuel ethanol was 923,000 barrels per day for the week ending November 4, 2016. The Weekly Supply Estimates from EIA shows the weekly U.S. product supplied of finished motor gasoline was 9,213,000 barrels per day for the same time period.

posted by S. Patricia Batres-Marquez on Tuesday, October 25, 2016 U.S. beef exports in August 2016 reached a volume of 75,236 metric tons (MT), increasing both year over year (27.6%) and relative to the previous month (4.9%) (see Figure 1). U.S. beef exports during August 2016 were valued at $480.990 million, up 11.5% and 5.5% relative to the same period last year and the previous month, respectively.

posted on Wednesday, October 12, 2016 Ethanol D6 RIN prices that had been $0.36 per RIN at the end of September 2015 rocketed to $0.97 per RIN by mid-July 2016.Now it has slowly settled into the $0.86–$0.88 range by mid-September 2016.

posted by S. Patricia Batres-Marquez on Friday, September 30, 2016 Distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) is the main co-product of corn ethanol produced in dry-mill plants. Since 2007, on average, 97.1% of total DDGS production has come from dry-mill ethanol facilities with the remaining 2.9% coming from beverage distilleries. For each bushel of corn (56 pounds) used to produce ethanol, about 17 pounds of distillers grains are manufactured.

posted by Spencer Parkinson on Tuesday, September 13, 2016 Data collection in agriculture has long been a mindset that allows for continuous improvement. With so much data being created on a continuous basis, the thoughts of analyzing that data can be daunting. Thankfully, though, the sophistication of data analytics has kept pace with the rate of increasing data creation and management. Enormous strides in computing and software capacities have taken place at an increasing rate that make it much simpler to take vast amounts of dairy data...

posted by S. Patricia Batres-Marquez on Thursday, August 18, 2016 About 22% of the total volume of U.S. production is exported every year making exports an important outlet for U.S. agricultural production. The main U.S. agricultural export products are grains and feeds, soybeans, livestock products, and horticultural products. The top five export destinations for these products are China, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and the European Union.

posted on Tuesday, August 16, 2016 Last June, I happened to read an interesting article “American Drivers Regain Appetite for Gas Guzzlers” from The New York Times. Americans have renewed their interest in bigger cars, pickup trucks, and sport utility vehicles over more fuel efficient small cars mainly due to falling gasoline prices. Later, in July, the Monthly Energy Review from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that the U.S. domestic transportation sector is now the biggest producer of green-house gas (GHG)..

posted on Tuesday, July 26, 2016 While Iowa has a high population of hogs being fed for the market, many of the market ready hogs are being transported to processing facilities in other states or, at the very least, long distances to the nearest processing facility.

posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2016 Future growth in ethanol demand will mainly depend on the development of a long-term policy framework driven to create innovative ethanol consumption programs, such as E15, midlevel blends, and E85 blends. Use of intermediate blends are needed to increase the amount of ethanol consumption in the domestic fuel market to meet the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

posted by S. Patricia Batres-Marquez on Wednesday, July 6, 2016 Solar energy is a renewable energy derived from radiant light and heat from the sun which can be harnessed by using different methods or technologies for several purposes such as generating electricity, heating or cooling spaces in buildings, and heating water for home, commercial, or industrial uses.

posted by Spencer Parkinson on Wednesday, June 22, 2016 In an earlier post, I provided readers some background on who I am, where I grew up, and how a Mountain West farm kid made his way to the Midwest. As I wrote previously, I had the pleasure of working with the Gittins family on their diversified dairy farm in Smithfield, UT during my middle school, high school, and college years. The experiences I had there have in many respects guided my direction since.