TODAY ON AGDAY
APRIL 25, 2012
BSE CASE:
Good morning I’m Tyne Morgan. Clinton Griffiths is on assignment. USDA announced the first case of BSE in the United States in six years and the market responded. One of the big questions about this case is the impact on the livestock market. According to our reporting partners at “Beef Today”, rumors around noon-time Tuesday sent the cattle market down sharply. Again our top story - USDA confirms a new case of BSE in a California dairy cow. The AG Department says the animal was not intended for human consumption. As this story continues to unfold, be sure to stick with AgDay and the Farm Journal Media tour to keep you up to date.
IOWA PLANTING UPDATE:
Cooler temperatures has slowed planting in much of the Midwest and causing farmers to be behind the average planting pace. While the eastern corn belt is planting at a record place, the cooler temperatures have slowed the planting rate in many of those states. Farmers in Iowa, on the other hand, are just getting started and that brings us to our next I-80 planting tour stop. That pretty much sums up planting in Iowa. Although warmer temperatures created temptation for many producers to get in the field before normal, these two young producers took the conservative route and decided to wait. Unlike producers I talked to in both Illinois and Nebraska, both of those farmers in Iowa are planting more corn this year and less soybeans. Join us next week as we continue our I-80 travels and check on planting progress in Indiana.
CROP WATCH:
The northeast gets snow and the cornbelt has cool, but dry conditions. Mike Hoffman has more in cropwatch.
ANALYSIS:
In agribusiness, we’ll be monitoring the impact to the livestock markets as it reacts to news about a case of BSE. Be sure to get the latest on Agweb.com. Meanwhile, global economics provide plenty of uncertainty. Farm Director Al Pell has more in analysis.
COFFEE ROASTER:
As you sit there this morning, enjoying a cup of coffee, have you ever thought about the farmers who grow the coffee beans? A coffee roaster in southwest Michigan thinks about them quite a bit. After all, they grow the crop that’s helped the roaster become quite successful. And as Frank Waugh tells us the coffee-man is not forgetting it either. They cook like popcorn, they actually almost double in size and in the process they dry out. Roast master, Rich Siri, has become a little bit of a nut for these little beans. What I tell most people, is that it was a hobby that went horribly arye. We started off roasting just for fun, like loved the flavor of fresh coffee and liked the science behind it and it was something that I did with my kids a lot Electrical engineer by trade; Rich had no problem building his first roaster. We actually started out with a pizza oven that was about could do about 12 ounces of coffee and graduated from the pizza oven to a one pound roaster. Soon after that, he got his first order, a rather big one. To roast forty pounds of coffee with the one pound roaster was about a 65 hour process, so I slept in the basement next to my coffee roaster for a couple of days until we got the roast done. Rich’s first customer came from right here Sawyer, in fact, it is right across the street from his current roasting operation. I have always been interested in people who do, do-it yourself projects, and then I tried his coffee and it was really good, Scott didn’t want to just drink the coffee, he wanted to brew with it. So I took his Sumatra and did a Sumatra cream stout and it was kind of our first try at using coffee in a beer, and it was something that I had wanted to do...and his Sumatra is awesome so it worked and kind of balanced perfectly with what we were doing. It worked so well that Greenbush is using his coffee again. The beer that we did with that coffee was so successful that it is getting re-brewed again... It is going to become one of our standards, the feedback was so good, and people like the way the coffee worked in it, it went over huge Growing popularity, persuaded Rich to upgrade to a much larger roaster. He is also increasing his variety thanks to recent trip to Kenya. The coffee that comes out of Kenya is excellent coffee, and it is one that you can find but it is almost a specialty coffee, while the coffee is good, the practices of getting it are sometimes not. Currently the situation is the beans get bought for pennies for a pound and get sold at a much higher price to the point where the farmers are getting cut out and they don’t have enough to live on. Infusco hopes to change that, by purchasing beans directly. Our goal is to pay the farmers three times what they are getting paid right now, a price that will provide more than just a cup of coffee. And our goal is to provide coffee to the US that has a story and also serves the people it comes from. Our thanks to Frank Waugh from WNDU-TV, our affiliate in South Bend, Indiana, for sharing that story.
FOOD AND YOUR FAMILY:
In food and your family, weight training is good for more than just the health of your body; it also improves the health of your brain.
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