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Soybean Production Continues Ascent in Miss.

Soybean Production Continues Ascent in Miss.

By Mr. Robert Nathan Gregory

An improved price environment for soybeans pushed the crop’s value of production to near record highs in Mississippi in 2021.

Soybean production grew about 25% from $1.2 billion in 2020 to $1.49 billion this year. It is Mississippi’s second largest agricultural commodity for the second straight year and by far the state’s most valuable row crop.

Will Maples, a row crops economist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, estimated soybean prices to be up around 20% from 2020.

“These higher prices supported increased acreage, which combined with good yields and higher total production,” Maples said. “Overall, 2021 was a good year compared to previous years. U.S. soybean exports have recovered from the low levels we saw in 2019 and are expected to remain stable throughout the 2021 marketing year.”

MSU Extension soybean specialist Trent Irby said about 2.2 million acres of the crop were harvested this year.

“Overall, this has been a good crop. We have had some exceptional yields in places and some quality challenges in others,” Irby said. “It looks like our average yield will be right at the previous record mark.”

These yields were achieved despite heavy rainfall during a stormy three-day period in June, which swamped some crops for long stretches.

“The part that hurts are all those acres that were off to such a good start when we had the rain and flooding,” Irby said. “Had that not happened, we would likely be looking at a new state record.”

Continued development of soybean varieties and growing season maintenance techniques, Irby said, have helped growers steadily improve production quality.

“We have a lot of really good varieties available, and that, coupled with thorough management from beginning to end, contributes to the increase in yield across many acres,” he said. “Adoption of the latest management strategies together with proven practices like early planting have taken soybean production to a higher level.”

The timing of production advancement, coupled with new uses of soybeans, is keeping demand high, which is good news for growers’ future prospects, Maples said.

“There has been an interesting development in soybean crushing that we have slowly been witnessing,” he said. “Traditionally, soybeans have been crushed with a focus on meal, but oil has been a secondary product. With a recent increase in biofuel demand, we are seeing higher oil prices expanding its share of the crush margin.”

Maples said this change has shifted the traditional focus on crushing soybeans for meal to oil.

“The development of the biofuel market is a strong price supporter of soybeans heading into the future and will be important to keep an eye on,” he said. “Soybeans have a lot of potential heading into the future.”

Source : msstate.edu

Trending Video

Wheat Yields in USA and China Threatened by Heat Waves Breaking Enzymes

Video: Wheat Yields in USA and China Threatened by Heat Waves Breaking Enzymes

A new peer reviewed study looks at the generally unrecognized risk of heat waves surpassing the threshold for enzyme damage in wheat.

Most studies that look at crop failure in the main food growing regions (breadbaskets of the planet) look at temperatures and droughts in the historical records to assess present day risk. Since the climate system has changed, these historical based risk analysis studies underestimate the present-day risks.

What this new research study does is generate an ensemble of plausible scenarios for the present climate in terms of temperatures and precipitation, and looks at how many of these plausible scenarios exceed the enzyme-breaking temperature of 32.8 C for wheat, and exceed the high stress yield reducing temperature of 27.8 C for wheat. Also, the study considers the possibility of a compounded failure with heat waves in both regions simultaneously, this greatly reducing global wheat supply and causing severe shortages.

Results show that the likelihood (risk) of wheat crop failure with a one-in-hundred likelihood in 1981 has in today’s climate become increased by 16x in the USA winter wheat crop (to one-in-six) and by 6x in northeast China (to one-in-sixteen).

The risks determined in this new paper are much greater than that obtained in previous work that determines risk by analyzing historical climate patterns.

Clearly, since the climate system is rapidly changing, we cannot assume stationarity and calculate risk probabilities like we did traditionally before.

We are essentially on a new planet, with a new climate regime, and have to understand that everything is different now.