Purdue Agriculture Report

Welcome to Purdue Agriculture Report, an e-newsletter for business and community leaders on research, academics and Extension across Indiana and around the globe.

While the aroma of a livestock operation is unmistakable, the dust, ammonia and other air-borne compounds coming from farms are difficult to measure. As such, the air-quality regulation of the livestock industry has been based on limited data.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced that Purdue University will lead a national $9 million study to help establish air emissions standards, based on scientific research, for the livestock and poultry industries. Al Heber, professor of agricultural and biological engineering, has been selected by a livestock industry consortium to head the study.

The research project will collect data on air quality at livestock facilities. Heber will recruit scientists from additional universities and deploy teams to selected farms. Using mobile labs, they will monitor these sites continuously for two years, measuring air particle emissions.

Studying air quality at commercial livestock facilities is the best way to gather data that will affect regulation of these operations. The goal is to discover how science can aid in developing fair and accurate air-quality standards.

Ag graduates with business, management skills in demand

Employers in food, agriculture and natural resources will be competing for students with management and business skills over the next five years, according to a report published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Purdue University.

The publication, "Employment Opportunities for College Graduates in the U.S. Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resources, 2005-2010," is a publication that forecasts demands for graduates with certain skills. The report is based on statistics produced by the USDA, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Center for Education Statistics.

"Employers are looking for students with strong technical and communication skills and who can work well in team environments," said Allan Goecker, associate director of academic programs in Purdue Agriculture and principal author of the report. "Strong business skills are also an important asset for which employers are searching." read more

Survey shows Indiana farmland still hot property

Indiana farmland is a hotter commodity than some of the crops it grows.

A February survey by Purdue University indicated Indiana farmland values exceeded $3,500 per acre on average this past fall and winter, said Craig Dobbins, a Purdue Extension farm management specialist.

"To get a sense for how the Indiana farmland market was changing, we conducted a survey of the Indiana Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers when they held their meeting in Lafayette ," Dobbins said. "We asked them to provide us with their estimate of the sales price for a bare tract of land that's 80 acres or larger with no buildings and capable of producing, year in and year out, 145 bushels per acre of corn.

"When we pulled all of their answers together, the average value was $3,512 an acre for this tract. They said that land values were up about 11 percent for the year, from February to February."

Since 2000, each increase in the average price per acre of farmland has set a record, Dobbins said. Dobbins attributed the booming land market to development, tax incentives, farm expansion and modest long-term interest rates. read more

Plants defy Mendel's inheritance laws, may prompt textbook changes

Contrary to inheritance laws the scientific world has accepted for more than 100 years, some plants revert to normal traits carried by their grandparents, bypassing genetic abnormalities carried by both parents.

These mutant parent plants apparently have hidden templates containing genetic information from the preceding generation that can be transferred to their offspring, even though the traits aren't evident in the parents, according to Purdue University researchers. This discovery flies in the face of the scientific laws of inheritance first described by Gregor Mendel in the mid-1800s and still taught in classrooms around the world today.

"This means that inheritance can happen more flexibly than we thought in the past," said Robert Pruitt, a Purdue Department of Botany and Plant Pathology molecular geneticist. "While Mendel's laws that we learned in high school still are fundamentally correct, they're not absolute. read more

Hog producers could realize better profits if they reverse their thinking on forward pricing, said Chris Hurt, a Purdue University agricultural economist. The best time to price live hog futures is earlier than it once was, Hurt said.

"As we go back 10 years, or even as much as 25 years, historically the best pricing opportunities, on average, have tended to come in late April and the first half of May," he said. "We now tend to see the cash price of hogs - that is, the daily price of hogs - be the best fairly early in the summer. A number of years ago we used to talk about July or July-August. Now we're talking more May to June as the peak cash price of the year."

Historical data indicates that from 1997 to 2004, seasonal live hog prices averaged $47.12 in May and $47.93 in June. Average prices in July were just under $47, with August prices averaging below $45. Already this year, April and May futures are averaging between $50 and $59. read more

A popular herbicide is showing up in drinking water supplies, threatening its future use by Indiana farmers.

Producers who use weed control products with the active ingredient atrazine need to be extra careful when applying the herbicide to cropfields near watersheds, said Bill Johnson, a Purdue University Extension weed scientist.

High levels of atrazine have been found in almost a dozen watersheds in Indiana . Farmers can reduce the risk of atrazine runoff by not making applications nearer to water sources than recommended or at times when the herbicide is more likely to wash away, Johnson said.

Atrazine is used extensively in corn and sorghum production. It has not been linked to health problems in humans. read more

The Purdue University College of Agriculture welcomed eight new recipients of its Distinguished Agricultural Alumni Award during a campus ceremony on April 1.

The award honors mid-career graduates of the College of Agriculture who have made significant contributions to their profession or society in general and have a record of outstanding accomplishments. There have been 125 recipients of this award.

This year's distinguished alumni include: Tom Bechman, Franklin, Ind.; Scott C. Beck, Atlanta, Ind.; Mark H. Legan, Coatsville, Ind.; Jeffrey Luckman, Newport News, Va.; April C. Mason, Fort Collins, Colo.; Gerald A. Powell, Zionsville, Ind.; W. Wayne Townsend, Hartford City, Ind.; and Jian-Kang Zhu, Riverside, Calif. read more