Latest News & Updates in KC Agriculture - December 2021

Developments

Tyson Foods, Springdale, Arkansas, announced it will be distributing $50 million in year-end bonuses to frontline and hourly workers. Each of the company's U.S. team members would receive one-time bonuses ranging from $300 to $700 based on tenure.  According to the release, distribution of the bonuses started this month. The company also said that it is offering more flexible work schedules at some facilities and will be offering paid sick leave as of January 1, 2022 as a way to "better support its frontline workforce." The company also invested $500 million in wage increases and ‘thank you bonuses’ over the past year.

Kansas City Southern has announced that the 21st anniversary KCS Holiday Express program in partnership with The Salvation Army has raised over $280,000 to benefit The Salvation Army in 21 communities on its U.S. rail network. Those communities include Kansas City and Slater, Missouri; East St. Louis, Illinois; Pittsburg, Kansas; Ashdown and Mena, Arkansas; Poteau and Stilwell, Oklahoma; Houston, Laredo, Port Arthur, Victoria and Wylie, Texas; Baton Rouge, DeQuincy, Gonzalez and Shreveport, Louisiana; and Corinth, Jackson, Meridian and Vicksburg, Mississippi. Over 21 years, the charitable component of the KCS Holiday Express project has raised well over $2.6 million, which was donated to The Salvation Army at each scheduled train stop to help provide warm clothing and other necessities for children in need in the local community.

Donald Danforth Plant Science Center is establishing a new “Center of Excellence” in an effort to reduce the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer by 12%, the equivalent of removing 10 million cars from the road. Employing cross-disciplinary teams of scientists, the center “aims to improve the sustainability of agriculture by developing technologies to track the flow of nitrogen and carbon across plant roots, discovering novel beneficial microbes, and understanding the genetic mechanisms that influence these interactions.” 

The Kansas Corn Growers Association responded to EPA’s announced ethanol volumes. After months of delays, EPA released the proposed biofuel blending volumes for the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) in its Renewable Volume Obligation (RVO) proposal. The statutory level for conventional ethanol is 15 billion gallons per year. Today’s proposal was a mixed bag in which EPA set the 2022 volume level at 15 billion gallons for 2022 but set the 2021 RVO at 13.32 billion gallons. Then, in an unprecedented move, EPA revised the finalized 2020 RVO level of 15 billion gallons, reducing it to 12.5 billion gallons. The RVO sets the yearly level for renewable fuels required by the RFS, the mechanism that provides market access to renewable fuels. Over the three years, EPA reduced demand for over 4 billion gallons of ethanol. “Cuts in the ethanol RVO mean cuts in corn demand. EPA’s volume levels for conventional ethanol over those three years destroy demand for over 1.5 billion bushels of corn,” KCGA CEO Greg Krissek said. “We do appreciate EPA meeting the statutory level for ethanol in 2022. But we see a cut in 2021 volumes, and we are alarmed that they would reopen the 2020 RVO, a rule that was already finalized.”

Zoetis has been named to Newsweek Magazine's America’s Most Responsible Companies 2022 list, which recognizes top-performing companies that are making a difference through their environmental, social and corporate governance actions. The company debuted at No.71 (out of 500 companies) in its first year on the Newsweek list.Zoetis is the only standalone animal health company and ranked in the top 14% of all companies listed and the top 25% among Health Care & Life Sciences companies on the list. In partnership with Statista Inc., Newsweek identified the top 500 most responsible companies from a pool of over 2,000 organizations across 14 industries, based on publicly available information as well as an independent study of 11,000 U.S. residents.

Farm Journal Media has acquired Precision Reach, the leading programmatic digital services company serving the agricultural market. Precision Reach (formerly known as Big Reach Network) is a data-driven programmatic advertising network that reaches farmers, ranchers and a suite of proprietary niche influencer audiences on digital devices across thousands of websites, mobile apps and streaming devices. The acquisition combines Farm Journal’s unmatched audience intelligence with Precision Reach’s industry-leading expertise and long-time trusted reputation to offer clients the best programmatic services available in agriculture. “Precision Reach is the pre-eminent player in the ag programmatic space and provides Farm Journal with another best-in-class tool in our growing Enterprise Solutions toolkit,” said Andy Weber, CEO of Farm Journal.

U.S. Senator Jerry Moran announced a $1,594,970 USDA investment in eight Kansas small and midsized meatpackers through the Meat and Poultry Inspection Readiness Grant (MPIRG) program. The MPIRG program was created by Sen. Moran’s legislation: Requiring Assistance to Meat Processors for Upgrading Plants (Ramp-Up).The MPIRG’s Planning for a Federal Grant of Inspection project supports small and midsized meat processing facilities working to meet the standards of the Federal Meat Inspection Act or Poultry Products Inspection Act and the MPIRG’s Cooperative Interstate Shipment Compliance project is assisting facilities working to meet the standards to operate under a state’s Cooperative Interstate Shipment program.

The Purdue University/CME Group Ag Economy Barometer fell in November, as producers expressed concerns about growing production costs and fluctuating commodity prices. The barometer, a monthly survey that tracks producer sentiment, decreased 5 points in November to a reading of 116. According to the release, rising costs for fertilizer, farm machinery, seed and fuel are increasingly a concern for farmers.  James Mintert, the barometer's principal investigator and director of Purdue University's Center for Commercial Agriculture, said November was the "lowest reading of 2021 for all three measures of producer sentiment." 

Landowners who purchased Missouri property in 2021 paid more for land than buyers who purchased land in 2020, according to the latest Missouri Farmland Values Opinion Survey report from University of Missouri Extension. Agricultural economist Ray Massey, who led the survey, projects the upswing in land values will continue. He says higher land values will result in higher cash rental rates. Higher land values may also lead to an increase in the tax base, allowing communities to collect more revenue. Conducted in September 2021, the land values survey collected responses from 88 Missouri lenders, farmers, rural appraisers and others familiar with Missouri land values. Values for cropland, pasture, timberland and hunting/recreational land all increased from 2020 to 2021. More information available at www.muext.us/LandValues. 

U.S. agriculture could be headed into a severe land crunch and a new food vs. fuel battle because of the growing demand for soybean-based biofuels. That's the assessment of economist Dan Basse, president of Chicago-based Ag Resource Co. In a presentation to the American Seed Trade Association's annual meeting, Basse said that soybean oil production would have to double by 2024 to meet the demand from the renewable diesel production capacity that's planned or coming online. That in turn would require farmers to increase soybean acreage by an astounding 40 million acres, a number that would be impossible to meet. Farmers harvested an estimated 86 million acres this year. "If I need 40 million acres, I need to displace lots of other crops," Basse said in an interview with Agri-Pulse. At most, 2 to 3 million acres could feasibly come from corn given the market's need for 15 billion bushels of that crop each year, he added.  Source: Agri Pulse, December 8, 2021.

The U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (USRSB) joins the Trust In Beef program as a founding partner and technical advisor. Trust In Beef is a new effort to empower beef producers to accelerate the adoption of sustainability initiatives and provide consumers with real-life proof of the continuously improving environmental performance of American beef. The program is led by Farm Journal‘s social purpose division.

This past Fall 100 Lathrop GPM attorneys were named to The Best Lawyers in America© list, seven of whom were selected “Lawyer of the Year” in their practice area. Additionally 13 attorneys in the firm were chosen for the inaugural “Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch” in 2002.  Among the Lathrop attorneys being so honored was AgBizKC Council member Bill Ford, who was recognized for his work in environmental law.  Past chairman of the Agricultural Business Council of Kansas City Robert Thomson, a partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner was also named to the list.

In July of 2021, African swine fever was detected in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, marking the first time in nearly 40 years it had made an appearance in the Western Hemisphere.  This was an indication to researchers like Megan Niederwerder, assistant professor at Kansas State University, that it was time to increase the sense of urgency for discovering methods of outbreak prevention before the virus has a chance to reach North America. “While our primary goal is to prevent African swine fever introduction into the U.S., we have to be prepared for a swift and effective response should the virus ever enter our country,” Niederwerder says. She recently received a grant from the National Pork Board to lead a $513,000 research project focusing on African swine fever survival once the virus has arrived on a farm. Her research focuses on common contamination points, such as pen contamination, manure secretions, and ways the virus can be eliminated from those contamination points. Source: Successful Farming, December 3, 2021.

People

Kansas City-based AgriThority, an agricultural product development company specializing in accelerating new technologies to commercialization around the world, has  expanded its Europe, Middle East and Africa team with the addition of Franz Brandl, Ph.D., as Senior Research & Development Manager. Based in Germany, Dr. Brandl brings decades of experience from the intersection of crop protection and breeding genetics for innovative seed care technologies and their application. Most recently, he served as the global product manager for Syngenta Seedcare Fungicides in Switzerland.  

Todd Hays, Monroe City, was re-elected to a two-year term as vice president of the Missouri Farm Bureau Federation (MOFB) during the organization’s 107th Annual Meeting on December 7 at the Lake of the Ozarks. Hays was first elected vice president in 2010. Prior to that he served on the organization’s board of directors in the 2nd district seat, representing northeast Missouri. Before his election to the board, Hays was appointed MOFB Young Farmers and Ranchers (YF&R) chairman in 2003, serving in an advisory capacity on the board for one year.

National Pork Producers Council named Bryan Humphreys the organization's new CEO, effective Dec. 21. Humphreys currently serves as the senior vice president of the National Pork Board and was also a former employee of the National Pork Producers Council.

Kansas Livestock Association’s KLA Cattle Feeders Council elected individuals to serve on the group’s executive committee during the KLA Convention in Wichita. Jason Timmerman with NA Timmerman of Colby was elected chairman, while Keith Bryant with Cobalt Cattle of Garden City was selected to serve as vice chairman.  Additional members elected to the CFC Executive Committee were Brandon Depenbusch, Innovative Livestock Services, Great Bend; Shane Tiffany, Tiffany Cattle Company, Herington; Daniel Berg, Gray County Feed Yard, Cimarron; and Tod Kalous, Pratt Feeders. Jeff George with Finney County Feedyard in Garden City also is serving on the seven-member committee as past chairman. The KLA Cattle Feeders Council Executive Committee is the volunteer leadership group representing the business interests of cattle feeders belonging to the association.

Jacob Hall, Marshall, and Jessica Janorschke, St. Joseph, were selected 2022 Missouri Farm Bureau (MOFB) Ambassadors during the organization’s 107th annual meeting December 5 at the Lake of the Ozarks. The MOFB Ambassador Program selects a male and female student 17-to-22 years of age to represent agriculture and Missouri Farm Bureau for one year. Each Ambassador receives a $2,500 educational scholarship. Throughout 2022, the Ambassadors will make select appearances representing Farm Bureau during a legislative trip to Washington, D.C., in March, the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, and other events promoting agriculture.

Events

The Western Farm Show returns to the American Royal in Kansas City, Missouri, as a live event for 2022. Scheduled Friday through Sunday, Feb. 25-27, the event will feature the latest agricultural equipment and many other attractions for farmers, ranchers and family members. Produced by the Western Equipment Dealers Association, the Western Farm Show is the Midwest’s top indoor farm show with hundreds of exhibits, acres of things to see and do, the latest in farm and ranch technology, and more. More information is available at www.westernfarmshow.com.

University of Missouri Extension will hold a feedlot school January 13-14, 2022, at North Central Missouri College in Trenton. MU Extension beef nutritionist Eric Bailey says MU Extension specialists will tell the “ins and outs of feeding cattle in Missouri.” There is renewed interest in feedlots due to new packing plants being built in and around Missouri, he says. Although Missouri ranks third nationally in beef inventory, it has not supported feedlots in the past, Bailey says. This means revenue generated by Missouri’s large cattle industry goes out of state. Missouri cattlemen raise 1.7 million calves annually but feed out only 187,500 of them. “We want to keep a greater portion of these cattle at home and feed them on the farm instead of shipping them out,” Bailey says. “This will add revenue to farms and economic impact for Missouri.”  For more information, contact Shawn Deering, deerings@missouri.edu or 660-726-5610; Jim Humphrey, humphreyjr@missouri.edu or 816-324-3146; or Eric Bailey, baileyeric@missouri.edu or 573-884-7873.

Digging Deeper...

Since Impossible Foods CEO Patrick Brown told Forbes Magazine in November that his company is getting ready to launch an Initial Public Offering (IPO) sometime next year, it might be a good time for this column to take a deeper dive into faux meat. You can also obtain more information and additional insight about alternative meat products from Beef Checkoff. Kansas Beef Checkoff also has produced several videos on the topic, including “One Simple Ingredient,” which can be found at on YouTube.

Dennis McLaughlin, McLaughlin Writers LLC – Sources: The Counter, September 2021; Wired Magazine, September 2017, December 2021; Forbes Magazine, November 2021; Slate.Com, 2017; International Food Information Council, Food Insights, 2021; Mike Pomeranz, Food and Wine Magazine

Engineering The Impossible Burger

 A couple of years ago, Wired Magazine characterized the Impossible Burger as “not quite impossible, but definitely unlikely.” But Impossible Foods is upbeat, and hopes to seize the moment with an IPO or SPAC (Special Acquisition Company) listing that could value the startup at $10 billion. It already has a public valuation of around $4 billion; and since its founding in 2011 it has raised $1.5 billion in real money from the venture funds of billionaires like Bill Gates and Hong Kong magnate Li Ka-Shing of Horizon Ventures. It’s alternative meat products, which use commodity soy as the main ingredient, are currently sold in more than 20,000 stores worldwide.

Additionally the faux meat industry as a whole is stashing away a “currency” potentially more valuable than cash: Activism. Over the past several years consumer research has explored peoples’ perceptions of environmentally sustainable and healthy diets. Food Insight reports there has been “an uptick in interest in alternative eating patterns including a plant-based food diet.” These and other alternative eating patterns, says Food Insights, an information hub created by nutrition and food safety experts at the International Food Information Council (IFIC),  has led to an increased interest in consuming alternative meat products made from plants and cell cultures. A big motivator for many folks is the idea they can enjoy meat-like products, protect the environment, and advocate for animal welfare. All in one bite.

In the next ten years, these alternative meat products have been forecast to reach a global worth of $140 billion. About a decade ago, what appeared to be a mad scientist’s endeavor, that Slate Magazine called “gruesome” in a 2017 article (because some startups were using fetal cow blood serum in their process to create real-meat-tastes), is being picked up by larger companies. Cargill introduced a plant-based hamburger patty last year firing a competitive shot across the bows of Beyond Meat and Impossible Food. Other meat companies like Tyson Foods and Smithfield Foods have also entered the plant-based meat market. 

 While alternatives to conventional meat products are getting some shelf space in grocery stores and supermarkets, the traditional beef, poultry and pork industry isn’t going away. It’s true that plant-based and cell-based counterfeit meat cuts are increasingly available and advocates argue that plant and cell-based meat options herald a movement that will change human eating habits.  

But real meat producers and processors have plenty of muscle mass (so to speak) to meet the challenge of faux meat. It will remain dominant in the protein market. Based on their acquisitions and investment in plant and cell-based meat production, any developments and advances in “fake meat” science and technology, commercialization, marketing, and consumption will probably have the tried-and true expertise, savvy, and experience of the old guard meat industry.

Where’s The Beef?

Plant-based substitutes for meat protein have been around for a long time. Tofu, anyone? “Companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are leveraging new research to make their products more like real meat than ever before,” says Mike Pomranz, who covers the food and wine business for several leading magazines and other media outlets. Much of Beyond Meat’s innovation is built on work conducted on pea proteins at the University of Missouri, “along with a bit of beet juice to create a bleeding effect,” Pomeranz wrote recently in Food and Wine magazine. 

Various consumer research has shown that a lot of vegetarians and people who adhere to limited-meat diets still crave the flavor that real meat offers. Biologist Patrick Brown, founder of Impossible Foods,  

has been trying to replicate the taste of meat by, well, creating real meat. Which brings us to the  question: Where’s the beef in plant-based and cell-cultured/lab-produced meat? Or at least the taste and texture.

It comes from animal blood, specifically from a compound called heme.  Brown believes heme gives ground beef its color and metallic taste from the iron in the heme molecule. Pomeranz adds, “Heme is a component of animal blood that supposedly lends Impossible Burgers their meat-like characteristics.”

“Engineering a beef burger from scratch requires more than just heme, which Impossible Foods bills as its essential ingredient,” Wired Magazine first reported in 2017. “Ground beef features a galaxy of different compounds that interact with each other, transforming as the meat cooks. To piece together a plant-based burger that’s indistinguishable from the real thing, you need to identify and recreate as many of those flavors as possible.” 

That’s accomplished with gas chromatography mass spectrometry technology. The process heats a sample of beef, releasing aromas that bind to a piece of fiber. The machine then isolates and identifies the individual compounds responsible for those aromas. “So then we have kind of a fingerprint of every single aroma that is in beef,” says Celeste Holz-Schietinger, Ph.D., vice president Product Innovation at Impossible Foods. From that fingerprint, she explains, the company can figure out how to make each of those particular flavor compounds. According to Staci Simonich, Ph.D., associate dean of Oregon State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences, this sort of deconstruction is common in food science, a way to understand exactly how different compounds produce different flavors and aromas. “In theory, if you knew everything that was there in the right proportions, you could recreate from the chemicals themselves for a specific flavor or fragrance,” she says.

Dealing with texture is another biotech challenge. Impossible Foods isolates individual proteins in the meat. “Then as we identify what those particular protein properties are, we look at plants for plant proteins that have those same properties,” says Dr. Holz-Schietinger. Plant proteins tend to taste more bitter, so Impossible Foods has to develop proteins with a cleaner taste. That research has produced a mix of ingredients: wheat protein to give the burger firmness and chew; potato protein which allows the burger to hold water and transition from a softer state to a more solid state during cooking. For fat, Impossible Foods uses coconut with the flavor sucked out. And then of course you need the heme, which drives home the flavor of “meat.”

Faux Future?

Making something that accurately mimics the taste, look, feel, and smell of meat is actually not all that complex. So say the Impossible Meat scientists. Making the early burgers were much more complex, Dr. Holz-Schietinger says, because her team didn’t fully understand it all.  Experiments with cucumber and malodorous durian fruit didn't pan out, she notes, nor did trying to replicate the different connective tissues of a cow. “Now we understand which each component drives each sensory experience.”

But there are other complexities attached to taking faux meat mainstream, especially cell-cultured meat. Food safety groups have not been happy. Among other things, they are upset that GRAS (“generally recognized as safe”) Notices filed with the FDA are voluntary, not mandatory. 

Another problem is cost. Pioneers of lab-grown meat (not to be confused with plant-based meat alternatives) claim that costs for cell-cultured are poised to plummet drastically. They point to two new studies (Fall 2021) from CE Delft, a Dutch consulting firm, concluding that cell-cultured meat could be cost competitive within a decade. A recent BBC story reported the cost of production had dropped from $325,000 a pound to just $11.36, and cell-cultured meat could be on peoples’ plates in five years. Peter Verstrate, head of Netherlands-based Mosa Meat told the BBC, “I am confident that when it is offered as an alternative to meat people will find it hard not to buy our product for ethical reasons.”

Not So Fast

A study released this past September by The Counter, an independent, nonprofit news service investigating the forces shaping how and what Americans eat, more or less said that such optimism and  enthusiasm is nonsense. Entitled “Lab-Grown Meat Is Supposed To Be Inevitable; Science Tells A Different Story,” the lengthy report observes that “splashy headlines have long overshadowed inconvenient truths about biology and economics. Now, extensive new research suggests the industry may be on a billion dollar crash course with reality.” 

The paper is available at https://thecounter.org, and Digging Deeper will review it in depth in an upcoming Council newsletter.

KC Mayor Quinton Lucas Addresses Ag Business Council

For the second time since he was elected mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, in 2019, Quinton Lucas addressed the Agricultural Business Council during its December Luncheon and Annual Meeting. Reflecting on his first visit with the Council shortly after the mayoral election, Mayor Lucas said he had the best job in the world in the best city in the world – the economy was buzzing, USDA was relocating two important agency groups to Kansas City, the NFL Chiefs were on their way to the NFL Playoffs and an eventual Super Bowl Championship. “What could go wrong in 2020?” he quipped.  

Despite the pandemic, the Mayor said Kansas City, with its roots in agriculture, meat protein production and distribution, is a source of optimism for a beleaguered nation.  That relationship with agriculture – and food – is what allowed the city to develop and grow during tough times, he explained. Kansas City doesn’t have to depend on tourism, technology or big manufacturing to remain vibrant. Food is something no one can do without, he added. 

Mayor Lucas was both energetic and excited in citing that agribusiness is the “key to the nation’s well-being,” and was the leader in dealing with supply chain issues across the board during COVID-19.  “There’s just something great about agriculture,” he observed affirmatively.

The mayor said the city wants to be more involved in advancing agriculture as an industry, a culture and an opportunity, especially for students. Mayor Lucas also wants to expand the scope of STEM programs.  “STEM should not just be about engineering,” he said – it has got to be about food, too. Kansas City and the region “can find all the talent it needs in the nearby land grant colleges.” And the Mayor intends to find ways to provide more support to these institutions.

Ag Business Group Elects Johansen, Seeber as 2022 Leaders

(L to R) Dustin Johansen, Ron Seeber

December 9, 2020, KANSAS CITY, MO:   Dustin Johansen, Director, Business Development Enterprise Solutions, Farm Journal, was elected chairman of the Agricultural Business Council of Kansas City at the group’s annual meeting held December 7.   Ron Seeber, who serves as CEO Kansas Agribusiness Retailers Association, Kansas Grain and Feed Association, and Renew Kansas Biofuels Association was elected vice chairman. 

Johansen leads business development initiatives for Enterprise Solutions division of Farm Journal, driving revenue growth for data services, market research and custom projects for livestock and row crop industries. Previously, Johansen managed the Kansas City office of Osborn Barr Paramore and led the animal agriculture and equipment practices. He also spent nearly 20 years at Caterpillar, Inc. in equipment sales and dealer sales and marketing operations. Johansen was raised on a purebred Charolais operation in Tipton, Missouri and is a graduate of the University of Missouri – Columbia, where he currently serves as President of the CAFNR Alumni Association for the college.

Ron Seeber assumed his current position with the three associations in 2017 after working for the groups since July 2008. An expert in state and federal legislative affairs, Seeber also worked for Senator Bob Dole in policy and political capacities.  He has spent his entire career in the regulatory arena.

The Council’s Board of Directors is composed of 20 persons who serve staggered two-year terms. Those elected to the Board for a two-year term commencing January 1, 2022 were: 

• Julie Abrahamzon, Cargill Animal Nutrition

• Tom Brand, National Association of Farm Broadcasting

• Chris Daubert, University of Missouri

• Kelly Farrell, Farrell Growth Group

• Nikki Hall, Corteva

• Terry Holdren, Kansas Farm Bureau

• Chris Klenklen, Missouri Department of Agriculture

• Kristie Larson, American Royal

• Paul Schadegg, Farmers National Company

• Matt Teagarden, Kansas Livestock Association

Johansen extended his thanks to outgoing Chair Greg Krissek who is CEO of Kansas Corn.  Krissek served two, one-year terms as Council Chair.  Johansen commented that, “it is always easy to say the new person has big shoes to fill, but that is certainly the case here.  Greg Krissek demonstrates what association leadership looks like at it best – supportive, gracious, encouraging, and forward looking.”  “He is a class act and we greatly appreciate his service,” Johansen said.

Bob Petersen and Erica Venancio continue to serve as staff members for the Council, Petersen as the executive director and Venancio as director of member services.

Everybody Is Tied To Agriculture

That was one of the points Teddy Bekele made clear in his presentation to Council members at the November breakfast meeting, held concurrently with AFA’s annual Leaders Conference at the Sheraton Crown Center. Bekele is the Chief Technology Officer at Land O’Lakes, heading up the company’s ag tech and IT operations. As such, he is responsible for developing and implementing technology solutions for retail and farmer customers to help them produce more sustainable harvests and protein products.  Commenting on the legacy of the iconic 100-year-old coop, Bekele added, “We’re not just a butter company.” 

Many challenges in farming are not new, Bekele said. “However, what is different now is that farmers are making decisions based on data versus intuition.” More farmers are relying on technology to help them make decisions that allow them to produce more food with fewer resources and less environmental impact. But he pointed out data alone won’t necessarily “tell you anything.” 

Elaborating on that thought, Bekele noted the key to making data practical is to turn it into information and churn that into knowledge. But he does not discount farmer intuition. “Intuition is the secret sauce – people, not technology, are the most important piece in the digital transformation puzzle.” Connectivity or lack of it is an impediment, however, to putting some of that digital puzzle together. Over half of farmers want to incorporate more data in their operations, but 60% do not have rural broadband connectivity.

Cybersecurity

Part of Teddy Bekele’s responsibilities at Land O’Lakes is creating and overseeing security measures to prevent ransomware attacks. He said a common attitude of some companies is that they think they’re too small, and assume cyber crooks wouldn’t waste their time on them.  In 2020, Bekele said small organizations accounted for less than half the number of breaches that occurred at large organizations. This year the gap shrank. At large organizations, 307 attacks took place; small operations encountered 263. 

Bekele recommended these top actions to prevent ransomware attacks:

• Install Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) systems – Users must present their User ID, password and be using a known device or supply “text” for access.

• End Point Protection (EPP) – Helps identify and prevent ransomware attacks; use a partner/service to deploy and manage EPP.

• Protect Your Backups – They are “your only way back – short of paying the ransom.”

Digging Deeper...

The U.S. economy is on a strong growth path and cash-rich consumers are spending robustly on both services and goods, reports Colorado-based CoBank, a national cooperative bank that provides loans, leases, export financing and other financial services to agribusinesses and rural power, water, and communications companies in all 50 states. In the latest edition of its publication The Quarterly, CoBank says “while the U.S. economy is running hot, it is still very much in the grips of the pandemic [and] its negative influence has steadily shifted from curtailing demand to derailing supply chains.” 

Dennis McLaughlin, McLaughlin Writers LLC – Sources: Nabaneeta Biswas, professor of economics at Marshall University’s Department of Finance, Economics and International Business; Michael Ellis, publisher of Rural Lifestyle Dealer; Neil Dutta, head of U.S. economics at Renaissance Macro Research; PNC Financial Services Group senior economic adviser Stuart Hoffman; Jean Boivin,PhD,  managing director of the Blackrock Investment Institute; Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2021; The Quarterly, CoBank.

Are Supply Disruptions Becoming Slightly Less Painful?

Businesses of all sizes in all sectors of the economy have been wrestling with the worst supply chain bottlenecks anyone has seen or can remember. In the final quarter of 2021, the U.S. economy and rural industries are still dealing with ongoing phases of the COVID pandemic. Nevertheless, the economy seems on the route to recovery, even as supply chain disruptions and labor shortages have added significant costs to business operations and consumer budgets. American shoppers will be looking at higher prices for months to come.

Rapidly rising input costs and product shortages are hitting agriculture particularly hard, as ag commodity prices have flattened and inflation compresses margins. However, robust agricultural exports have kept much of agriculture in the black, says Dan Kowalski, vice president of CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange Division. Credit conditions were strong going into this Fall’s harvest season, with consumers still flush with cash and, he notes, spending robustly on both services and goods.

Supply chains, however, remain in desperate straits. As of October, according to CoBank, lead times for manufacturing inputs had reached record highs, and retailers were spending millions to charter container vessels to ensure shipments reached stores in time for holiday shopping. The scramble to keep supply chains intact has driven up costs. The latest producer price index data for August was up 20% over August 2020. The consumer price index was 5.2% higher than August 2020.

Earlier this fall, businesses were paying much higher costs, but passing only a small portion of those costs on to the end user/purchaser. While many businesses held off on raising prices, that is expected to end in Q4 or Q1 2022. Supply chain snarls could persist well into 2022, and so will elevated inflation. The Federal Reserve has adjusted its tone on inflation, with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell recently admitting that inflation is now more broad and structural than earlier in the year.

For seasoned ag industry veterans, the supply chain is like nothing they’ve ever seen. “In my 30-year career this is the first time we have faced a situation of this magnitude,” says Michael Kuhlmann, head of Crop Protection at HELM Agro. There were different factors coming together at the same time, he explains – such as a reduction of production capacity when China experienced its own pandemic-related shutdowns, along with a shortage of container availability and space on container vessels. The Olympic Games in Beijing in the first quarter of 2022, plus the Chinese New Year in February – that shuts down factories for a week – and other trade and COVID-19 disturbances converged to form the perfect logjam. “I do not expect a significant improvement throughout the first quarter,” Kuhlmann states. “Hopefully in the second quarter, things start to stabilize a little. Other shipping, manufacturing, and retail executives are on the same page: They don’t expect a return to more-normal operations until next year and that cargo will continue to be delayed if Covid-19 outbreaks disrupt key distribution hubs.

Things Are Looking Up

But better times could be happening sooner than later. On November 22, the Wall Street Journal said global supply-chain woes are beginning to recede. “In Asia, Covid-related factory closures, energy shortages and port-capacity limits have eased in recent weeks,” the paper reported.  In the U.S., meanwhile, major retailers said they have imported most of what they need for the holidays.” Walmart, Home Depot and Target, said they are well stocked for the holidays because they imported goods earlier than usual this year. 

Although the situation may be looking up, most company executives concede their problems are not over. Several retailers reported thinner profit margins, blaming elevated freight costs. In desperate fashion, some have chartered their own ships to get around bottlenecks.  But “globally speaking the worst is behind us in terms of the supply-chain problems,” said Louis Kuijs, head of Asia economics at U.K.- based Oxford Economics. Its recent survey of 45 economies found that “almost all believe supply-chain disruptions have peaked or will peak in the last quarter of 2021.”

An easing of supply-chain choke points would allow production to move toward meeting strong demand and would lower logistics costs. If sustained, that, in turn, would help alleviate the upward pressure on inflation. Nabaneeta Biswas, professor of economics at Marshall University’s Department of Finance, Economics and International Business, recently observed the best way to contain inflation and ward off a paralyzing recession is “to increase production capacity, specifically, in the sectors where we are experiencing inflation. Increasing production capacity is the key. There's no magic wand that would increase production capacity overnight. It's something that's going to happen over time.”

Aubrey Daniels, Ph.D., architect of the concept of organizational behavior management (OBM) that applies behavioral principles to individuals and groups in business, government and human service settings, offers a unique understanding of the economic conundrum of supply-chain, demand, production, inflation and recession. In a recent article, Daniels wrote, “Economics will never improve its ability to predict without first understanding and studying behavior as the central source of economic activity. People buy things and spend money. That is behavior. Without behavior there is no economy.”

If it is true that behavior is what drives the economy, then things really could be looking up. Michael Ellis, publisher of Rural Lifestyle Dealer, observed in a recent issue that farmers and rural equipment buyers appear reconciled to supply chain delays. But they haven’t stopped buying because of delivery delays. So dealers shouldn’t be cutting back their marketing/merchandising programs.

PNC Financial Services Group senior economic adviser Stuart Hoffman is optimistic about economic growth in the U.S. He thinks the country can avoid recession in 2022, 2023 and 2024 if Congress raises the debt ceiling. The $1 trillion infrastructure package to address the country’s roads, bridges and broadband initiatives should help. “That’s a pretty big stimulus for the U.S. economy,” he adds, “and it’s hard to believe the U.S. economy is going to fall into recession.” 

Other economists have made similar points. “To be in stagflation, the economy needs by definition to be stagnating, and the evidence for this is quite thin,” said Neil Dutta, head of U.S. economics at Renaissance Macro Research, in October. “By all accounts, the economy remains firmly in boom mode.”  For the economy to be in stagflation, new orders must be below their long-run average while higher prices continue above their long-run average, Dutta explained. He described the economy as being in an “inflationary boom.”  New orders and prices are both strong.

That, however, doesn’t mean inflation isn’t a concern. Reacting prematurely to expectations about rising inflation could become a problem. Jean Boivin, head of the Blackrock Investment Institute worries that some policy makers will be too quick and/or aggressive in responding to inflation increases with ineffective monetary policies. Or actions that only exacerbate the situation – needlessly destroying demand. Tightening monetary policy would do little to unclog ports or fix shortages that have snarled supply chains.

Amidst all of this, energy prices have surged, with few indications of a near-term reversal. The dollar has also been steadily rising for months, and the yield curve is steepening again. All three of these factors could be interpreted as signs of a healthy economic recovery. They could also be simply reflections of the supply and inflation challenges being experienced throughout the economy. In this case, the explanations are not mutually exclusive. “The economy is on a strong growth path, but inflation is hastening expectations on the Fed’s timeframe to tighten monetary policy,” CoBank explains. “For those in agriculture, this confluence of factors poses a headwind and creates even higher operating costs to close out the calendar year.”

Latest News & Updates in KC Agriculture - November 2021

Developments

Special Report:  The Solution Could Become A Problem: A new study appearing in the current December issue of Applied Animal Science suggests that USDA’s beefing up investment in medium and small-scale meat processing maybe should not be regarded as the ultimate protection for the protein supply chain against the next black swan event. Some of the biggest economic disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic – noted the authors of the analysis led by John Anderson of the University Department of Agriculture Economics and Agribusiness – occurred in food supply chains, particularly in the protein sector.  The study – Lessons From the Covid-19 Pandemic for Food Supply Chains – can be found here. Applied Animal Science is a peer-reviewed journal of the American Registry of Professional Animal Scientists (ARPAS) that covers scientific discoveries and applications for the animal sciences and animal health systems.

Although the goal of improving food supply chain resilience is a worthy one, the authors state, there will be no easy routes to this goal. The modern commercial food supply chain is complex, technologically advanced, and consists of large companies that keep per-unit costs of operation low. “The pandemic has generated great interest in not only shortening food supply chains but also in greatly reducing the scale of operation of the chain’s components.”

The analysis suggests that while this might offer advantages in terms of resilience to extreme events like the coronavirus pandemic, it would do this at the expense of efficiency of operation, resulting in higher costs throughout the system for both consumers and producers. 

Pandemic-related disruptions to meat supply chains and the economic hardship associated with those disruptions have generated tremendous interest in improving supply chain robustness and resilience. Much of that interest focuses on encouraging local and regional processing operations, and creating shorter supply chains. At the same time, commercial interests will most likely aggressively pursue further automation to mitigate the effects of labor supply disruption.

Local and regional processing operations have received large relief packages. At the same time, large major commercial operations are becoming even more efficient due to post pandemic adjustments of their own. Thus, local and regional operations may face an even more challenging competitive environment than before the pandemic. There is a real danger, the study concludes, that interest in smaller-scale, local food systems, which has attracted significant investment during the pandemic, will taper off, leaving them in an even more competitive environment than the environment that existed before the pandemic.

Source: Applied Animal Science, December, 2021; Agri-Pulse Communications, November 23, 2021.

NovaQuest, a biopharma and life sciences investment firm specializing in human and animal health investing, and TechAccel, a technology and venture development organization, announced today that NovaQuest has acquired TechAccel’s ownership stake in Covenant Animal Health Partners. Covenant is a novel product development partnership originally formed by TechAccel and Reliance Animal Health Partners in 2018. The acquisition leverages NovaQuest’s capital and expertise, and Covenant’s development and registration know-how and ability to bring “revenue-ready” animal health products to market. Covenant will address critical market needs across production and companion animals and will advance new assets into industry partner portfolios. Read more here.

2021 Christmas tree inventory has been affected by supply chain disruptions and high transportation costs. The situation had importers, growers, sellers and buyers frazzled on Black Friday, when Christmas tree shopping begins in earnest. But Jami Warner, executive director of the American Christmas Tree Association, a trade group representing the artificial tree industry, assures “Christmas is not canceled, everyone will be able to find a Christmas tree.” ACTA notes this year’s supply of real Christmas trees will be squeezed by the summer’s heat dome in the Pacific Northwest, while supplies of artificial trees, largely coming from China, will be affected by the same shipping and labor problems plaguing many industries. Warner predicts price hikes of 10 to 30% over last year, “a lot of that on the artificial side.” She urges consumers to shop early because otherwise, “your tree may not be the tree you were looking for.” Doug Hundley, seasonal spokesman for the live tree National Christmas Tree Association, is more optimistic about this season’s supply. He said prices for live trees will be more like 5 to 10%t higher than last year, following the trend of the past several years. The Canadian Christmas Tree Association says demand for holiday trees has been rising for the past five years and that there is potential for a shortage this year due to extreme weather events. The Pacific Northwest is the largest producer of live trees, with about 5 million trees cut annually, Hundley said, accounting for nearly 25% of the national supply. He said the region’s stock is down 10% due to this summer’s heat and drought, so the reduction of available trees could be half a million. 

Some good news: The number of monarch butterflies migrating to California for the winter spiked this year after a historic low. Every year, monarch butterflies from all over the western U.S. migrate to coastal California, to escape the harsh winter weather. In the 1980s and 1990s, more than a million made the trip each year. Those numbers have plummeted by more than 99% in recent years. "The last few years we've had less than 30,000 butterflies," biologist Emma Pelton said.  And last year the drop was below 2,000 butterflies. But this year, the numbers are starting to pick up. Biologists and volunteers across California have already counted more than 100,000 monarchs. Richard Rachman is the coordinator for the Xerces Society's annual Thanksgiving monarch count in Los Angeles County, and has been buoyed by the numbers.

American Foods Group, based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, plans to build a new 2,400-head-per-day beef-processing plant by 2024. It will be located in Warren County in eastern Missouri. Once fully operational, the plant is expected to create about 1,300 jobs and generate about $1 billion in economic activity in the region, according to the Greater Warren County Economic Development Council. Warren County and the state of Missouri will be evaluating potential partnership strategies to help facilitate the location of the facility.

The National Corn Growers Association joined four other agricultural groups in encouraging the U.S. Court of International Trade to overturn an earlier decision by the International Trade Commission, which imposed tariffs on imported phosphate fertilizers from Morocco. The U.S. Department of Commerce recommended in February 2021 that the ITC implement tariffs over 19% on imported fertilizers from Morocco after the Mosaic Company, which manufactures fertilizers used in the U.S. and abroad, filed a petition with the department seeking the levies. The ITC voted in March to impose the tariffs while adding similar levies on Russian imports. As a result, critical sources of imported supply have been shut out of the U.S. market, and the costs for fertilizers have increased for farmers. In the meantime, Mosaic, whose control of the phosphate market has grown from 74% to over 80%, is gaining a near-monopoly over the phosphate fertilizer supply in the U.S. In fact, Mosaic’s share price has quadrupled since a March 2020 low.

USDA began issuing approximately $270 million in payments late this month to contract producers of eligible livestock and poultry who applied for pandemic assistance. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, provided funding for payments to contract producers of eligible livestock and poultry for revenue losses from Jan. 1, 2020, through Dec. 27, 2020. Contract producers of broilers, pullets, chicken eggs, turkeys, hogs and pigs, ducks, geese, pheasants and quail were eligible for assistance, along with eligible breeding stock and eggs of all eligible poultry types produced under contract.

Merck Animal Health, a division of Merck & Co., Inc., was named best animal health company in North America by IHS Markit, a U.K.-based global publisher reporting on the animal health industry. The recognition is based on the company’s strong financial strength and product innovation. IHS Markit cited Merck Animal Health’s ongoing levels of growth by the company’s companion pet and livestock businesses. IHS Markit also cited Merck Animal Health’s combined core expertise in traditional animal health products and its market-leading position in the burgeoning digital technology solutions in the area of tracking, monitoring and traceability as major strengths.

FYI: Some veterinary industry leaders say there’s a shortage of U.S. veterinarians, while others say there’s only a perception of one amid scheduling difficulties during the pandemic. “I strongly believe there is a shortage of veterinarians in the U.S.,” said Rustin Moore, dean of Ohio State University’s veterinary college. According to policy expert and Fountain Report contributor Mark Cushing, “The veterinarian shortage is acute and chronic.” But AVMA President Jose Arce said he thinks there’s a “perception of a shortage because pet owners can’t see their veterinarian as quickly as they would like to right now.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates veterinary positions to increase 16% by 2029. Moore said veterinary school applications have spiked, and there does not seem to be enough schools to take in all the qualified applicants.

Events

Beef producers will discover the value of management and genetics at the 22nd annual Missouri Livestock Symposium on December 3 and 4 in Kirksville, Missouri. Farmers and ranchers will hear from University of Missouri Extension state specialists on Saturday as they cover several topics for beef producers. Details are on the internet at www.missourilivestock.com; or at the Adair County MU Extension Center, 660-665-9866.

Foundations VIII – An Introduction to the Animal Health Industry, a one-day training program, will take place on Zoom on December 14. The program, led by longtime executives Chris Ragland and Terry Sheehan, offers a comprehensive industry overview for those who are new to the business. This one-day course will feature six 50-minute educational modules with key market primers. It’s aimed at individuals who have been in the industry for two years or less, and for others who could use a more in-depth perspective. The Foundations program is offered by Axxiom Consulting and Fountain Report publisher Antelligence. Cost is $695.  The course syllabus is available now from Antelligence. More information available from Antelligence publisher, Chris Kelly, chris.kelly@antelligence.com.

People

Lenexa, Kansas-based Farm Journal announced that Cliff Becker has been promoted to executive vice president of the company’s Livestock Division. Becker is a past Chair of the Board of Directors for the Agricultural Business Council of Kansas City. In this new role at Farm Journal,  Becker will continue to provide leadership to a broad portfolio of best-in-class livestock media brands while also launching new initiatives for beef, dairy and swine audiences. “Cliff dedicates his knowledge and passion for agriculture and food to supporting Farm Journal’s clients and audiences while sharing his leadership talents with organizations across the industry,” said Charlene Finck, Farm Journal president. “His devotion to serving the livestock producers is exemplary and an engine for creating new platforms and events.” Becker’s leadership includes collaboration with Farm Journal’s Trust In Food social purpose initiative to launch Trust In Beef, a new producer-to-plate engagement campaign that ignites an urgency in producers to make actionable, sustainable pivots in on-farm production practices while communicating the industry’s evolution across the value chain to improve the beef's industry’s declining reputation with consumers. Becker also led Farm Journal’s recent acquisition of United Pork Americas, an international swine industry conference and exposition. The event is an extension of Pork Expo Brazil, which has attracted more than 150,000 international swine industry stakeholders to the event in South America over the past two decades. United Pork Americas is an extension of this successful brand, bringing world-class education, networking and entertainment to the United States. Since joining Farm Journal in 2012, Becker has served in several roles for the company and continues to expand his contributions to agriculture, serving on the board of directors for World Dairy Expo, the National Ag Center and Hall of Fame, the Agricultural Business Council of Kansas City, Western Illinois University, Cattle Feeders Hall of Fame and the Animal Agriculture Alliance.

Local veteran farm broadcaster Mark Oppold was named Farm Broadcaster of the Year at the National Association of Farm Broadcasters’ annual meeting this month in Kansas City. His career in farm broadcasting has spanned over 40 years, and most recently he was a news director at RFD-TV.

At the end of 2022 Dennis Rodenbaugh will take the reins of Dairy Farmers of America as president and CEO. Rodenbaugh will succeed Richard Smith, who is retiring after leading the organization for the past 16 years. Rodenbaugh currently serves as executive vice president and president of council operations and ingredients solutions for DFA.

Bayer Crop Science president Liam Condon will leave the company at the end of the year, succeeded by Rodrigo Santos. Condon has led Bayer Crop Science since 2016 and has been with Bayer since 2006 and prior to that withSchering, which was acquired by the company. He also has experience in Bayer’s health care and pharmaceutical units. 

Bruce Everhart, Waldron, Indiana, was introduced as the new president of St. Joseph-Missouri-based American Hereford Association (AHA) during the Annual Membership Meeting Oct. 23 in Kansas City, Missouri. Everhart and his wife, Shoshanna, own and operate Everhart Herefords, a more than 50-year-old purebred operation consisting of 25 head. Everhart is also a board member and past president of the Indiana Hereford Association.

Latest News & Updates in KC Agriculture - October 2021

Developments

Just hours before boarding Air Force One for his trip to the Climate Summit in Scotland, President Joe Biden unveiled the framework for a $1.85 trillion social-spending and climate bill. “Top House Democrats hoped [it] would be enough to convince progressives to drop their objections to a parallel, roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill. President Biden met with House Democrats in the morning to pitch lawmakers on the new framework, a far slimmer piece of legislation than the $3.5 trillion the party had originally outlined. Democrats have been rushing to complete negotiations on the bill so that they can also move forward with the public works legislation, which passed the Senate over the summer but has languished in the House.

“The White House framework released Thursday called for major funding for child-care subsidies, universal prekindergarten, tax breaks for families, in-home care for elderly and disabled Americans, as well as tax credits aimed at combating climate change.  But several party priorities were absent, including a national paid-leave program while the fate of others, including a push to allow the government to negotiate drug prices, remained uncertain.” Source: Andrew Duehren, Ken Thomas, Natalie Andrews, The Wall Street Journal dispatch, October 28, 2021, 12:42 EST

BASF and Cargill are expanding their partnership in the animal nutrition business, adding research and development capabilities and new markets to the partners’ existing feed enzymes distribution agreements. The two companies will develop, produce, market and sell customer-centric enzyme products and solutions. The goal is to provide feed innovations for farmers that reduce nutrient waste, improving feed efficiency, and promote animal growth and wellbeing.

The House Agricultural Committee is presenting a full committee hearing on “The Immediate Challenges to our Nation’s Food Supply” Wednesday, November 3, at 10 am EDT. The hybrid hearing will be live-streamed, and can be accessed at https://agriculture.house.gov. 

Tyson Foods says more than 96% of its workers have been vaccinated ahead of the company’s November 1 deadline for them to do so. The company based in Springdale, Arkansas, said the number of its 120,000 workers who have been vaccinated has nearly doubled since it announced its mandate on August 3. At that point, only 50% of Tyson workers had been vaccinated. Tyson, which has long been dealing with worker shortages, said employees who don’t get vaccinated before the company’s deadline will be fired. But those former employees will be welcomed back if they do get vaccinated later.

The National Defense Prototype Center, a joint project between Spirit AeroSystems and Wichita State University opened in mid-October. The facility will combine the robust research, development and production capabilities of Spirit and WSU to support critical space and national security programs. The center will comprise a lab for high temperature testing (temperatures that reach half of the sun’s surface temperatures) as well as furnaces and autoclaves that can carry out high temperature manufacturing processes. This is the only facility in the country to offer these capabilities in one location. The NDPC provides the Department of Defense new solutions to complex problems, particularly as our country works to compete with China and Russia in the development of hypersonic missiles.  

The University of Missouri celebrated the grand opening of the Roy Blunt NextGen Precision Health building. Located on MU’s campus, the $221 million, 265,000-square-foot facility will be a regional hub of lifesaving research and anchor the NextGen Precision Health initiative. The initiative leverages the combined power of MU, the MU Research Reactor, MU Health Care and the other three MU System universities to revolutionize health care, eliminate health care disparities and transform community health. The initiative also brings together a set of resources, leading industry partners and internationally recruited research faculty to drastically shorten the time it takes for innovations to go from the lab to clinical treatment. 

Late this month Missouri Farm Bureau president Garrett Hawkins issued a strong message that global climate policy and agendas could have negative effects for agriculture. “Climate policy is no longer an issue we can hit the snooze button on,” he wrote in a message to Missouri farmers October 21. Full text is available at Climate Agenda Sounding Alarms for All Americans (mofb.org).

Golfers took to the fairways and greens in support of Missouri 4-H Youths on Sept. 21 at the 11th annual 4-H Clover Classic Golf Tournament in Columbia.  “The generosity of our partners and friends is incredible. Together we raised more than $69,000 for Missouri 4-H, a record for the Clover Classic Golf Tournament,” said Rachel Augustine, director of the Missouri 4-H Foundation. Sponsors were Climate Field View, a subsidiary of Bayer; and Great American Insurance-Crop Division.

Total U.S. beef export sales in the last week of September dipped a little, but Chinese purchases were strong at 6,000 metric tons, according to USDA trade data. Chinese purchases and imports have been exceptionally strong this year, lifting U.S. beef exports to a new record high for the month of August, according to the U.S. Meat Export Federation. From January through August, U.S. beef exports to China are up more than 800% over the same period in 2020.

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced an investment of more than $146 million in sustainable agricultural research projects aimed at improving a robust, resilient, climate-smart food and agricultural system. This investment is made under NIFA’s Sustainable Agricultural Systems program. This innovative program focuses on a broad base of needed research solutions from addressing labor challenges and promoting land stewardship to correcting climate change impacts in agriculture and critical needs in food and nutrition. The investment is part of the third installment of NIFA grants within its Agriculture and Food Research Initiative’s Sustainable Agricultural Systems program designed to improve plant and animal production and sustainability, and human and environmental health. 

Elanco Animal Health and Kansas State University have entered a five-year strategic alliance agreement that will allow for collaborative research and intellectual property licensing for commercialization activities. Researchers will focus on activities supporting sustainable practices in livestock production and pet health; vector-borne and emerging disease prevention and treatment; and advanced understanding of the microbiome in animals. Source: Feedstuffs

The National Pork Producers Council is calling on U.S. immigration officials to reform a visa program that is key to keeping hog operations staffed. The TN visa program was created under NAFTA to allow Mexican and Canadian professionals in a variety of areas to be allowed to work in the U.S. for up to three years. “NPPC has received reports that eligible applicants have been denied entry into the country for no cause and cannot appeal such decisions,” the pork producer group said. 

During the World AgriTech London Summit in September, Kansas City-based (and Ag Biz Council member) Agrithority hosted a roundtable on the topic Overcoming Barriers to On-Farm Technology Adoption.  AgriThority’s Global Director, Science and Technology Ignacio Colonna led the virtual discussion. The discussion included challenges in predicting large-scale effects of crop management strategies that had been evaluated at the early development stage only under a limited range of controlled environment and finding the right network of associates to implement the use of new digital technologies.

TechAccel, the Kansas City-based technology and equity company investing in scientific breakthroughs to produce healthier plants, animals and foods, has completed a lease agreement for office and lab space at the Bio Research Development & Growth (BRDG) Park on the campus of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis. The new space provides TechAccel’s growing science team with room for operations, including space for its subsidiary, RNAissance Ag LLC. RNAissance Ag, which last year acquired St. Louis-based startup RNAgri, is leveraging its proprietary and inexpensive RNA manufacturing platform by developing RNAi applications in biopesticides, animal health and aquaculture. 

By mid-October nearly half of the Kansas wheat crop had been planted, and it is now starting to emerge. According to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, 42% of the Kansas wheat crop was planted as of October 3, behind last year’s 53%, but ahead of the five-year average. Planting is well over halfway done in the western half of the state, whereas planting in the central corridor is closer to a third complete and eastern Kansas is more variable.  “In the last five years, we have learned a lot about the yield potential of wheat in Kansas as well as how to manage the crop to reach its economical optimum,” said K-State Research and Extension wheat and forages production specialist Romulo Lollato.

“Agriculture dominates list of top cooperatives,” reported Agri-Pulse, October 27. “Some of the most well-known names in agriculture are atop the list of 100 largest cooperatives by revenue compiled by the National Cooperative Bank. CHS Inc. tops the list with more than $28 billion in 2020 revenue. The other two co-ops in the top three are ag giants Dairy Farmers of America and Land O’Lakes with $17.8 billion and $14 billion in revenue, respectively. Growmark ($7.5 billion in 2020 revenue) and Ag Processing Inc ($4 billion) are also in the list’s top 10. Overall, agriculture-specific coops account for 49 of the list’s 100 businesses…… While the 2021 list reported agriculture’s dominance in the usage of the cooperative system’s member-owned business model, it also reported some shifts in revenue between 2019 and 2020 when compared to last year’s figures. The report’s figures showed a drop of about $3.5 billion in revenue for CHS. DFA and Land O’Lakes both reported increases – about $2 billion for DFA and roughly $100 million for Land O’Lakes. Overall, the cooperatives in the report brought in about $2.1 billion less in assets in 2020, but the value of co-op assets jumped $133.7 billion. The report is released every October during National Co-op Month.”  Source:  Agri-Pulse Communications, October 27, 2021.

China recently reported its highest third-quarter pork production in three years, as the country’s hog herd recovers from African Swine Fever, Reuters reports. Pork output for July through September was 12.02 million metric tons, lower than the second quarter’s 13.46 million metric tons but the highest third quarter output since 2018. Large producers in China invested billions of yuan in new farms last year, part of an effort to increase market share after the ASF epidemic.

People

Missouri Soybean Association has created a new position and promoted soybean staffer Baylee Siegel into that position.  Baylee will be responsible for Missouri Soybean Association membership and grower services, which is consistent with Siegel’s previous role. The goal is to expand this program and build a team. “This new role is a tremendous opportunity for not only Baylee, but for Missouri’s soybean growers,” said Gary Wheeler, CEO. “This promotion is a natural next step, working to develop our field service staff. We have and will continue to be increasing our many services to our members, which strongly meets our mission and vision for the organization.”

Jay Schutte, Benton City, Missouri, assumed the role of Missouri Corn Growers Association president effective Oct. 1, 2021. Elected during the organization’s August board meeting, Schutte succeeds Jay Fischer of Jefferson City, Missouri. Schutte previously served the state’s growers as the Missouri Corn Merchandising Council chairman, vice chairman, secretary, and treasurer. Schutte represented corn farmers nationally, serving previously on theNational Corn Growers Association’s Risk Management and Transportation Action Team and chairman of the Ethanol Action Team, as well as the Asia Advisory Team with the U.S. Grains Council.

EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan announced the appointment of Rod Snyder to become EPA’s Agriculture Advisor.  Snyder will lead outreach and engagement efforts with the agricultural community for EPA, working to advance the Biden-Harris environmental agenda for farmers and rural communities. Snyder is nationally recognized for his leadership at the intersection of agricultural and environmental policy, and joins EPA after serving as president of Field to Market. 

The Missouri Livestock Symposium will recognize Dr. David Patterson as the inaugural recipient of the Missouri Livestock Symposium Achievement Award. Dr. Patterson will become a member of the Missouri Livestock Symposium Hall of Fame and will be inducted at a ceremony at the Symposium on Friday evening, December 3, in Kirksville, Missouri. According to committee vice-chairman Zac Erwin, the Symposium committee wanted to build on their reach and replace previous awards with one that is more inclusive and recognizes livestock industry leaders for career achievements. David Patterson is a Chancellor’s Professor in the Division of Animal Sciences at the University of Missouri. 

The Washington Examiner reported October 27 that Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is “making it clear that the only political campaign he’s interested in is a bid for the White House.” Pompeo just endorsed Kansas Senator Jerry Moran for reelection in 2022, “quashing rumors he was considering challenging the senator.” 

Danita Murray has been selected as the new executive director of South Dakota Corn, which houses the South Dakota Corn Growers Association and the South Dakota Corn Utilization Council, effective Dec. 1. The South Dakota native currently works at Finsbury Glover Hering as a partner and before that worked on Capitol Hill for former Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., as his chief counsel on the Senate Agriculture Committee. Murray has also worked for the National Corn Growers Association.

Events

Registration is open for the 2021 U.S. Cattle Trace Symposium, which will be held November 18 and 19 at the Hyatt Regency and Convention Center of Wichita, Kansas. The U.S. CattleTrace Symposium will bring together cattle producers, industry professionals and technology manufacturers to learn and discuss animal disease traceability and value-added opportunities. “After a year of operating through computer screens, we are looking forward to sharing the message of the value disease traceability can bring to the cattle industry with producers and other industry leaders in-person,” said U.S. CattleTrace executive director Callahan Grund. There is no cost to individuals registering for the event. To secure your housing and stay up-to-date about news regarding speaker announcements and sponsorship opportunities, visit their website. 

Registration is also open for the 2021 Kansas Livestock Convention, which will be held December 1-3 in Wichita. The Wichita Hyatt, which is convention headquarters, is sold out. However, rooms still can be reserved at the Drury Plaza Hotel Broadview at (800) 325-0720 (group number 2431364) and Fairfield Inn & Suites Downtown at (316) 201-1400. Be sure to tell the hotel you’re with KLA to receive the convention room rate. Learn more here.

Beef is the official protein of the 2021 ESPN Events Tailgate Tour. The event is stopping at more than 20 college football games during the 2021 season and is an opportunity to serve up some tasty beef to the crowds and to share beef’s great story with a broader consumer audience.  Cattle producers also will be on hand at select events, providing the chance for consumers to interact with ranchers while learning about beef nutrition and sustainability in a more connected and comprehensive way. Source: Kansas Livestock Association. 

This year's Kansas City One Health Day takes a deep dive into the effects of harmful algal blooms on the environment, animals and people. The event is from 3-6 p.m. on Wednesday, November 3, at the K-State Olathe campus. It features keynote speakers and a discussion panel comprised of topic experts. Normally, algae are important organisms in bodies of water because they are the building blocks of the food chain and ecosystem. When they grow out of control, however, they can harm people, animals and the environment. More information available here.

The Missouri Governor’s Conference on Agriculture convenes at Tan-Tar-A Resort in Osage Beach, Missouri, for its 49th celebration of agriculture.  The dates are November 18-19, 2021. Missouri farmers, ranchers, agribusiness leaders and aspiring agriculturalists are invited to enjoy a program that will include a commodity outlook, Missouri Agriculture Awards luncheon and nationally-recognized speaker line-up. More information available here. Sponsorship opportunities are available. Contact Liz Roberts, conference manager, at Liz.Roberts@mda.mo.gov or 573-522-1955.

Farm Journal’s MILK Business Conference, the only event that focuses exclusively on every business aspect of dairy operations, is set for November 30 through December 2, 2021, at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. The event will offer educational and networking opportunities for dairy industry leaders, live and in person, and will take place prior to the start of the National Finals Rodeo. The MILK Business Conference agenda highlights include: Five Mega Trends in 2022 and Beyond; How to Become the Employer of Choice; Turning Manure into Money; an expert session on mental health; a traceability session on beef and dairy. “We are thrilled to be hosting the MILK Business Conference in person in Las Vegas this November,” said Cliff Becker, senior vice president of livestock for Farm Journal. “A dairy’s greatest asset in 2035,” he added, “might not be their cows. Register and attend to find out what it will be.”  More information available here.

Missouri and Kansas produce growers can enroll in free workshops to meet training requirements of the Food Safety Modernization Act Produce Safety Rule. Both in-person and online workshops are scheduled for the next several months. FSMA includes standards related to water quality, use of manure and compost, and worker health and hygiene, says Londa Nwadike, food safety specialist with University of Missouri Extension and Kansas State Research and Extension. The standards are intended to reduce the risk of contamination from E. coli, Listeria, Salmonella and other disease-causing microbes. For more information and registration, visit their website or contact Londa Nwadike at 816-482-5850.

Agricultural Business Council Celebrates A Career Well Done

Photo by Greg Tammen, Kansas State University Olathe

For someone who claimed he didn’t know the meaning of the word “laconic” [brief and to the point], Senator Pat Roberts offered a master class on the use of it in his talk to Council members at a special luncheon honoring his 40-year career in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. The event took place October 15 at Kansas State University Olathe, and featured comments from both Kansas Governor Laura Kelly and Attorney General Derek Schmidt. 

Gov. Kelly introduced Sen. Roberts as a “rabid Wildcat, a natural standup comedian and a revered statesman who became [for her] a role model, a mentor and an advisor.” In closing, she thanked Sen. Roberts for “finally retiring” so she could “publically recognize” him for all that he did “behind the scenes” to get things done. The Governor described the Senator as a “true public servant and a Kansas treasure.” 

Among the many reflections he noted from his career, Sen. Roberts’ lamented how the senate is at odds. “Senators used to spend more time together,” he said, adding that they used to vote “as people,” not a necessarily a political block. He mentioned that his first encounter with Sen. Pat Leahy did not get off on a good start. Since then he and the Senator from Vermont have become “best friends.”

Among some of his laconic observations, Sen. Roberts remarked that “doing away with the filibuster is non-sense.” He related a recent interview with regional political broadcaster Mike Mahoney: “As usual, he cut me off.” He also warned that the country “is getting close to a monarchy,” but suggested the “pendulum will swing back.” The Senator struck a more serious note when he said there are no self-made men. “It’s your friends who make you who you are.”

Sen. Roberts, a graduate of Kansas State University, served eight terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1981 to 1997.He served as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps and worked as a newspaper reporter before entering politics in the late 1960s. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980 to succeed 1st District Congressman Keith Sebelius, for whom he had worked. He served eight terms in the House, including one as chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. Sen. Roberts was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996. On the Intelligence Committee, he was responsible for an investigation into the intelligence failures prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He led Kansas' congressional delegation and chaired the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. Sen. Roberts is the first person to chair both the House and the Senate agriculture committees. On January 4, 2019, Roberts announced that he would not seek reelection in 2020.

Digging Deeper...

Cyber hackers will be a menace to U.S. economic and national security for the foreseeable future. Ransomware attacks could be a daily occurrence in five years, warned Army General Paul Nakasone, director of the National Security Agency, at a conference earlier this month in Washington, D.C. That’s why he and his top brass at the U.S. Cyber Command have launched a “surge” operation against ransomware enemies. The strategy is to discover and understand the methods ransomware warriors use so businesses, hospitals, schools, governments and individuals can initiate tactics to pursue, capture and neutralize the hackers. In his remarks at the symposium hosted by cybersecurity firm Mandiant, Gen. Nakasone referred to hacks perpetrated on Colonial Pipeline and JBS last spring that disrupted fuel and food supply chains. “Ransomware,” he declared, “is a national security issue.”  Dennis McLaughlin, McLaughlin Writers LLC – Sources: Sophos Group PLC, Abington, England, “Whitepaper May 2021” (available at www.sophos.com); Mandiant, Alexandria, Virginia; Wall Street Journal, September 7, 9, 2021; Vanson Bourne Research, U.K.; Tom Bienkowski, RSS Feed, May 24, 2021.

Hackers Beware

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. It was established in 2004 by the National Cyber Security Division of the Department of Homeland Security and the nonprofit National Cyber Security Alliance.  But, hundreds of corporations, cities, public utilities, hospitals, among other organizations, have been well-acquainted with ransomware attacks for quite some time. And this year’s high profile hacks of Colonial Pipeline and food processing giant JBS made the general population even more aware of damage ransomware causes – especially when it’s their energy needs and food supply in the crosshairs.  

But how do you really measure that level of awareness? Well, you can start with the general ledgers of corporations. Their executives and board of directors have increased spending this year on cybersecurity.  At the same time, companies that provide cybersecurity systems and highly-skilled professionals are seeing a heavy rush of cash from venture capitalists.  Investors have plowed $12.2 billion into worldwide cybersecurity startups and established businesses so far this year, according to Prequin, Inc., a global assets data analyst. That’s over $2 billion more than 2020 as a whole.

Some of the biggest beneficiaries from the influx of investment capital could be the cybersecurity specialists themselves.  Chief information security officers (CISOs), senior-level executives within an organization who are responsible for protecting the company’s  information assets, are earning a median annual salary of $509,000 this year, up from $473,000 in 2020, says executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles  International.  Cyber insurance brokers aren’t doing badly, either. According to management broker Marsh, the year-over-year increase on average U.S. cyber insurance rates in the second quarter rose 56%. Marsh attributes the increase largely to a boom in ransomware attacks on businesses.

More Work To Be Done

Increased investment and budgeting for cybersecurity notwithstanding, there are still challenges facing U.S industry and institutions. Mandiant, based in Alexandria, Virginia, estimates that nearly half a million cyber security jobs remain open. There are not enough trained cybersecurity technicians and experts to fill them. At the same time, as cyber security positions remain unfilled, cyber criminals are honing their own skills and developing advanced, unpredictable hacking tactics, techniques and procedures.  

To keep pace with ransom warriors, U.S. companies and organizations need to implement strategies that involve training their security teams to develop and improve problem-solving and critical thinking aptitudes. Efforts toward that end are underway. Initiatives include a task force formed by the Justice Department and an executive order from President Joe Biden directing federal agencies and contractors to overhaul their cyber defenses. In September, the Treasury Department issued sanctions against a Russian-operated cryptocurrency exchange, which it accused of facilitating ransom payments to cybercriminals. In late September the Biden Team announced the U.S. will convene a summit of 30 nations before year’s end to discuss how international cooperation can mitigate the impact of cybercrime. 

During the Mandiant conference, Deputy National Security Advisor Anne Neuberger explained the upcoming 30-nation summit will focus on setting international norms for cyber activities, financial regulation for cryptocurrencies, law-enforcement partnerships and building resilience against cyberattacks, she said. “One of the things that we really want to accomplish together in cybersecurity,” she said, “is to be fighting different fights in six months [to] a year.” 

A New Kind Of Villain

In order to be fighting a different fight the action has to be proactive. Kellen Dwyer, a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney involved in several cyber and national security activities, said in a Wall Street Journal piece (September 7, 2021), “Whenever the Justice Department has confronted a new and sophisticated criminal threat, it has focused its resources on proactive rather than reactive investigations and reorganized itself accordingly.”   

Dwyer previously served in the Justice Department in several cyber and national security roles. As an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, he obtained a computer hacking indictment against Julian Assange and represented the United States at Assange’s extradition hearings in London. He received the Attorney General’s Award for the trial of a Russian hacker who helped develop malware used in one of the largest data breaches in U.S. history. Kellen also prosecuted Aleksey Burkov, a Russian hacker whose arrest in Israel triggered a high-profile tug-of-war between the U.S. and Russia.

“Proactive investigations,” Dwyer wrote, “start with known or suspected criminals and seek proof of specific crimes they may have committed, as well as intelligence on the criminal apparatus that supports them, such as who supplies them with necessary tools and contraband, how they communicate and how they move their money.”

A successful ransomware attack requires three critical components, according to Kellen Dwyer: 

• Access to compromised computers

• Malware to remotely encrypt the victim’s data 

• Means to receive and launder ransom payments. 

Cybercriminals who specialize in each of these areas abound. And they are apt to convene cybercrime forums that bring all of these elements together. Indeed, ransomware gangs typically don’t breach computer systems themselves. They create the malware needed for such attacks and lease it to low-skilled “affiliates” in exchange for a percentage of the take. 

Contrary to popular stereotype, ransomware attacks are not necessarily committed by lone wolves with exceptional computer savvy. “In reality,” Dwyer says, “most hackers don’t have the technical sophistication to create malicious tools that are essential to their trade.”  They rely on enterprises known as ‘cybercrime-as-a-service’ (CaaS) organizations. The CaaS business model includes malware developers, hackers and shady staffers involved in promoting, selling and distributing hacking tools and services on the dark web. 

The ominously sounding dark web is indeed shadowy, and is part of the internet housing hidden sites that can’t be visited through conventional web browsers. Sites on the dark web use encryption software so visitors and owners can remain anonymous and their locations unknown. It is home to illegal activity such as prohibited drug and gun sales, illicit pornography and stolen credit card and Social Security numbers. 

But for the record, not all that takes place on the dark web is sinister, malevolent or menacing.  Dissidents fearing political prosecution from their government might use the dark web to communicate with each other. For the sake of ultimate privacy, an individual might seek medical advice while remaining unidentified. Journalists might use the dark web to keep sources anonymous. 

Good Guys Take The Gloves Off

Like criminal organizations in the physical world, however, cybercrime organizations can be infiltrated. Law enforcement can learn where an organization meets, how it communicates and where it stores information. It can place undercover agents in the organization or arrest members and persuade them to inform on others. Members of cybercrime organizations who cannot be tied to particular hacks can be targeted for “sting” operations or charged with conspiracy.

An increase in proactive investigations into CasS organizations could cripple the ecosystem that enables ransomware. Indeed, fewer than 10 strains of ransomware were responsible for most of the attacks committed in the past six years, and just five cryptocurrency exchanges received 82% of funds extorted by ransomware, according to blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis Inc.  

Such investigations also could yield valuable intelligence. If investigators arrest malware developers, they are likely to learn about their hacker-clients. If a cryptocurrency exchange that caters to criminals is taken down, investigators will find leads on ransomware gangs that used its services. This sort of intelligence building pays dividends, says Dwyer. “When an attack happens, you know where to look and, ideally, already have gathered evidence on the suspects.”

To pursue a proactive approach, investigators will have to add cyber prosecutors and agents and give them the resources to conduct long-term investigations. They could be organized into “strike forces” focused on particular regions of the world in much the same way the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces have prosecutor-led strike forces that conduct intelligence-driven, multi-jurisdiction investigations into priority targets and their affiliate financial networks.

But the real battle for cybersecurity should be fought in the confines of all companies and organizations. Security and business continuity planning should be ingrained in every enterprise’s corporate culture. This planning should include a cyberattack response plan and other “war-gaming” activities. In addition to creating a rapid response plan, reporter Tom Bienkowski in a May 24, 2021, release from RSS Feed says, “It is advisable to conduct extensive employee training to stand as a line of defense against cyberattacks. Good cybersecurity practices must be reinforced across all functions of every organization. Leadership should set an example, demonstrating a commitment to security that sets a tone for the business.”

Beware of 10 Types Of Hackers

Hackers are computer savvy people with bad intentions. That’s how India-based JigSaw Academy, a data science institute, sees them. But they’re not all cut from the same cloth – or wear the same hat.  In March 2021, the Academy published an article by cyber data specialist and computer engineer Ajay Sarangam who catalogued ten types of hackers. Here is a synopsis of his profiles: 

1. White Hat Hackers – known as ‘ethical hackers,’ they are professionals with expertise in cybersecurity who work with governments and organizations to hack their computer systems to discover loopholes and weaknesses, and build better firewalls to lower or eliminate ransomware attacks and other intrusions.

2. Black Hat Hackers hack into organizations’ networks to steal bank data, funds or sensitive information. They use the stolen resources for their own profit, selling them on the black market or to harass their target for ransoms.

3. Gray Hat Hackers are not out to rob targets or help people and institutions. They could be considered sport hackers; they enjoy experimenting with systems to find loopholes, crack defenses and have fun. 

4. Script Kiddies are juvenile amateurs using ‘scripts’ from other hackers. Their motivation is attention. Standard Kiddie Script attacks are Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), during which they flood an IP address with so much traffic the site collapses. Such attacks might occur on Black Friday shopping websites.

5. Green Hat Hackers – are learning the ropes of ransomware attacks with the intention of profiting from it; they welcome opportunities to learn from experienced hackers.

6. Blue Hat Hackers – want to learn the trade not for profit, but rather to gain popularity or settle scores with rivals. 

7. Red Hat Hackers – focus on stopping black hat hacker attacks. They can be quite ruthless when counteracting black hat malware.

   These seven types of hackers, described above, are broadly referred to in the cybersecurity world, notes Ajay Sarangam. The three types, below, he says, work in different capacities. 

8. State/Nation Sponsored Hackers – attempt to acquire information about other countries to protect national interests and/or to help ward off aggressive actions.

9. Hacktivists – target government websites and networks to obtain data in government files for personal or social gain.

10. Whisleblowers –are individuals working in an organization who attempt to expose the organization’s confidential information possibly because of a personal grudge or to bring to light illegal activities within the organization.

Who Got Hacked, Who Paid, Who’s Next

Earlier this year (in January and February), Sophos Group PLC, a security software and hardware company based in the U.K., commissioned independent British research firm Vanson Bourne to survey 5,400 IT decision makers across 30 countries to learn more about their actual encounters with hackers and ransomware attacks. And how they dealt with them. Sophos develops products for communication endpoint, encryption, network security, email security, mobile security and unified threat management. 

Here are some key findings that emerged from the survey:

What Industries and Groups Were Targeted in 2020?

Percentage of Respondents 

• Retail - 44% 

• Education - 44%

• Business & professional services - 42%

• Central government & NDPB - 40%

• IT, technology & telecoms - 37%

• Manufacturing & production - 36%

• Energy, oil/gas & utilities - 36%

• Healthcare - 34%

• Local government - 34%

• Financial services - 34%

• Media, leisure & entertainment - 32% 

• Construction & property - 31%

• Distribution & transport - 25% 

What Industries and Groups Paid Ransom?

Percentage of Respondents 

• Energy, oil/gas & utilities - 43%

• Local government - 42%

• Education - 35%

• Healthcare - 34%

• IT, technology & telecoms - 32%

• Business & professional services - 32%

• Retail - 32%

• Construction & property - 28%

• Financial services - 25%

• Manufacturing & production - 19%

What Industries and Groups Expect a Ransomware Attack?

Percentage of Respondents  

An average of almost half of the respondents surveyed said they expected or wouldn’t be surprised if their company or organization were with hit with a ransomware attack in the near future. They cited the growing sophistication of hacking technology as the reason for their concern.

• Manufacturing and production - 60%

• Healthcare - 55%

• Central government and NDPB - 54%

• Construction and property - 51%

• Energy, oil/gas and utilities - 51%

• Financial services - 47%

• Retail - 47%

• Distribution and transport - 46%

• Education - 46%

• IT, technology and telecoms - 46%

• Local government - 43%

• Business and professional services - 40%

• Media, leisure and entertainment - 40%