Tag: press release

US Farmers Expected to Increase Corn Acreage as Prices Remain Resilient

Spring planting forecast shows reduction in soybean, wheat, cotton and grain sorghum acres with corn picking up the real estate 

DENVER (February 20, 2025)—U.S. farmers are projected to shift acreage to corn this spring as corn prices maintain an impressive run while prices for competing crops struggle to keep pace. Corn prices have been buoyed by tight global stocks, strong export demand and record ethanol production. Profitable feeding margins in the livestock and poultry sectors are also supporting corn demand. 

According to a new report from CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange, corn is expected to pull acres from soybeans, spring wheat, cotton and grain sorghum when the spring planting season gets under way. The report projects total U.S. planted acreage for each of those crops based on statistical regression analysis and information from grain cooperatives and merchandisers across the U.S. The report also outlines scenarios and global market dynamics that could impact acreage allocation decisions before planting starts. 

“While farmers tend to stick to historical crop rotations for agronomic reasons and market diversification, corn’s price rally relative to other crops suggests a major shift in acreage is in the offing,” said Tanner Ehmke, grains and oilseeds economist with CoBank. “We’re still several weeks away from the start of planting season, which means the acreage balance is still in flux. Multiple factors could shift how acres are traded around the U.S., but the current price environment suggests corn will be king in 2025.” 

Corn

Corn acres are expected to climb 4.2% to 94.5 million in 2025. Notably, low hay prices are expected to shift acres out of corn harvested for silage to corn harvested for grain, raising the corn-for-grain harvested acreage by 5.0% to 87.06 million. However, the potential for trade disputes with Canada and Mexico could significantly weaken the demand for U.S. corn and curb the increase in planted acreage. A trade war with Canada may throttle exports of U.S. ethanol, while a disruption to the Mexican market could severely impact U.S. corn exports.

Soybeans

Soybeans are expected to experience the biggest drop with acreage falling 3.6% to 84.0 million. The loss will be somewhat blunted by last fall’s expansion of winter wheat acres, which will create more opportunity for farmers to double-crop soybeans following the winter wheat harvest. U.S. winter wheat acreage was tallied at 34.12 million acres, up 2.1%, according to USDA. The potential for tariffs on used cooking oil imports from China and canola oil from Canada would lift demand for soybean oil and encourage farmers to hold on to soybean acres. 

Wheat 

Spring wheat acres in the Northern Plains are expected to fall 5.9% to 10.0 million as wheat prices continue to struggle from a strong dollar and greater U.S. supply following last year’s bigger harvest. Most of the reduction in spring wheat acres will go to corn, but soybeans also stand to gain some wheat acres. However, the potential for weather-related wheat crop losses in Russia combined with losses to the U.S. winter wheat crop could quickly change the market dynamics and limit the loss of spring wheat acres.

Sorghum 

Grain sorghum acres are expected to drop 9.5% to 5.7 million due to the lack of export demand. The loss of Chinese demand, which typically accounts for 90%-95% of U.S. grain sorghum exports, has pulled cash grain sorghum prices well below corn prices on the Plains. Low prices are prompting livestock feeders to include more grain sorghum into feed rations and ethanol plants are using more sorghum for ethanol production, bolstering U.S. demand. Higher domestic usage – and the potential for Chinese demand returning to take advantage of historically low sorghum prices – may lift prices and protect sorghum acreage from losses.

Cotton

Cotton acres are forecast to fall 7.8% to 10.3 million with prices struggling under the weight of a slowing global economy, a strong U.S. dollar and increasing competition from Brazil. The shift of cotton acres to corn will likely be greater in the Southeast than in the Texas plains. Texas cotton producers have shifted acres to wheat and other fall forages for beef cattle, which are currently trading at record high prices. An economic recovery in China or a shorter than expected crop in Brazil may underpin cotton prices and protect acres from shifting.

Read the report, Spring Acreage Outlook: Corn to Gain Acres from Multiple Crops.

About CoBank

CoBank is a cooperative bank serving vital industries across rural America. The bank provides loans, leases, export financing and other financial services to agribusinesses and rural power, water and communications providers in all 50 states. The bank also provides wholesale loans and other financial services to affiliated Farm Credit associations serving more than 77,000 farmers, ranchers and other rural borrowers in 23 states around the country.

CoBank is a member of the Farm Credit System, a nationwide network of banks and retail lending associations chartered to support the borrowing needs of U.S. agriculture, rural infrastructure and rural communities. Headquartered outside Denver, Colorado, CoBank serves customers from regional banking centers across the U.S. and also maintains an international representative office in Singapore.

We are waking up to the reality

that we live on a water planet

and it changes everything

Europe and Asia are leading the world with the introduction of

a “Blue Economy” to accompany the “Green Economy,”

and now the United States needs to catch up

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Jeremy Rifkin’s new book Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Home in the Universe will be published simultaneously in all the principal world languages in September 2024.

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What would happen if we suddenly realized that the planet we live on appeared eerily alien, as if we’d been teleported to some other distant world? That frightening prospect is now. Our planetary hydrosphere, which animates all life on Earth, is rebelling in the wake of a global warming climate, unleashing blockbuster winter snows, biblical spring floods, devastating summer droughts, heatwaves and wildfires and deadly autumn hurricanes, wreaking havoc on ecosystems, infrastructure, and society. While fossil fuels lit the fuse, it’s the hydrosphere that’s ringing the death knell.

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In Planet Aqua, Jeremy Rifkin argues that we have misjudged the very nature of our existence and to what we owe our lifeline. We have long believed that we live on a land planet when in reality we live on a water planet, and now the Earth’s hydrosphere is taking us into a mass extinction as it searches for a new normal.

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Rifkin asks us to imagine the incredible hubris of believing that our species could sequester, pacify, propertize, commodify, and hold dominion over all the waters of the planet for our exclusive utilitarian uses. Yet, that’s exactly what we set out to do six thousand years ago with the rise of urban hydraulic civilizations around the world. And now we find ourselves trapped in a massive commercial juggernaut of hydropower superdams, artificial lakes, reservoirs, and ubiquitous water infrastructure that’s collapsing in the throes of a rewilding hydrosphere.

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The great reset, says Rifkin, is rethinking the waters as a “life source” rather than a “resource” and learning how to adapt to the hydrosphere rather than adapting the hydrosphere to us.

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Rifkin takes us into a new future where we will need to reassess every aspect of the way we live – how we engage nature, pursue science, govern society, conceptualize economic life, educate our children, and even orient ourselves in time and space on our water planet. The next stage in the human saga is to ‘rebrand’ our home Planet Aqua and usher in a Blue Economy to accompany the Green Economy.

The big conversation taking place in Europe over the past 6 months is the call for a 'Blue Deal' to accompany the 'Green Deal' as the next leap forward in the European Union (see enclosed articles). The 'Blue Economy' agenda is also emerging in China and Korea as a centerpiece for rethinking life on Planet Aqua and is going to migrate to North America, the UK, and other nations around the world as well in the coming months.

The European Economic and Social Committee, the European Committee of the Regions, critical industries, trade associations, the farming community, government, academia, and civil society are all coalescing around a storyline and game plan to address a dramatic change in the climate brought on by a rewilding hydrosphere that's killing off our fellow creatures and endangering our own species on a scale unprecedented in history - and everywhere, humanity is frightened and looking for answers.

The call for a massive 'Blue Deal' to go hand-in-hand with the current 'Green Deal' will be the centerpiece of the new expanded agenda of the European Union. The conversation is focusing on a number of critical themes including demolishing outmoded superdams and artificial reservoirs, the construction of new resilient water infrastructure, the introduction of omnipresent distributed water internets and water microgrids, portable desalination devices and water purification systems, sponge cities, ephemeral pop-up 3D printed communities, water calendars and safe climate corridors, alongside extending legal rights to rivers to run free, deploying green hydrogen infrastructure, stewarding lakes, rivers, and streams as shared commons, addressing the dire threat of groundwater depletion, repurposing the water-energy-food nexus, pursuing paradigmic shifts in science and technology on a water planet, and developing new approaches to pedagogy, curricula, clinical learning, and incubator projects at the universities and secondary school level.

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This fundamental turning point in the way the human family relates to water on Planet Aqua will underwrite a rethink in the deployment of policies and practices going forward, putting the 'Blue Economy’ alongside the ‘Green Economy’ at the top of the agenda for nations around the world. Planet Aqua provides the narrative and worldview for rethinking life on our water planet as well as a robust agenda across every aspect of society in making this transformation in our species' future.

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Underpinned by robust research, this major new work by one of the world’s leading public intellectuals aims to redefine the very core of our existence on Planet Aqua.

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We are coming to grips with the reality that we live on a water planet 

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Jeremy Rifkin is the best-selling author of twenty-three books translated into thirty-five languages. He is a principal architect of the European Union’s and China’s economic plans for transitioning into a Third Industrial Revolution to address climate change and he served as an advisor to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer on the U.S. infrastructure plan. He is listed among the top ten most influential economic thinkers in The Huffington Post’s global survey of “The World’s Most Influential Voices.”

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DETAILED CONTENTS

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Part One The Imminent Collapse of Hydraulic Civilization

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1) First There Was the Waters

Déjà vu and the Second Deluge

Our Aquatic Self: How Humans Emerged from the Deep

2) The Earth Be Dammed: The Dawn of Hydraulic Civilization

The Making of a Social Organism

The Invention of Economics

Drowning in Progress

3) Gender Wars: The Struggle Between Terra Firma and Planet Aqua

Picking Sides: The War of Goddesses and Gods

Women: The Carriers of the Water

4) The Paradigmatic Transformation from Capitalism to Hydroism

The Water-Energy-Food Nexus

Leaving Capitalism Behind

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Part Two The Canary in the Mine: How the Mediterranean Eco-Region Became Day Zero on a Warming Earth and a Bellwether of the Second Coming of Life

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5) The Near Death and Rebirth of the Mediterranean

Day Zero: When Nations Run Dry

Renewables to the Rescue and a Second Life for the Mediterranean Ecosystem

Water, Water, Everywhere, But Not Any Drop to Drink...Until Now

6) Location, Location, Location: The Eurasian Pangaea

The Bridge to Europe and Asia

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Part Three We Live on Planet Aqua and That Changes Everything

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7) Freeing the Waters

Opening the Floodgates

Harvesting the Hydrosphere

8) The Great Migration and the Rise of Ephemeral Society

The Renaissance of the Ephemeral Arts and the Reset of Time and Space

How Plato Took Our Species Down the Wrong Path

9) Rethinking Attachment to Place: Where We’ve Come from and Where We’re Heading

Stepping Into Neo-Nomadism

Ephemeral Cities and Ephemeral Waters

A New Business Model: Additive Manufacturing and Provider-User Networks

10) Bringing High-Tech Agriculture Indoors

Vertical Farming

11) The Eclipse of Sovereign Nation States and the Gestation of Bioregional Governance

Mass Migration and the Issuing of Climate Passports

Military Defense Gives Way to Climate Resilience

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Part Four Sublime Waters and a New Ontology of Life on Earth

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12) Two Ways to Listen to the Waters

Vanquishing the Waters or Riding the Waves

Reorienting Ourselves in Time and Space in a Liquid Milieu

13) Swallowed by the Metaverse or Buoyed by the Aquaverse

An Ecological Vision or Dystopian Nightmare: Two Paths to the Future

Planet Aqua: Rebranding Our Home

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Healthy and Homemade for Valentine’s Day: Good Dee’s Delicious Baking Mixes Support Wellness Goals

Founder Deana Krim has made gluten-free, lean-crafted, and low-carb baking mixes that will delight any baked goods connoisseur

NEW YORK – (February 5th, 2025): Good Dee’s makes it easy to indulge in sweet treats and homemade bread while adhering to low-carb, low-sugar lifestyle choices. This Valentine’s Day, baking gluten-free and delicious treats is easy with baking mixes like Devil's Food Keto Cake Mix - Gluten Free and No Added Sugar. Driven by her passion for great food and her personal struggle with weight and family genetics, Deana Karim founded Good Dee’s to help health-conscious consumers enjoy their favorite treats while avoiding gluten, sugar, carbs, and more. The options are endless; Good Dee’s offers a wide range of baking mixes, from Bread & Corn free bread to Brownie & Sprinkles, Cakes & Cookies & Pancakes, ensuring there's something for everyone's taste and dietary preferences.  

“I created Good Dee’s when I discovered how small changes, like lowering carbs and sugar and changing my mindset, helped me conquer a lifelong struggle with weight. But food, especially baked goods, should bring joy, not guilt. That’s why I created baking mixes that deliver amazing taste without sacrificing your commitment to a healthy lifestyle,” says Deana Karim, Founder and Owner of Good Dee’s. “This Valentine's Day is the perfect want to nourish the one you love with Good Dee’s delicious treats - indulge without compromising on taste!”

For the perfect Valentine's treat, try Good Dee’s favorites like these:

For the Carrot Cake lover, mix some muffins with the Carrot Keto Muffin & Cake Mix - Gluten-Free and No Added Sugar, just in time for National Muffin Day on February 20th. They are:

• Keto-friendly, with no gluten or added preservatives.
• Low-carb and plant-based with high-quality watermelon seed flour, free of grains and dairy, naturally sweetened with no sugar added, and full of healthy fiber. 

To accompany a delicious Valentine’s dinner with Good Dee’s home-baked bread, try: 

Corn Free Keto Bread Mix - Gluten-Free and No Added Sugar. The corn free bread is a delicious, gluten-free bread option that is perfect for those with dietary restrictions, particularly those avoiding corn. This bread has a soft, moist crumb and a slightly nutty taste, making it versatile for various uses, from sandwiches to toast. 

Visit GoodDees.com for clean-eating mixes, complete nutrition details, and endless inspiration for healthy baking. For more creative and guilt-free treat ideas, follow @GoodDeesMix on Instagram. 

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About Good Dee’s:

Created and founded by native Texan-turned-New Yorker Deana Karim, Good Dee’s proves that health-conscious living and decadent indulgence really do mix. The tasty solution to a lifetime of deprivation and struggle with weight gain, Good Dee’s offers innovative, full-flavor mixes made with high-quality, clean ingredients and free of gluten, soy, wheat, and added sugar. Give in to cravings guilt-free with Good Dee’s complete collection of baking mixes designed for low-carb, restricted, and special diets. Learn more and shop all flavors and varieties at GoodDees.com or Amazon.com. Find inspirational recipes and baking ideas on Instagram @GoodDeesMix.

Hundreds of Studies Show Efficacy of One Particular Brain Fitness Program

San Francisco, January 21, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — New data from papers published in science and medical journals in 2024 shows tremendous growth in the evidence of efficacy of one particular brain fitness product: BrainHQ from Posit Science.  The widely used web, Android, and iOS app was the subject of another 55 published journal articles in 2024. 

There are now some 300 published peer-reviewed studies on the efficacy of BrainHQ, including 96 studies in healthy older adults, 4 studies in workplace performance, and 200 studies across a wide range of health conditions — including brain injuries (stroke, mild to severe traumatic brain injuries, chemobrain, cardiobrain, HIV Associated Neurological Decline, diabetes, movement disorders, autism, ADHD, and substance use, sleep, and conduct disorders); mental illnesses (depression, schizophrenia, bipolar); and neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer’s dementia, pre-dementia, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis).

BrainHQ is an outlier in the field. According to a comprehensive systematic review of commercially-available brain training and brain games targeting older adults, the lion’s share of such offerings have zero peer-reviewed studies showing efficacy.

“We work with a global network of more than 500 university-based researchers,” observed Dr. Henry Mahncke, CEO of Posit Science. “They have helped us design, test, refine, and validate our offerings. Thousands of hours of work go into a typical study, and those researchers are the real heroes in advancing our knowledge of the mechanics of brain plasticity and how we can harness it to drive gains in three critical areas: cognitive performance, everyday activities, and the health of the brain as an organ.”

For example, studies in prior years have shown the link between the exercises driving gains in cognitive performance and everyday activity and causing physical changes in the brain (e.g., the speed, accuracy, and strength of neural responses, the integrity of the insulation that surrounds neural connections, the functional connectivity between disparate regions of the brain, and hippocampal volume).  The 2024 BETTER Aging study nicely expanded on those results through imaging, by showing not just gains in cognitive performance but also better maintenance of brain biomarkers of age-related atrophy. 

Similarly, the J-MINT PRIME Tamba study from Japan (using a Japanese version of BrainHQ exercises) expanded on prior studies by showing the training can drive significant gains in cognition even among those at elevated risk of dementia (in this study, due to hypertension and/or diabetes). The study compared three different types of lifestyle interventions (diet, physical exercise, and brain exercise) against a control and found a 41% gain in a standard measure of global cognition in the brain exercise group using BrainHQ.

A study from Brazil in healthy older adults (using the Portuguese version of BrainHQ exercises), also showed significant gains in global cognition after 20 hours of training, which gains still persisted at the five-month follow-up.

A trio of studies of BrainHQ cognitive assessments were published in 2024. Two looked at the widely used BrainHQ UFOV® assessment, which measures speed of processing and useful field of view. A study from China used the UFOV assessment to evaluate brains of ping pong players and found an association between UFOV performance and brain health as measured through brain imaging. A study among patients with HIV Associated Neurological Decline found greater amounts of BrainHQ training showed greater gains in UFOV scores, even two years after training.  In addition, a study on the norming and validation of dozens of new 3-minute remote BrainHQ assessments has cleared the path for using those assessments in a variety of contexts to establish baselines and ongoing monitoring of cognitive status — much as people are able to do at home with blood pressure or glucose levels.

Other studies in 2024 deepened understanding of the impacts of BrainHQ training across some previously studied health conditions, including: stroke, TBI, Chemobrain, HAND, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, Down syndrome, multiple sclerosis, pre-dementia, and cognitive aging. 

Prior to 2024, many studies had been published in various types of pre-dementia and dementia (e.g., MCI, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s); however, 2024 saw the first BrainHQ case study in frontotemporal dementia published.

Also in 2024, there were more studies looking at the combined impact of BrainHQ and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which is also believed to enhance brain plasticity. Such trials had mixed results with some showing greater gains for combined intervention, but others showing no better results than using BrainHQ alone.

Among the 15 review articles citing BrainHQ in 2024 was one from a research team at the University of Hong Kong. That review cited thirty-five studies in dementia and pre-dementia, showing training improved memory. These findings align with the 2024 World Health Organization guidelines recommending cognitive training in dementia.

Benefits have been shown in hundreds of studies of BrainHQ, including significant gains in standard measures of cognition (attention, processing speed, memory, and decision making), in standard measures of quality of life (depressive symptoms, confidence and control, safety, health-related quality of life) and in real-world measures (health outcomes, balance, driving, hearing, and work). BrainHQ is now offered, without charge, as a benefit by leading national and 5-star Medicare Advantage plans and by leading medical centers, clinics, and communities. Consumers can try a BrainHQ exercise for free daily at http://www.brainhq.com.