One big job for Congress this year is an update of federal farm programs, including crop subsidies.
Rain over the summer has meant a poorer quality of grass silage, and the farm's maize crop is also expected to produce lower yields when it is harvested in the coming weeks.
Competitors include small firms such as Farmlogs, a Web startup that focuses on crop data, and software maker Farm Works, as well as John Deere, which has software and Web support for managing crop production and machinery.
Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and a host of other farm-heavy states have seen crop losses as a result.
Plans to sow a the GM fodder maize trial crop at Castle Cenlas Farm had also faced significant local opposition.
In the distance a last glimmer of sun caught the top of Pumpkin Hill where men were still out mowing the first hay crop on the Deaver farm.
Howell, along with his brother and nephew who run the family farm, are trying save a tomato crop.
Mr. SCOTT BULLING (Crop Insurance Manager, Oklahoma Farm Bureau): They may have their hay insured for, say, somewhere 20 dollars per round bale.
Scott Bulling is crop insurance manager with the Oklahoma Farm Bureau.
At the weekend police were called after protesters held a demonstration near a farm at Mathry in Pembrokeshire, west Wales, where GM crop trials are expected to start.
The BCAP (Biomass Crop Assistance Program), part of the 2008 farm bill, is designed to encourage farmers to plant biomass by cost-sharing the establishment of the crops.
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The farm bill contains few new incentives to expand overall acreage or to encourage crop shifts.
With farm prices at historic lows, the premium paid for growing the right crop might mean the difference between making money and not making money (or between losing a little money and losing a lot).
Jeff Scates, a farmer in Southern Illinois, said about 75% of his family's farm was underwater last spring, and he didn't finish planting his corn crop until early June.
Crop production purchase agreement between the investor and farmers, who continue to own and farm their land.
The best way to raise a big carbon crop, though, is to do what Russell Hughes did on part of his farm in Searsboro, Iowa.
"So you really would have to lose the entire crop at the last minute to get anything close to 100-percent recovery, " says farm expert Maire Ullrich.
Hispanic and Asian families crop up in the most unlikely places: Indian computer programmers in Plano or Austin, Mexican farm workers in the Dakotas, Asian entrepreneurs in Las Vegas.
The coffee giant intends to use the farm to help coffee farming communities around the world mitigate climate change impacts, and to support long-term crop stability on a warming planet.
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