How to protect our paddy farmers
Farmers’ cry after failing to cut a profit in every harvest season has become a routine headline for Bangladeshi newspapers. At the same time, people are struggling to afford a sufficient amount of rice throughout the country.
These two facts paint quite a contradictory picture of the rice supply chain and a discrepancy between harvesting and household consumption.
Bangladesh has become self-sufficient in terms of rice production. It produces almost 35.8 million tonnes of rice every year. Despite steady supply, the rice prices tend to fluctuate casually and unnaturally.
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U.S. crude oil production saw the biggest drop on record in 2020
Slashed drilling activity and low oil prices led to the largest decline in annual average crude oil production in the United States in 2020, when output slumped by 8 percent from a record high in 2019, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Wednesday.
U.S. crude oil production averaged 11.3 million barrels per day (bpd) last year, the EIA has estimated. This was down by 935,000 bpd, or by 8 percent, compared to the record annual average of 12.2 million bpd in 2019.
Last year’s flop in U.S. oil production was the largest annual decline in EIA records.
Following the crash in oil prices in March 2020 due to the pandemic, U.S. operators curtailed production and brought fewer wells online. By May 2020, American crude oil production had slumped to a monthly average 10 million bpd from a peak of 12.8 million bpd in January 2020.
Texas, as usual, accounted for the largest share of U.S. crude oil production—at 43 percent last year. Output in Texas fell less than the national average, by 205,000 bpd, or 4 percent, to average 4.87 million bpd in 2020, down from the record high of 5.07 million bpd set in 2019.
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EIA forecasts U.S. natural gas production will establish a new monthly record high in 2022
In December Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), we forecast that U.S. dry natural gas production will increase from 95.1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in October 2021 to 97.5 Bcf/d by December 2022, a new record high. The previous monthly record of 97.2 Bcf/d was set in November 2019.
In early 2020, COVID-19-associated declines in demand resulted in a corresponding natural gas price decrease and reduced drilling. As a result, monthly natural gas production declined to a low of 87.3 Bcf/d in May 2020. Dry natural gas production in the United States has generally risen since then, with a brief exception in February 2021, when winter weather substantially reduced natural gas production in Texas.
Our forecast for U.S. natural gas production growth includes expected output from natural gas-directed drilling activity as well as natural gas production associated with crude oil production (associated gas). In both the Haynesville region (mainly in Texas and Louisiana) and the Appalachia Basin (mainly in Pennsylvania and West Virginia), increased drilling activity and greater output per well have led to more natural gas production in recent months, according to metrics compiled in our Drilling Productivity Report. Associated natural gas production has also increased as producers have completed wells that were previously drilled but uncompleted (DUC wells).
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Light can have a ‘huge impact’ on milk production
Like all mammals, dairy cows are affected by the amount of light they receive each day. Seasonal changes in day length also can have a huge impact in milk production, ranging from 5 lb/cow/day in the northern United States to 8 to 9 lb/day in the south.
Changes in hours of light and day length allow the animal to anticipate changes in her environment before they actually occur, says Kevin Harvatine, a dairy nutrition physiologist with Pennsylvania State University. He spoke this past summer at the virtual 4-State Dairy Nutrition and Management Conference.
The seasonal change in available natural light, from 16 to 18 hours of daylight in spring to 8 to 10 hours/day in winter, can have a 5 to 10 percent effect on milk production, he says. As a result, milk production is highest in April and lowest in September. And if cows are dry in winter, the affect of the shortened days can lead to an increase in mammary tissue growth during the dry period, he says.
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Sugar mills directed to submit complete info to cane commissioner
The Punjab government has reiterated that all the sugar mills should submit full information to the cane commissioner on daily basis regarding sugar production and sale to brokers/dealers, enabling the authorities to check hoarding or unjustifiable increase in the prices of the commodity.
Sources told the Business Recorder on Wednesday that the occupiers of mills are bound under section 9 (b) of the Punjab Sugar (Supply chain Management) Order, 2021 to provide the above information pertaining to production and sale of sugar to the office of the cane commissioner on a prescribed format. Nevertheless, it is alleged that requisite information is not being provided to the office of the cane commissioner.
The commissioner had asked this information through an earlier letter No. CC WP-48553/21 dated 04.08.2021. The letter demanded that the occupiers of the sugar mills must provide information of sale of sugar made to various brokers, dealers and bulk consumers. In a fresh letter, issued to the mills by the cane commissioner, it said that certain unscrupulous elements hoard sugar and thereby jack up its prices.
It further said that lack of information and opacity shrouding sale of sugar are the major contributory factors of hoarding, black-marketing and price-hike of sugar, brunt of which is ultimately borne by the common man.
Full disclosure of information by the sugar mills, which is even otherwise mandatory upon them under the law, can help ameliorate the lot of the people, the cane commissioner said in his letter.