Hog slaughter ‘roughly current’ after Covid: Meatpacking plants have recovered from the coronavirus slowdowns and shutdowns of last spring and are “roughly current” with the U.S. hog supply, reducing the backlog on farms to around 200,000 head from estimates as high as 2.5 million, said Lee Schulz, an associate professor at Iowa State University, in a National Pork Board webinar. (FERN’s Ag Insider)
Five weeks of record-setting rural cases: A spike in rural coronavirus infections pushed the United States to its highest one-day tally of Covid-19 cases since the pandemic began last spring. For the fifth week in a row, rural infections set a record. (Daily Yonder)
First U.S. shipment of China-bound rice: The first-ever commercial shipment of U.S.-grown rice was unloaded in China on Tuesday, after more than a decade of regulatory and political negotiations, said the trade group USA Rice. (USA Rice)
NCBA delays convention to August: The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association postponed its annual Cattle Industry Convention by six months, to August 2021, because of travel restrictions and limits on crowd sizes during the pandemic.
What’s in a name? Not ethanol: Pacific Ethanol Inc. said it intends to change its name to reflect an evolving focus onto higher-revenue specialty alcohols and essential ingredients and away from ethanol fuel, which has shrunk to half of the company’s output from 85 percent in 2019. (Pacific Ethanol)