Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Yoshon Alert-Winter wheat is always yoshon- there may be shortages


(Bloomberg) -- America’s bread basket looks like it’s going gluten free: Dogged by lower prices and tepid demand, U.S. wheat farmers are poised to plant the fewest acres of winter varieties in 110 years.

That’s according to a Bloomberg survey. Analysts are predicting another year of declines for acreage as U.S. producers face stiff competition from global rivals gathering bumper crops. World supplies are so plentiful that futures for hard red winter wheat are down about 15% in 2019, one of the worst performances for commodities this year. In some parts of the southern U.S. Plains, wheat is now cheaper than corn, making the yellow grain a better bet.

“The price doesn’t get high enough to tell us to keep planting wheat,” said Ken Horton, who grows wheat, corn and sorghum with his sons in Leoti, Kansas. Horton is cutting plantings of the HRW wheat variety by 30% to about 3,000 acres.

“Any time you have cash corn higher than cash wheat, you’ll see more acres go to corn,” Horton said in a telephone interview.

As of Oct. 27, U.S. farmers had planted 85% of their winter wheat, up from 77% at the same time in 2018, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

However, rains in parts of the Midwest may hamper the last phase of sowing. Some growers who double-crop wheat in soybean fields might not be able to harvest their soy in time to seed wheat, according to Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist at INTL FCStone in Kansas City. That could result in fewer planted acres of the soft red winter variety, he said.

“There’s quite a correlation in soybean-harvest pace and wheat plantings,” Suderman said by phone.

Planted acres of all varieties of winter wheat are forecast to decline to 31.118 million, according to a Bloomberg survey of six analysts. That would be down from 31.159 million a year ago and above only the 29.196 million acres from 1909, the first year in USDA records. The agency won’t make an official estimate until January.

In the Texas Panhandle, farmers are turning to cotton instead of wheat, said Darby Campsey, director of communications and producer relations at the Texas Wheat Producers.

“The low wheat prices have given way to other options,” she said.




Sunday, October 27, 2019

Shatnez 1936



              This is from Hapardes Pesach 1936
               Evidently there was already concern for organized 
               shatnez testing, long before reb Yosef Rosenberg 
               arrived in NYC

              I think perhaps those who were concerned about Shatnez 
              bought from frummer yidden, and this Mr. Sheinkin set up 
              a factory with hashgocho of Agudas Harabonim. 
              Rosenberg introduced checking of garments bought at 
              non-Jewish places, department stores etc.
  

Alert: Lakewood Kesubos / Gittin correct spelling of Lakewood

The attached newly discovered מעשה בית דין  written by Maran Harav Moshe Feinstein זצ"ל, clearly shows his opinion that the correct spelling of the name of the town “Lakewood” in Hebrew is ליקבוד”. As such, all כתובות written in Lakewood should be spelled ליקבודaccording to this ruling of the פוסק הדור.
Regarding the writing of Gittin which is much more חמור than כתובות, the spelling of the name of the town must be decided by the גדולי הדור. The Chasam Sofer in Teshuvos states, that before starting to write Gittin in a new town, the גדולי הדור must convene and decide how Gittin should be written in that town. This includes both the spelling of the name of the town and the rivers that must be written in a גט, as well as the spelling of those rivers.  
It should also be noted that at times both Roshei Yeshiva of Lakewood, Maran Harav Aharon Kotler זצ"ל and his son Harav Shneur Kotler זצ"ל spelled Lakewood in Hebrew, ליקבוד, exactly as spelled by Reb Moshe זצ"ל

Sunday, October 20, 2019

Slivovitz in 1936

So in prewar New York Slivovitz from Trencin was especially cherished. But there seems to have been  a slivovitz problem in 1935 and only in 1936 did they restore the hashgocho of Rav Yehoshua Gross of Trencin for pesachdik slivovitz.

Grama based mechanisim for Shabbos / Yom Tov

It seems that the GRAMA based appliances by Tzomet and Star-K are based on the same principals, and they are not acceptable for Shabbos / Yom Tov by the contemporary Poiskim, only in case of a life threatening situation.   







Thursday, October 17, 2019