Journalism has many traditions. One of the oldest is adding “-30-” after the last paragraph of a just-completed story to alert the editor of “the end.” Old-timers say it was adopted from the …
Too many officials in the Trump Administration and several farm state Capitol Hill leaders believe that just saying something is true makes it true. For example, on June 24, the White …
I’m old enough to remember when Congress — like most Americans — worked during the summer. Sure, the pinstriped, air-conditioned gang took a few weeks off every August but they usually …
In the ongoing, years-long group text between my four brothers and sister, there was a brief exchange the Saturday before Memorial Day between me, son Paul, and my next younger brother Perry. I …
In yet another effort to explain the 2025 changes to the Federal Milk Marketing Orders, a mid-June headline in a widely respected farm newspaper carried this news: “Milk pricing explained: ‘New …
The June World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates from USDA contains a paradox policymakers might want to note: domestic stocks of unsold cotton continue to sit on the sluggish market while …
Poor Joe Biden. Out of office for 17 months and he’s still the reason for every Trump Administration failure, large or small. Take the latest screw-up the U.S. Department of Agriculture now …
Farm Bills are often loaded with “special interest” lard that favors, say, crop insurance companies, international grain merchandisers, meatpackers and other farm and food players looking for an …
Remind me to never take commodity market or stock market advice from the current resident of the White House. Two days before President Donald Trump’s quick “beans, beef, and Boeing” trip …
On April 22, the Department of Agriculture signed a $300 million “blanket purchase agreement” with Palantir Technologies Inc. to, as Palantir explained, “support the National Farm Security …
On the farm of my youth, our full-time field worker, Jackie, didn’t say much. When he did, however, he often offered creative euphemisms and descriptive epigrams. A favorite, for example, was if it …
You’d think that the three extra years Congress has taken to update the 2018 Farm Bill might mean it stumbled upon solutions to today’s falling farm income, sagging ag exports, the need for more …
The maddening part of today’s fertilizer crush is not the steep price spikes that hit U.S. farmers immediately after the Trump Administration went to war with Iran Feb. 28. Nor is it that …
Central Dublin’s busy O’Connell Street became a parking lot a week ago when Irish farmers and truck drivers parked their tractors and trucks on its River Liffey bridge to protest nationwide …
In its program-slashing, 2027 Department of Agriculture budget plan, the White House hoped to head off sure-to-come complaints by tying spending cuts to that handy whipping boy, big, bad government. …
It may be a surprise that last year’s biggest ag story — tariffs — was swept off today’s front pages by even bigger news: a Middle East war, its sharply higher fuel and fertilizer prices and …
Spring often just burst onto the southern Illinois farm of my youth. One morning you’d see a green blade of something peeking through the bare ground by the mailbox and by the time you got off the …
There’s a line spoken by Harry Potter, the literary creation of author J.K. Rowling, in the film “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” that many in U.S. agriculture can relate to: “I …
In the end, it usually comes down to numbers. Figures scrawled on the back of an envelope, say, or blinking numbers on a computer spreadsheet. Maybe even 58,281 names inscribed on two, long black …
If you grew up on a farm, you know that milk cows show up to be milked, horses return to the barn to be fed and, like clockwork, chickens return to roost every night. In fact, chickens are so …