It happened again the other week at a local public forum on agriculture.
The panel of speakers included me, two farmers and a state Farm Bureau economist.

Today’s Southern breeze gently rustles the heavy-headed tulips outside my office window before sweeping through the apple tree to sprinkle a shower of blossom petals onto an emerald lawn.

The Congressional battle to approve the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) began in earnest with the usual suspects mouthing the usual platitudes to the usual inside-the-Beltway audiences.

Had I known my professional life would center on chronicling the takeover of global ag business by global ag business, I would have listened more closely to Professor Lyle P.

The lessons contained in the proposed settlement of a civil lawsuit arising over

You don’t own any cattle, so the court-clouded Canadian beef import rule doesn’t affect you, right?
Likewise, you don’t make fructose, raise sugar beets or grow cotton so all that mumbo-jumbo about NAFTA, CAFTA, TRIPS and the WTO is better left to those smart trade-talkers in Washington, Brussels and Geneva.

The first hint of spring brings big iron and big irony to the winter-rested Illinois prairie.

The scene, often repeated these bitterly political days, was straight out of Alice in Wonderland.
On March 3, U.

It was an embarrassing moment for the White House and its free trade acolytes.
There, hat-in-hand before the agriculture commissioners, secretaries and directors of each state and four U.

The trick in getting farmers to read farm magazines, a long-time editor of mine repeatedly admonished, is to put numbers in the headline, the lead and every paragraph thereafter.