We should talk, we need answers
Where will CRISPR take us? Answers to this question and others shouldn't solely come from government regulators like USDA, according to columnist Alan Guebert.
Trying to silence checkoff foes
Big Ag’s control of commodity checkoffs reached new heights April 19 when the House Appropriations Committee approved the USDA's $21.3 billion 2017 budget.
Spring seemed to be in slow-mo
Hints of spring arrived early this year, but the season itself seemed to be in the slow lane because rare was the week when back-to-back sunny days warmed the tired winter soul.
They never stopped making it
Forty-five years ago, anyone hoping to be someone in American agriculture was offered the same, free advice: "Buy land; they're not making it anymore."
Lobbying and money and the Hill
In Washington, D.C. the week of April 10, ag-related and ag-dependent groups overran Congressional offices and government agencies in waves of annual “fly-ins.”
Ethanol has agriculture in a trap
It looks like we're heading toward another corn surplus.
Free markets work, when we let ’em
There is a certain poetry in U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-KS, failure to convince the U.S. Senate to squash state and local food labeling laws.
Expect a Cuban junket in 2016
Last year, according to U.S. Department of Commerce data, American ag sales to Cuba hit $149 million, the lowest level since 2002.
Whole lot of shaking going on
What will it take for politicians to publicly recognize free trade agreements as mostly illusion or climate change as a reality? Maybe an earthquake.
Remembering a childhood friend
On a sparkling blue Friday afternoon in October 1965, I stepped off a noisy school bus with my best friend, Marvin, to walk the long lane to his family's farm. Until the day I die, he and I forever will be 10 years old walking down a farm lane toward the greatest weekend in our young lives.
