Readers respond to past columns
Twice a year readers who write, telephone or send drone aircraft to my office take over this space to air their gripes, grievances and...
‘Farm and Food File’ celebrates 20 years
In yet another testament to the careful inattention this office consistently pays to the career of its founding (and, as ever, only) staff member,...
Please tell me you remember, right??
If you thought the farm bill fight was bad, you’re gonna hate the coming battle over the reauthorization of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission...
June, farm bill could be another mess
June meant the end of school, the beginning of summer and the arrival of dairy month.Now, somehow, June has become the Golf Channel’s official...
Top 10 reasons to love the China deal
There's many reasons to be thrilled about Shuanghui International Holding Inc.’s proposed $4.7 billion purchase of Smithfield Foods, Inc. Here's only 10...
A closer look at farmland values
The mild winter affected U.S. farmland values only mildly.
Summer, however, may cool ‘em. According to the much-followed Seventh Federal Reserve District quarterly land survey...
So, where’s my cow insurance?
It was evident from the hello that the South Dakota rancher had practiced his pitch before he dialed my office.
“I’m (so and so),” he...
Dairy’s dive into the unknown
It’s one of American agriculture’s best truisms: Only six people in the world understand U.S. dairy policy and none of the six milks cows.
It’s...
You’ll know it when you see it
In the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court case Jacobellis v. Ohio, Justice Potter Stewart wrote a concurring opinion he hoped would establish a legal standard...
Patience is farming with a faulty planter
The first good corn planting day of spring finally arrived at my central Illinois farmette April 30. Like the month’s previous 29 days, however,...
