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,...
SNAP should be embraced by ag
Two of the greatest ironies of living in the richest, strongest nation in the history of the world are how many poor people remain...
Cubs and cattlemen: Paying to lose
Chicago Cubs baseball fans and American cow-calf ranchers have two things in common. First, they can't win for losing and, second, they pay heavily...
Congress needs less old-boy cronyism
While Max Baucus and Jon Tester are both Democrats, both U.S. senators and both Montana country boys, last month’s hurried vote to fund nearly...
Springing backward, like the economy
That lion-in/lamb-out thing about March didn’t offer much lamb this year, but it did deliver several platters of snow.
Oh, spring arrived on time; winter...
Land bulls, bears and squirrels
The neighborhood farmer grapevine, fiber optic for years now, was set abuzz two weeks ago with news that a 237-acre piece of the township...
Congress can no longer fiddle around
Contrary to rumor, Nero did not fiddle while Rome burned. He couldn’t have; fiddles did not exist in first century Rome. Far more likely,...
