Farm and Food File: Again with the crop insurance?
Suggestions on how to change the 2012 farm bill are popping up faster than jack-o'-lanterns. Like this gap-toothed hallmark of Halloween, however, most are hollow, scary and shed little light.
Remember me? Of course I do, Orlie
Longtime readers may recall a Thanksgiving column years ago that featured a dinner entree provided by Orlie, the gainfully unemployed younger brother of our...
Cargill says thank you to Brazilians
Columnist Alan Guebert says Cargill has every economic and legal right to move ahead with its Brazilian ethanol import plan
Technology wave started years ago
About the time I broke the cotton shackles of my mother's apron strings for the glorious freedom of my father's farm fields, a technology wave hit the southern Illinois farm of my youth.
Wal-Mart’s organic plan could boost demand
What will Wal-Mart's new organic sales mean for farmers?
Slouching toward Election Day
There are facts on which the world operates and there are facts on which politics operate. Spoiler alert: The two are not the same.
Checkoff boosters’ facts are weak
Columnist Alan Guebert comments on the USDA's lenthgy, costly and failing devense of commodity checkoffs.
Pork producers respond to column
If you were to interview yourself, then write a story based on the interview, it's a safe bet the story might be more self-serving than, say, what your neighbor or mother-in-law might write about you.
A real worker finds something to do
The undercooked thought and overbaked talk that endlessly paralyzes Washington would not have gone far on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth before someone, boss or hired hand alike, would have condemned the yak and urged all to "get to work."
Take it to the non-bank bank
It was more a wavering non-waiver than another government oldie-but-goodie, a non-denial denial. Still, nothing in the Environmental Protection Agency's Dec. 1 delay to...