Dirty laundry is out in the open now
With the summer’s big holiday just ahead and the midpoint of the year just behind, it’s time to empty the office bucket of spleen,...
Flooding fallout is anyone’s guess
While Midwestern farmers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have precise measurements on how much rain fell where in the deluge that socked 2008...
Bare cupboard needs a great crop
There’s no profit in arguing with government numbers, a veteran commodity trader once moaned to me.
“You might be right come two months,” he...
DFA not celebrating much this June
Mega-dairy co-op, Dairy Farmers of America, is the focus of several investigations.
Anti-ethanol effort led by grocers
According to two documents posted on Sen. Charles Grassley’s, R-Iowa, congressional Web site, the “grassroots” anti-ethanol media blitz that’s hitched today’s climbing food prices...
Soybean farmers: Living on a prayer
As the cold, wet planting season of 2008 slips into mid-May, corn and soybean farmers are grousing about weather delays, the likelihood of reduced...
‘Bloated’ farm bill on shaky ground
Since 1981, when I picked up my first pen, paper and paycheck as a journalist, six farm bills have come and gone. With them...
Farm bill politics are a train wreck
In the long, glorious history of America, it’s unlikely that April 22, 2008, will be remembered as anything other than just another balmy, bureaucratic...
Not to worry about winter baggage
Spring finally found the legs to arrive in central Illinois nearly a month after the calendar alerted us to be on the lookout for...
U.S. economy is ‘eating seed corn’
American humorist Will Rogers once joked that “there’s no trick” in coming up with political wisecracks “when you have the whole government working for...
