Thursday, April 25, 2024

Sometime in the early summer of 1965 I migrated from my mother's hot kitchen and the family's enormous garden to our farm's sweltering hayfields and crowded milking parlor.

America's food industry, like the nation's church leaders, spent much of May wringing its hands over, by all accounts, pieces of poorly written, poorly acted fiction.

When biofuel promoters begin to extol the virtues of ethanol, it's sometimes difficult to determine if their excitement is powered by corn-based fuel or corn-based liquor.

On May 8, Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns took the Bush administration's first formal step toward the 2007 farm bill.

The news of John Kenneth Galbraith's April 29 passing brought but a moment's sadness before it swept me back to the book-lined study of his home where, in mid-June 1986, he availed himself to a lengthy interview so I could prepare a profile of him for Farm Journal's Top Producer magazine.

The e-mailer was hotter than a $3 pistol. "What part of illegal don't you understand?" the opening salvo of the angry note asked after a column on immigration reform - and the lack thereof - a month ago.

While the nation's farmers leap into spring planting, this office is reluctantly digging through the winter drifts of stories gone undone.

During Australia's inquiry of the $215 million in kickbacks paid to the Saddam Hussein regime, documents have been made public that show American-based Australian diplomats working hand-in glove with U.

In his opening address to the 11th National Ethanol Conference Feb. 21, Renewable Fuels Association President Bob Dinneen declared loudly and proudly that "ethanol has arrived.

When the USDA announced the discovery of the nation's first mad cow in late December 2003, consumers and ranchers were met by a government search-and-destroy blitz worthy of war.