What diesel fuel is to tractors, facts are to journalists. Diesel is expensive; facts, for the most part, are free. Moreover, facts are all over. So if they’re just about everywhere and usually free, why aren’t more facts used? Oftentimes, if the facts cannot be bent to support the political side of an argument then
Facts, Figures And Fools With Money
U. S. Cowboy Checkoff Fight Grows
“There’s a real sense that the proposed NCBA changes leave no strong role for state beef councils and non-NCBA members. Who speaks for them if these changes are adopted?” – NANCY ROBINSON Of all the political hot rocks farm groups are juggling now in Washington, D. C. – cap and trade, cuts in crop insurance,
USDA-DOJ Workshop Better Work
“I can buy seed from 100 different companies but 90 per cent of all the germplasm in it comes from just one company, Monsanto.” The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, better known as NASCAR, often brags that it’s the only sport in the world to begin every new season with its biggest, richest
Food, 2050 And Beyond
Type the phrase “farmers feeding world” into Google’s search engine and “about 15 million results” pop up in “0.12 seconds.” Some results may surprise American farmers who, in good old U-S-of-A modesty, may have thought they had been, were and will be feeding the world. Not so, suggests the hunter-gatherers at Google. “Smallest Farmers Key
Customers Don’t Need Educating
Talk is cheap but words have meaning. In a mid-January speech to the 400 or so farmers, vendors and state officials at the 10th annual Minnesota Organic Conference in St. Cloud, I spent most of my hour talking about words like “elitist,” “educate,” “farmer,” “producer,” “customer” and even “mule.” I thought the talk went well,
And This Little Piggy Squealed…
Roosters crow, cows moo and pigs squeal. To be more precise, proud roosters crow, contented cows moo and, contrary to popular folklore, scared pigs – not happy ones – squeal. In fact, the more scared the pig, the louder the squeal. This simple piece of farm knowledge was confirmed, again, in a Jan. 5 letter
Take Biofuels To The Non-Bank Bank
It was more a wavering non-waver than another government oldie but goodie, a non-denial denial. Still, nothing in the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Dec. 1 delay to grant the ethanol industry’s request to boost the current 10 per cent ethanol limit in gasoline to 15 per cent suggested it won’t happen – and soon.
Ohio Livestock Vote Simply Devilish
If idle hands are the devil’s workshop, idle thoughts are, what, the product of a devil’s advocate? Maybe, but one election result from early November leaves plenty of room for thought, idle or otherwise. On Nov. 3, Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved Issue 2, a statehouse-directed ballot initiative to create a “Livestock Care Standards Board.” The
These Grassroots Are All Astroturf
In the long, expensive battle fought by U. S. farmers to make corn-based ethanol the premier alternative fuel in America, few Washington, D. C. influence-peddlers fought harder and spent more in opposition to it than the American Petroleum Institute. In fact, you name the biofuel issue and API and its fat cheque-book made it into
Sleeping With The Fishes
If mega-biz is to be believed, the new antitrust chief in the Obama Department of Justice, Christine A. Varney, is really a hurricane whose chief ambition is to demolish the very foundations of modern American business. If the Wall Street Journal is to be believed, Varney’s first public comments on antitrust, offered in her May
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
