Its official name is the United Nations 28th Conference of the Parties on Climate Change, or COP28 for short. Given the news from the two-week gathering in the desert near Dubai, a better name might be “Shifting Sands, Shifting Blame.” For example, “A staggering 88,000 people are accredited” to attend the meeting, financial magazine Barron’s
Comment: The smokescreen of COP28
The global climate change event is the world’s biggest green mirage
Opinion: The pileups start to pile up
U.S grain marketing is looking as messy as its politics
It’s looking like today’s political and grain market pileups will be bigger and messier than first thought. Here’s how New York Republican Representative Mike Lawler described his colleagues’ never-to-pass federal budget demands to CNN Sept. 19: “This is not conservative republicanism. This is stupidity.” There’s little wonder that Congress has spent most of 2023 shooting
Comment: Clock ticking south of the border
Anti-work, anti-freedom U.S. Congress needs more work, more freedom
Even before the U.S. Congress returns from its five-week, no-work period to its usual three-day weeks of little work, Republicans in both chambers are signaling to global markets, the White House and their colleagues that their return will bring no 2023 Farm Bill and no 2024 U.S. federal budget by the Sept. 30 drop-dead date
Comment: War is expensive both on and off the battlefield
However you describe it, war is expensive. For some, it’s extremely profitable, too
Union general William T. Sherman once famously said, “War is hell.” However you describe it, war is expensive. For some, it’s extremely profitable, too. Shooting wars aren’t the only type of warfare that are costly, deadly and often without a winner. In January 2022, the International Monetary Fund estimated the total cost of the COVID-19
Comment: Agribusiness competition and the danger of the middle road
Hemming and hawing avoids tougher action and ‘us’
After plowing through a 57-page U.S. Department of Agriculture report titled “Concentration and Competition in U.S. Agribusiness,” I asked an agronomist friend who had also read the report why it seemed that its writers used so much “hem-and-haw” language in analyzing, for example, the rise of today’s powerful seed companies. “I’m less interested in the
Comment: ‘Appeasing hardliners’ all but promises Farm Bill failure
The next U.S. Farm Bill, due by the end of this year, will profoundly impact the ag sector of Canada’s biggest trade partner for the next five years
Members of the U.S. Congress are facing down two enormous tasks, with little time to complete them. As of Sept. 30 of this year, the 2018 Farm Bill will expire. Simultaneously, the American government needs a new budget in place to open its doors Oct. 1. It will take a mighty effort for either to
Opinion: World’s most critical food faces uncertainty
The unsteady future of rice is a ‘singing canary’ for farms in general
Over 50 percent of the food calories eaten per day across the world comes from grains. In impoverished nations, that percentage is 60 per cent. In the poorest, it tops 80 per cent. The three most important grains are corn, wheat and rice. All are critical to global food security, but all are not equal.
Comment: Colossal crops, measly prices and little backslapping
The latest WASDE report has some good news that isn’t that good
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report confirmed that a freight train of grain is barreling toward 2023-24 markets, and farmers everywhere need to prepare for the rockier prices sure to follow. The report was succinctly summarized by DTN market analysts shortly after its release May 12: “USDA
Pride comes before the fall; then comes the walking
From two-footed to two-wheeled and back again
Long before the arrival of ATVs and colour television, the most common implement we used on the southern-Illinois dairy farm of my youth was our own two feet. Everyone from my parents to the hired hands walked everywhere, every day, without complaint or, as often was the case for me and my brothers, shoes. My
Comment: The short, unhappy history of carbon sequestration
The carbon credit market is far from the golden solution often portrayed
Facts are a key element of informed decision making, and not just any facts; the best, most tied-to-reality facts are needed to make the best decision. “Alternative” facts, meanwhile, only exist in alternative universes, and people use them at their own intergalactic peril. But that is what Verra, “the world’s leading carbon standard for the
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
