Before a January “memorandum of understanding,” or MOU, on a farmer’s “right to repair” his farm machinery, U.S. equipment makers and their farm and ranch customers were locked in a legal and legislative fight over who could fix today’s complex ag machinery – the customer who owned or leased it, or the maker that designed,
Comment: Right to repair still an issue
This fight between farmers and machinery giants is just getting started
Comment: The great carbon boondoggle, the sequel
Pigging out at the trough of the U.S. federal government
Iowa’s Bruce Rastetter has a sixth sense when it comes to making money. In 1984, according to the Des Moines Register, Rastetter “started feeding hogs on contract…and within two years, 500 head grew to 100,000.” A decade later, his Heartland Pork was the 12th largest hog farm in the U.S. Ten years after that, with
Comment: Mother Nature has a population plan, too
China is about to shrink, Africa to grow, and the environment to strike back
A scientist friend recently noted that at today’s rate of consumption, the world is environmentally and economically sustainable for roughly one billion people. “That means with the world’s population of eight billion,” he half-joked, “you’re a goner.” Right, just not right now. Let nature take its course, eh? Recent population trends, however, show that nature
Comment: ‘The ceaseless drive to endless increase…’
Nitrogen overuse has serious implications for the globe
It usually goes without notice or comment, but three of the planet’s key elements – carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen – sit like ducks in row on the periodic table. None is more important than the others but if there’s a first among equals it would be nitrogen, as a prescient report from Canada’s National Farmers
Opinion: Drought, war, inflation and consumer disconnect
Would the public support farm and food programs if they knew the farm income numbers?
By almost any measure, 2022 has been a tough year for most. Inflation, war, the growing consequences of climate change and then widening political divide are just a few of the compounding woes we continue to deal with. In the middle of this chaos, however, U.S. farmers received remarkably good news. According to estimates released
Comment: Forty billion green reasons to go green
If the U.S. budget passes, green ag is about to get a big boost
If American farmers and ranchers really want to live the oft-repeated boast that they are “the first environmentalists,” then, by golly, Joe Manchin and his Democratic Senate colleagues have the legislative vehicle to prove it. Manchin, the chief monkeywrencher of Dem dreams for the last two years, shocked everyone when he and Senate Majority Leader
Guebert: The simple answer to the simple question
Nobody’s worried about corn stocks, while wheat woes are piling up
Oftentimes the simple answer to a simple question is the simple truth. Some people, however, don’t want the simple truth, so they bend facts or shave figures so their square pegs replace roundly accepted reality. It’s commonplace in ag. For example, on April 12, President Joe Biden travelled to Iowa to announce an expansion of
Opinion: Water reckoning coming to southwestern U.S.
A megadrought and runaway water use is a recipe for disaster
From 35,000 feet, the white ring that marks the high level of Lake Powell looks just like the ring of an emptying bathtub. The only difference is the chalky top mark on this big tub, once the second-largest freshwater reservoir in the U.S., is an unscrubbable 1,900 miles around. And Lake Powell, the upper reservoir
Opinion: Real GHG emissions solutions need open mind
First steps in ag climate fight are honesty and courage, not offsets and credits
[UPDATED: May 19, 2022] Last May, the Canadian National Farmers Union (NFU), submitted a detailed response to the Canadian government’s earlier “Draft Greenhouse Gas Offset Credit System Regulations.” The response, like the government request, went relatively unnoticed in U.S. ag circles. It shouldn’t have because the 23-page reply by the NFU was as shocking in
Opinion: The coming war for U.S. crop acres
Ethanol might be a sacred cow for now, but expect a renewed food-versus-fuel fight
Farmers are long familiar with acre wars. This late-winter scrum is a showdown over how many acres of which crop farmers will plant. Most years these fights are decided by a variable — and oftentimes volatile — combination of three elements: what market prices are calling for, how government farm programs could affect prices, and
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
