One of the most beautiful – and inexplicable – aspects of economics is how its practitioners never seem to be wrong. Indeed, almost every school of economic thought, from John Maynard Keynes’ demand-driven economics on the left to Arthur Laffer’s supply-side economics on the right, is crowded with disciples defending their leader’s theories and just
Opinion: A broken system
Supply chain fragility reveals overall economic fragility of globalization
Opinion: Up, down or sideways??
Farmland values picture becomes unclear when you delve into the numbers
It’s the choices we make in the good times, the grandson of a Kansas homesteader once told me, that determine our farming successes, not the choices we make in the bad times. Why? Because, he explained, in the good times we have the money to make big mistakes and in the bad times we’re too
Opinion: Smarm, snarl, and snark
Style can’t replace facts, honesty, and ideas in an off-the-mark New York Times video
As deep winter reasserted itself over most of the continent’s farms and ranches, the New York Times brought some real heat to the Big-Ag-Fights-Climate-Change debate. In a 14-minute, fast-paced video titled “Meet the People Getting Paid to Kill Our Planet,” the film’s subtitle not only names the killers, it convicts them, too: “American agriculture is
Comment: Making pork chops flow uphill
Duelling reports from industry economists full of bafflegab
For more than 40 years my father farmed within a mile of where the Kaskaskia River met the Mississippi deep in southern Illinois. That meant he had two, lifetime partners: the river and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, landlords of the levees that guarded our wedge of the Great American Bottoms. Dad never argued
Comment: In the heat of the night
Staying warm in winter has got a whole lot easier over the years
Of all the daily chores my father performed on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth, the most vital to me each winter morning was his rekindling of the banked fire in the tall, round wood stove that dominated my mother’s kitchen 60 years ago. The stove was, no kidding, a Warm Morning model.
Comment: Keep moving, nothing to see here
When the U.S. government slapped together a tariff-mitigation program, mistakes were made
No one was shocked recently when the U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO) announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had overpaid farmers billions of dollars during the slapdash tariff-mitigation scheme ordered by the Trump White House in 2018 and 2019. A couple of billion bucks in government waste is, evidently, chump change when — as
Comment: Cresting the wave, looking into next year’s trough
An influential market outlook sees lower returns in the future of farmers
There’s no good time for bad news. Most farmers and ranchers, however, prefer to hear it sooner than later to factor it into the day or season’s plan. Maybe that’s why our good friends at farmdocDaily, the online consortium of Land Grant extension specialists hosted by the University of Illinois, released a “Stress Test of
Comment: Running with the big Deere
Labour unrest and record profits underscore importance of equipment maker
In an effort to maintain its enviable, 34-year run of labour peace, Deere & Co. and the United Auto Workers recently announced a deal to boost worker pay — by 20 per cent over five and six years, Deere said — to keep the iconic green-and-yellow machines rolling off its 11 assembly lines and through
Opinion: Hey, genius, mind your own business
The agriculture industry isn’t always interested in some of the good advice it gets
It’s a rare honour to be named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. In fact, in 40 years, only 1,061 have been awarded the title and the no-strings-attached stipend, this year a plush US$625,000, commonly referred to as a “genius grant.” Even more rare are MacArthur Fellows with ties to farming and food. Before this year, only
Opinion: Ethanol’s future is running out of gas
As electric vehicles take off, biofuels are set to sputter
The key ingredients for a looming crack-up in ethanol — the fast rise of electric vehicles, lukewarm politics, and more evidence of catastrophic climate change — are in place and few in ag policy circles are prepared to face that reality. In fact, none of those woes are new; they’ve been building for years. For
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
