Tinkering with CRP could be costly
When Farm Journal’s late staff economist John Marten explained the-then new Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in the mid-1980s, he did so with a clever...
Who wins in world trade deals?
Can anyone explain why the biggest haters of the "nanny state" are also the biggest supporters of the biggest nanny the world has ever created?
JBS beef buy is bad for everyone
If JBS Swift's buyout of National Beef, Smithfield's beef slaughter operations and Smithfield's massive Five Rivers Cattle Feeding LLC, the nation's largest cattle feedlot with one-time capacity of 811,000 head, the three remaining firms will have over 80 percent market share of U.S. steer/heifer slaughter.
Dirty laundry is out in the open now
With the summer’s big holiday just ahead and the midpoint of the year just behind, it’s time to empty the office bucket of spleen,...
Flooding fallout is anyone’s guess
While Midwestern farmers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have precise measurements on how much rain fell where in the deluge that socked 2008...
Bare cupboard needs a great crop
There’s no profit in arguing with government numbers, a veteran commodity trader once moaned to me.
“You might be right come two months,” he...
DFA not celebrating much this June
Mega-dairy co-op, Dairy Farmers of America, is the focus of several investigations.
Anti-ethanol effort led by grocers
According to two documents posted on Sen. Charles Grassley’s, R-Iowa, congressional Web site, the “grassroots” anti-ethanol media blitz that’s hitched today’s climbing food prices...
Soybean farmers: Living on a prayer
As the cold, wet planting season of 2008 slips into mid-May, corn and soybean farmers are grousing about weather delays, the likelihood of reduced...
‘Bloated’ farm bill on shaky ground
Since 1981, when I picked up my first pen, paper and paycheck as a journalist, six farm bills have come and gone. With them...
