The short, unhappy life of Doha
In one episode of the 1970s television series M*A*S*H, an eminently paranoid Army intelligence officer tags flag-waving Frank Burns a Communist sympathizer because Burns subscribes to flag-waving Reader's Digest.
September will pack several punches
In the summer's waning warmth after Labor Day, my mother would order her child army into the big garden of my youth to gather the year's final flush of vegetables.
Sugar deal a sweet dream for ethanol
In the down-is-up world of American biofuels, success carries enormous costs. The latest evidence of these costs is an amendment tucked into the House version of the 2007 farm bill: As Mexican granular sugar flows into the U.
What goes around comes around
Some of the sagest advice my father ever offered my brothers and me urged us not to "hit back at bullies" because, sooner or later, "They'll get theirs.
Neither cheap nor poor, just genius
Every August, about silage chopping time, my mind flits back to a burning question of my youth: Given the old fashioned way we made corn silage on that southern Illinois dairy farm, were we just poor or were we just cheap?
Disaster relief an ace in the ag hole
About 10 seconds after the Democrats reclaimed the House of Representatives last November, Collin Peterson, the Minnesotan who would lead the chamber's Ag Committee come January, began to think about the 2007 farm bill.
Farm bill is first step in long process
If the writing of federal legislation is, as often described, a kabuki dance, then the farm bill passed by House Ag Committee July 19 is only the first, essential step of a complex drama that has two more months of rewrites before its scheduled Oct.
Dairy farmers take co-op to task
After years of private gripes and government investigations, 17 Southeast dairy farmers filed two federal class-action civil lawsuits in Tennessee July 5 charging the nation's milk giants with "conspiracy
An eating trip through New Mexico
When the lovely Catherine and I slipped out of steamy Illinois for a driving trip to New Mexico June 30, the last item I tossed into her car was a rain parka.
Everyone’s a critic, but be original
Just after I completed the previous reader-mail column in late December, a Christmas card, carrying a festive stamp, arrived.
