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.
Pork producers respond to column
If you were to interview yourself, then write a story based on the interview, it's a safe bet the story might be more self-serving than, say, what your neighbor or mother-in-law might write about you.
Technology wave started years ago
About the time I broke the cotton shackles of my mother's apron strings for the glorious freedom of my father's farm fields, a technology wave hit the southern Illinois farm of my youth.
