Riding (and writing) the ethanol tiger
For years, farmers' hearts would leap when the word "ethanol" appeared in a newspaper headline. Now farmers almost dread it because they know the ensuing story is likely to outline the inevitable bust that awaits them if the current unplanned, willy-nilly ethanol boom continues.
Voters: less bumbling, more balance
According to most political wags, Nov. 7's election results were delivered more by do-nothing Republicans than by here's-what-we-want-to-do Democrats.
Ethanol policy is not all politics
In the run-up to the Nov. 7 election, any candidate worth a baby-kissing pucker instantly, enthusiastically and repeatedly took the ethanol pledge.
Monsanto looks to lock up cotton market
In a move somewhere between brilliantly audacious and unbelievably outrageous, Monsanto's Aug. 15 offer to buy Delta & Pine Land Co.
Too much silence about merger
The weakly regulated, wild west show that has been the Chicago futures markets is poised to become a wilder, more global show now that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange announced it was purchasing archrival Chicago Board of Trade for $8 billion.
Gunning for the rural vote in November
Show me the contents of a person's wallet and I'll outline their life. My skinny wallet, for example, holds just two credit cards (likes convenience, hates consumer debt), a grocery store discount card (cheapskate), a driver's license, voter's registration card and fishing license (name, address, age, dull life) as well as a blood donor card (O Positive).
Really, you can’t make this stuff up
As fast as time usually passes, it seems to pick up even greater speed in the fall. Corn and soybeans, like maples' leaves, appear to turn golden one day, brown the next and, at least so to me, are gone the next.
Congress change means policy change
Leaving a backlog of work it clearly had no appetite for, a deeply divided, very worried Congress skedaddled out of Washington at the end of September to make its re-election case to an equally divided, equally worried electorate.
Farm Bill shopping lists long
On September's two middle Wednesdays, American agriculture's soft hands and hard hands - its lobbyists and farmers - brought their 2007 farm bill shopping lists to the House Agriculture Committee.
Talk is cheap and soon corn won’t be
Even before the ink had dried on last week's column - a detailed report that, at least to me, made an ironclad case not to raid the Conservation Reserve Program to fuel the anticipated ethanol boom - members of the House Agriculture Committee were listening to testimony that urged a raid on the program to fuel the ethanol boom.
