While the president-elect continues to nominate prospective members of his incoming administration, the outgoing Congress faces a hectic sprint to complete a long list of unmet legislative duties …
If you believe in striking while the iron is hot, you got to love Summit Carbon Solutions' swift, decisive action on its multi-billion-dollar, CO2 pipeline just two weeks after Donald J. Trump, the …
Nearly every autopsy of Vice President Kamala Harris’s stinging White House defeat begins with some variation of the phrase, “Voters pointed to the rising price of food as their chief …
Calls for $20 billion in "emergency" farm program payments won't go away now that the proposal's principal audience, voters, have done their duty. The idea's chief promoters, Congressional …
Election Day, Nov. 5, will end the costliest, dirtiest American political campaign season in memory and it will likely also mark Opening Day for what could be the costliest, dirtiest post-election …
Let's pause to consider the-above headline. First, it's a quote; I didn't write it. That's important because the third rail of today's ag journalism–the deadly, high voltage topic that can …
If you buy nearly two billion pounds of beef a year–an on-the-hoof equivalent of seven million cattle–you’d think you’d get the best deal ever from your suppliers. You are, …
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)–that toy poodle of a government watchdog overseeing the world's largest agricultural and financial futures contracts–is being courted by …
Like farmers and ranchers, veterinarians love to pour concrete. Many build customized facilities dedicated to their animal health mission: examination rooms, operating theaters, cattle chutes, …
A late September, 200-mile drive through the sunny center of northern and central Illinois reveals blue sky, yellowing fields, and not one roaring red, green, or silver combine gathering in any of …
It's easy to see why Eligio "Kika" de la Garza was elected to 16 consecutive terms in the House of Representatives (1965 to 1997) and served his final seven (1981 through 1994) as chairman of the …
As American grocery buyers await a Federal Trade Commission verdict on Kroger's two-year-old, $24.6 billion bid to buy competitor Albertsons, the European Commission took just 35 days to give its …
When you set a record ag trade deficit for the third consecutive year, the decline isn’t an aberration or a coincidence. It is, in fact, growing proof that a key element of your national ag …
Few states or nations put on a dairy cattle show like the World Dairy Expo in Madison, WI, where 50,000 visitors and vendors from nearly 100 countries will see 1,800 owners exhibiting 2,500 or so of …
In our increasingly urgent quest to clean up our climate-altering, carbon-fueled culture, biodiesel and renewable diesel have become two new darlings of alternative fuel advocates. While diesel …
Rain makes grain, and two mid-August Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports offered this year's first in-the-field look at just how much corn, soybeans, and wheat–as well as other crops like …
Milton Friedman, the patron saint of free markets and a founder of the Nobel-adorned Chicago school of economics, took a very dim view of all tariffs — ours, theirs, anyone's. Writing in …
Nearly 45 percent of all agricultural workers in the U.S. today—950,000 of an estimated 2.2 million farmworkers–are "unauthorized" migrants working illegally on American farms and …
Trying to stem the flow of money in American politics is like trying to hold back the Mississippi River. It’s dirty, dangerous work that, in the end, is almost always washed away by a flood of …
Like most southern Illinois farms of my youth, my family had a closet filled with guns. It was just inside the living room and it held my father’s 12-gauge Marlin shotgun, his .22 caliber …