The Trump Administration is digging two huge holes at the White House: one for the construction of the executive mansion’s massive new ballroom, the other to bury the export-dependent U.S. …

While my father and mother were far from apolitical, neither allowed any political signs or flags in the yard or on any barns on our southern Illinois dairy farm. The reason, my father once …

Maybe the reason you see black when people see white or you say “down” when they say “up” is because — in these troubling times — black is white and up is …

The farmers who spoke at a Sept. 2 meeting with congressional officials in Brookland, Ark., were respectful, plain-spoken and worried, according to the 4-minute, 30-second report aired by KAIT News, Jonesboro and …

September usually marks a turning point of sorts for most people. Summer turns to fall, vacation turns to school, and the green hope and promise of growing crops turns into the yellow and gold of …

A recent change in climate policy by the Trump Administration threatens to change everything on earth — from the fast-warming planet itself to all the life on it. On July 29, Lee Zeldin, …

First, a little Trump-USDA history. After U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers “published and funded objective analyses of issues such as climate change, the efficiency of food …

On the southern Illinois farm of my youth, August always meant heat, humidity, and the best food of the year. While we rarely suffered silently through August's steamy weeks, we usually ate our …

Contrary to popular belief, economists don’t read tea leaves, and most — like the rest of us — wouldn’t know a tea leaf from a spinach leaf. Economists do, however, …

Five years ago I stopped a long tradition of turning this space over to readers who disagreed with me. Most of those columns, offered twice a year, featured correspondents who verbally took me to the …

That's a great question and it was asked — and answered — by Jonathan Coppess, an associate professor of law and policy at the University of Illinois, in a “dismaying” July 17 …

In an apparent lightning strike of insight, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins offered her solution to what she and her GOP colleagues see as one of America's biggest problems: …

Lost in the breathless reporting on the huge federal budget cuts and even more massive federal tax cuts just passed by the heel-clicking Congress was a report on just how rich America's mega-rich now …

With 2025 half gone, the cautious American ag economy, like the slowing U.S. economy, now tiptoes into its second half. Key U.S. ag markets quietly survived the raucous first half. For example, …

Six months into my first job as pup reporter in the last century, I pestered my boss to transfer me from the green fields of north central Iowa to the story-littered streets of Washington, D.C. to …

If you’re in charge of reversing American agriculture’s three-years-old-and-growing trade deficit, your list of options is as limited as it is unworkable. You can, for instance, …

When you're 8 or 9 years old, you don't see the world as you will as a 50- or 60-year-old. Much of what seems perfectly ordinary to a child often becomes quite extraordinary with the passing of time. …

Despite all his accolades and achievements, Dwight D. Eisenhower remained modest and plainspoken. “The proudest thing I can claim” he noted after his triumphant return to the U.S. from …

For U.S. farmers and ranchers, Thursday, May 22, was right out of a Dickens novel: It was the best of days and the worst of days. Early — and I do mean cow-milking early — that …

On Feb. 21, 2018, this space outlined my assessment of Congress’s meandering approach to the overdue 2018 Farm Bill. Don’t just polish the badly tarnished 2014 Farm Bill, I urged; write a …