News
Dear County Agent Guy
Farmer of the Year With a wintertime pandemic raging outside our windows, many of us have opted to hunker down. Watching a movie in the comfort and the safety of your living room has gone from being an unhealthy way to avoid exercise to a good way to stay healthy. A series of random ...
Crop watch
The last month of the year is nearing the end and then it’s on to 2021. We will be glad to see it over with. From the drought and the derecho that hurt many towns, buildings, crops and trees, not seeing another big windstorm like that in our lifetimes could be okay. As to the drought, it was ...
‘There is still plenty of risk in this market’
By KRISS NELSON editor@farm-news.com The Dec. World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) isn’t a report that many pay much attention to, but this year, that was a different story. “Typically, the Dec. WASDE is a mere formality and in fact, last year at this time the corn ...
A year to remember
By KRISS NELSON editor@farm-news.com Trade, coronavirus, derecho and drought — those events will definitely bring the year 2020 into the history books. “When we look back, we will all remember the year 2020, but it is one of the few years that farmers will be able to say, ‘hey ...
Midwest Marketing Solutions
Tom Vilsack to lead USDA The next agriculture secretary is the former agriculture secretary. President-elect Joe Biden has picked Tom Vilsack to lead USDA. During an event in Delaware, Biden said Vilsack “wasn’t anxious to come back, but I was persistent.” Biden said Vilsack’s first ...
Weekly market review
Officials in China claim that pork production is back to 90% of the levels prior to ASF decimating their swine herds. They expect pork production to have made a full recovery by the middle of 2021. This has helped increase the demand of U.S. corn exports into China. With many farmers having ...
Operation Christmas Meal assists local families
By KRISS NELSON editor@farm-news.com FORT DODGE —The vacant Younkers parking lot at Crossroads Mall in Fort Dodge became the site where 1,000 families were each gifted with a free pork loin last Thursday. Operation Christmas Meal is made possible by Iowa Select Farms and the Deb and ...
Silent Night
By DARCY DOUGHERTY MAULSBY yettergirl@yahoo.com HOLSTEIN — Stepping into the Battle Center Church is a spiritual experience in more ways than one. The past permeates this space, where there’s no electricity, plumbing or climate-control system. No regular services have been held in this ...
Farm and Food File
Howard’s priceless gift of simple giving The Christmas tree was a scrub cedar hacked from the edge of the woods that bordered the farm. Big-bulbed lights, strung in barber pole fashion, generated almost as much heat as the nearby wood stove. Yellowed Christmas cards, saved over the years ...