The Dec. 26 issue of Farm News features columns of Alan Guebert and David Kruse that ignore history or common sense to avoid the calamity of losing more of the best farmers in Iowa. This cost-price squeeze has happened over and over again since I started farming 50 years ago. They ignore the ...
This is the time of year when football fans are eagerly scanning the statistics of their favorite players and teams. But statistics aren’t just for football fans. There are lots of other kinds of statistics, and although they may not be as exciting as touchdowns or rushing yardage, they are ...
As we get close to saying goodbye to 2025, it is a perfect time to reflect on a year that brought challenges to both producers and the agri-business community. As is often the case, weather and trade seemed to make headlines regularly in Farm News. This issue of Farm News includes a 2025 Year ...
People across the United States increasingly want to know where their food comes from. It just makes sense to know where something you put in your body comes from. And a problem like the recent scare over the possibility of tiny pieces of metal getting into shredded cheese only adds urgency ...
To the editor: According to a recent news story, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency just gave a slap-on-the-wrist fine to a big cattle feedlot in northwest Iowa for “unauthorized wastewater discharges” that occurred over three consecutive days in March 2021. That seems like the ...
Iowa’s rural landscape has changed drastically as farming has become less labor intensive in the last century. There was a time when the countryside was filled with the assorted buildings needed in the farm economy. Today’s larger farms have far fewer structures. If there is one ...
For Iowa’s farmers, one of the most challenging periods of every year is coming to an end. We are, of course, referring to harvest, which consists of weeks of long days bringing in the bounty of Iowa’s corn and soybean fields. A drive through rural areas reveals not much corn standing ...
October has been designated National Pork Month. That makes it an especially good time to reflect on the importance of the pork industry to this state. It’s unlikely that anyone who lives in Iowa does not already know that pork production contributes mightily to the economic vitality of the ...
National 4-H Week, which began Oct. 5 and concluded Oct.11, is an annual time to celebrate the enormous contributions 4-H makes to our community and nation. It’s hard to imagine anyone in Iowa who doesn’t know a bit about 4-H, but this annual observance is an appropriate occasion to ...
To the editor: After reading the Farm News Friday, Aug. 22, farmer advice column, "Low prices cure low prices … or so we've been told" by David Kruse his advice "to embrace the suck" is what psychologists and philosophers would call defeatism and for farmers to accept market exploitation! ...