Pivotal Issues Blog

By: Mark Moore Dairy cow monitoring is serious business at Pagel’s Ponderosa Dairy in Kewaunee, Wisconsin. The 6,250 milking cows at one of the two farms are outfitted with a monitoring collar as soon as they reach the farm and carry that monitor throughout their time on the farm. These monitors collect data 24 hours […]

By: Jodi Henke No matter the size of your operation, having a GPS system when planting, spraying, and other field operations gives you better accuracy and efficiency. You can choose between several levels of accuracy, depending on what your needs are. Morgen Dietrich is the market manager for embedded technology at John Deere. He says […]

By: Lisa Foust Prater A new online marketplace, Land dot Lease, allows landowners to sell permission to hunt on their property. The company says its site offers additional income to landowners with an abundance of deer while preventing the property damage that can be caused by an unmanaged deer population. It also offers leases for […]

By: Jodi Henke olving problems with your farming operation and noting where you can make improvements is a whole lot easier when you can retrieve data from a precision ag product. You want a system that ensures every pass across the field is documented and integrated into the equipment. You don’t have to think about […]

By: Alex Gray Have you ever wanted to try your hand at livestock production? Or see what it’s like to grow olives in the Mediterranean? “Farming Simulator,” a long-running video game series, gives you the opportunity to build the farm of your dreams in a realistic simulator. “Farming Simulator” is a family-friendly video game series […]

By: Todd Janzen My car recently did an over-the-air update of its operating system, directly downloading new software from the manufacturer’s cloud-based mothership. This is great for me, as the car’s owner, since the manufacturer can address bugs remotely without me having to take the car to the dealer. Interestingly, while reading about advancements in […]

By: Jodi Henke If you have a building on your land that’s sitting empty, make some money by renting it out for storage. People are always looking for places to put things they don’t have the room for such as campers, boats, machinery, animals, and hay. Ann Johanns is a farm management extension program specialist […]

By: Shawn Williamson Some farmers love what they do so much that they intend to do it until the end. Others would like to retire for health reasons or to have time for other interests. A portion of retired farmers will be able to live comfortably on the combination of farm rents and Social Security. […]

By: Bill Spiegel “This is a good old truck,” the retiring farmer told me, softly, when he opened the door to his machine shed. Inside was the purchase I’d driven 350 miles to obtain: a 1999 Chevrolet 1-ton pickup. I’d seen the truck on the Fanning Auction Service sale bill, and it struck me as […]

By: Jodi Henke We’ve been using the “acre” as a way of measuring land since the first plow dug into American soil. The area of an acre is a lot bigger than a few feet but much less than a square mile. So how did this moniker of measurement come to be? Michael Pugh is […]