Pivotal Issues Blog

By: Extreme Ag Team Record cold weather is impacting farm operations across the United States. XtremeAg’s Kevin Matthews, Kelly Garrett, and Matt Miles share how the weather is changing everything from planting dates to grain hauling. On February 16 at 6 a.m. it was -30° F., the coldest I’ve ever seen in my lifetime! The […]

By: Laurie Bedord Because plant breeding and seed product development is a long, expensive process, crop breeders want to find any problem a variety might have as soon as possible to get it out of the pipeline. In the past, measuring traits like plant height meant relying on humans to assess plants. Armed with a […]

By: Mark Moore For livestock operations, time is money. Each additional minute working with an animal, whether it’s checking vaccination or antibiotic treatments, reviewing withdrawal protocols, or balancing feed rations, can eat into the bottom line. When Gage Zellmer incorporated Performance Beef into his Atlantic, Iowa, operation, he was looking for a way to improve […]

By: Laurie Bedord Farmers have seen hundreds of technologies come and go that didn’t prove their worth. So when drones started circling over agriculture a few years ago, it wasn’t surprising the hype of their practicality was met with great skepticism. While some products were good, others were simply not suited for ag. By developing […]

Brad Harris, Manager of Global Agricultural Field Engineering at Firestone Ag recommends ensuring you have quality tires on when going to do field work so you can avoid a flat or a need to repair. “During planting or harvest, we don’t want anything stopping us. If we have a flat tire because we didn’t replace […]

By: Dave Mowitz Sandy and Greg Brummond know a good deal when they see one. Five years ago they cashed in on incentives offered on solar systems and invested in a $39,000 solar array that sits atop their farm shop near Craig, Nebraska. The payoff was twofold for the Brummonds. Their current system (which can […]

By: Paula Barbour A relatively new farmer, Roger Tobias went to work building something he needed for his operation. “I figured either it would work or it wouldn’t,” he says. It worked. What he needed was a movable irrigation system for one pasture. T-frames are made from scrap angle iron brace arms from a former […]

If you store equipment over the winter months, be sure to adjust your tire inflation pressure to account for the natural, slow loss of PSI. “This way, when we do get that equipment out for spring prep work, we’re not walking into sheds finding flat tires that need inflated before we can get into the […]

By: Heather Barnes Have you been making New Year’s resolutions every year, only to have them fall by the wayside before Valentine’s Day? Try picking a word for the year instead. I first heard about this from a blogger I follow, who talked about choosing one important word that would be her theme for the […]

By: Jodi Henke Help out your feathered friends this winter by making homemade suet cakes for them. It provides a high-energy source of fat and protein during increased energy needs in colder weather. Pure suet is the fatty tissue around a cow’s kidneys. You could also use pork lard, lamb fat, or even Crisco. Dave Shiley is […]