Pivotal Issues Blog

By: Myron Friesen At 63, I have started planning in my head, but I don’t have the legal documents done. Sometimes when I’m in the tractor doing fieldwork, I try to dream up the perfect plan for my retirement and farm distribution. Recently, my nephew, who works in finance, mentioned how he’s been advising clients […]

By: Paula Barbour Preferring not to use herbicide to kill his cover crops, Stephen Aberle built a roller that terminates rye, triticale, and oats. The rolls are mounted with hydraulic cylinders. Extending six cylinders about two thirds of the way allows the rolls to flex to follow the contour of his terraced land. At 40 […]

By: Successful Farming Every spring for the past century, ranches have set out to gear up for the annual prescribed burn season. Here’s a look at how and why pasture land in the Flint Hills is managed this way. Read More

By: Jodi Henke Technology is always changing in agriculture and the next phase can help alleviate labor shortages, give farmers volumes of information, and increase food production. Engineers and students at Kansas State University are developing prototypes of robots that will serve specific purposes in crop production. Read More

By: Laurie Bedord The path to precision begins with highly accurate data that is organized. For today’s farmer working to navigate various technologies and software, the Topcon Agriculture Platform, or TAP, delivers on those two critical points. Not only does the cloud-based farm management platform deliver advanced connectivity, cloud services, and data analytics, but also […]

By: Jerry Perkins Brad Haight is the founder and owner (along with his wife) of LeaseGen, LLC which, according to its web site, values wind and solar lease revenue streams for buyers and sellers of property where turbines or solar equipment is installed. In a presentation Tuesday at the Land Value Expo in Des Moines, […]

By: Laurie Bedord As consumers continue to demand better animal welfare and improved sustainability across the livestock sector, new innovations are emerging that enable producers to monitor herd health in real time, prevent disease outbreaks, and optimize nutrition. Thirteen of these breakthrough technologies will be spotlighted at the Animal AgTech Innovation Summit in San Francisco […]

By: Lauren Stine When it comes to apps offering farmers assistance around the farm, it’s a downloader’s market. There are countless services launching apps offering everything from assistance with figuring out the acreage in a particular area to forage identification or record keeping. Knowing which ones are worth space on your home screen can be […]

By: Tony Bailey Many farmers gave no-till a try in the late ’80s or early ’90s. Unfortunately, it didn’t go well for most. They were told to stop tilling and plant no-till. If they did, good things would happen. For some farmers, this worked well enough and they stuck with it. However, for many it was […]

By: Dave Nanda Fall 2018 and spring and fall of 2019 were very hard on soils, causing lots of soil compaction. I saw cornfields during July and August that showed the effects of soil compaction created during the spring. It is one of the most important factors that can affect soil health and reduce yields. If […]