Pivotal Issues Blog

By: Alex Lessard, Kansas Wheat Alliance Joe, the newest hard white winter wheat variety from Kansas Wheat Alliance, was named after T. Joe Martin, retired wheat breeder at K-State’s Agricultural Research Center in Hays, Kansas. Joe Martin began his wheat breeding career in 1974, after graduating from Michigan State, when he started in the plant disease […]

By: Dan Miller Kawasaki — now with 50 years of manufacturing history in the U.S. — has added a new MULE to its off-road line. Built to replace the venerable MULE 610 4×4, the 2017 MULE SX (the S for small, the X from strong) fits into the “value” end of the side-by-side market with […]

By: Dan Miller Joe Nichols’ shop, outside Cadiz, Kentucky, “was-is” an amazing sight. At the time it was built in 2008, the half-million-dollar project yielded 14,500 square feet of work and administrative space. The maintenance area alone measured 8,000 square feet. Even so, the floor space was all but consumed by a John Deere DB60 […]

By: Russ Quinn For those of you who don’t know me personally, I am very rarely at a loss for words. I tell people I had to take speech therapy classes in grade school, and those folks did such a good job I haven’t stopped talking since then! One of the rare times I was […]

By: Barb Anderson When Kniebel Cattle Company joined a value-added marketing program, it took a fresh look at its herd health plan. The Kniebels were concerned something as common as trichomoniasis or bovine viral diarrhea might be a stumbling block from which it would be hard for their operation to recover. As a precaution, they […]

By: Cheryl Anderson Ranchers who use prescribed burns to control invasive plant species on their pastures could soon receive some help from above. Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have developed a prototype unmanned aerial vehicle — commonly called a drone — capable of safely igniting prescribed burns. Developed at UNL’s Nebraska Intelligent Mobile Unmanned Systems […]

By: Russ Quinn Jason Schielke, an IT specialist for Frahm Farmland in Colby, Kansas, is a patient person. It’s a good thing he is: Wireless data transfers from the field can take time where Internet connectivity is weak. “We have spotty coverage here through the cellular service which John Deere uses,” Schielke told DTN. “We […]

By: Dan Miller You may have seen the low-profile Thunder Creek fuel trailers out in the field feeding fuel-hungry tractors and combines. Thunder Creek has upped its game with a new Fuel Service Trailer (FST) line. The FST line is three, fuel service trailers with the capacity for 500, 750 and 990 gallons of diesel […]

By: Marcia Taylor Steve Hess may be the grandfather of nine, but when it comes to farming, he is a millennial at heart. In fact, Hess, his wife Phyllis and their son Marcus are adopting cutting-edge technology this season they hope will help lift their Bushnell, Illinois, grain yields and profit margins through 2016 and […]

  By: Victoria G. Myers Some Midwestern corn and soybean producers may want to get into the cattle business, but with land still averaging more than $8,000 an acre, it’s impossible to pencil in a profit using traditional methods. Jeff Morse, Council Bluffs, Iowa, did that math a few years back, and he couldn’t make […]