Pivotal Issues Blog

Two Farm Journal polls reveal farmer priorities Tight margins for 2016 are pushing farmers to sharpen their pencils and punch their budgets into shape. “Bankers are going to be looking very closely at [debt to asset] ratios,” says Matt Bennett of Bennett Consulting, based in central Illinois. “We’re going to have to be better businessmen […]

By Alison Rice Combined seed and chemical company to grab more market share than any competitor The proposed $130 billion merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont, announced in December, would create a seed and chemical company with $19 billion in revenue, making it larger than Monsanto Company, Syngenta, Bayer or BASF Crop Protection. It would […]

By Larry Dreiling In a legal opinion, the Government Accountability Office, a congressional agency, said the Environmental Protection Agency violated publicity and anti-lobbying restrictions in its use of the social media platform Thunderclap to urge support for its Waters of the United States rule, the Food & Environment Reporting Network reported. “Specifically, EPA violated the […]

By Burt Rutherford “This El Niño and this blessing of moisture we’ve had over the High Plains for a while is not going to last. This El Niño will peak in about the next month or so. After it peaks, I think we’ll see it rapidly diminish in intensity and go back the other way.” […]

BY TYLER WILLIAMS THE big weather story this summer and fall has been the development of an El Niño in the Pacific Ocean. In short, an El Niño refers to the large-scale ocean-atmosphere climate phenomenon linked to warm sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific. El Niño is not only the warm sea-surface temperatures, […]

BY P.J. GRIEKSPOOR Article from the Kansas Farmer – www.farmprogess.com MONTY Teeter has spent his lifetime in arid southwest Kansas. Nobody has to tell him that the Ogallala Aquifer is being depleted too fast. For more than 40 years, Teeter’s business in Ulysses has been selling irrigation systems to area farmers. He started with center […]

Happy Thanksgiving! As November continues cooling down farm life, agriculture has had a busy month as the harvest starts winding down. From record-breaking yields and Consumer Reports to new ethanol grain options and market predictions, here’s your summary of the month’s news and how it affects agriculture: 108 Bushel Yield Breaks Record As part of the […]

If excellence is, as Aristotle claimed, attained by training and habit, then there are few agricultural trade shows more excellent than the 2015 Wichita Farm & Ranch Expo. The show has been showcasing the latest advances in the farming and agricultural sectors for two decades and counting, and in 2015 there are 282 leading agricultural […]

If you’re associated with agriculture in some form, it’s important to keep up with what’s going on in the industry. There are a number of publications that are the “go-to” guides to stay in tune with trends, equipment, regulations and any other information that may be coming down the pipeline. Here are the top 10 […]

As October has swung us solidly into fall and heading into winter, it’s been a busy month in agricultural circles. From predictions of bumper crops and falling wheat exports to changes in the Emerald Ash Borer quarantine and the latest on the cranberry harvest, we’ll catch you up on everything happening in agriculture and how it’s affecting […]