http://www.the-land.com en-us Copyright CNHI All Rights Reserved. 5 Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:11:00 +0000 http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_226171635.html http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_226171635.html In late March, Monsanto Co. sent a “Dear Valued Customer” letter to most U.S. corn and soybean farmers. The reason was “to discuss … some current marketplace dynamics that will directly affect you in terms of increased prices for Monsanto’s line of Roundup herbicides for 2008.” Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:10:00 +0000 http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_226171249.html http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_226171249.html The news from Geneva July 29 that the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round of global trade talks had “collapsed” hardly came as news to anyone other than WTO leader Pascal Lamy and U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab. Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:27:00 +0000 http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_214142717.html http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_214142717.html The American economy is downright Dickensian. If you’re in investment banking, airlines, real estate or automobile anything, it’s the worst of times. If you’re in commodities — oil, copper, potash, gold, corn, soybeans — it’s the best of times. Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:32:00 +0000 http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_214140929.html http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_214140929.html “CRP isn’t complicated, if you remember the ‘Four Ws’: West, Wheat, Wet and Windy.” Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:12:00 +0000 http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_205173203.html http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_205173203.html Can anyone explain why the biggest haters of the “nanny state” are also the biggest supporters of the biggest nanny the world has ever created? Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:11:00 +0000 http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_205172332.html http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_205172332.html Where else in the world could a little-known, foreign meatpacker go from nothing to No. 1 in cattle feeding and beef packing in a year with little more than warm bromides and cold cash? Only in America, baby. Only in America. Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:14:00 +0000 http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_184105158.html http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_184105158.html With the summer’s big holiday just ahead and the midpoint of the year just behind, it’s time to empty the office bucket of spleen, venom, anger and an occasional kiss readers vented, hurled, sent and tossed my way. Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:13:00 +0000 http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_184104955.html http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_184104955.html Is the yet-young ethanol industry so much stronger than the ages-old livestock industry that it will continue to crank out fuel even as America’s food production drops and food prices soar? The USDA thinks so; I think that’s an enormous leap of faith. Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:10:00 +0000 http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_171101408.html http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_171101408.html “There’s no ‘food crisis’ in the world today,” a farmer told me at a late-May gathering. “The crisis is all the big money pushing up commodity prices.” Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:09:00 +0000 http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_171101021.html http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_171101021.html There’s no profit in arguing with government numbers, a veteran commodity trader once moaned to me. “You might be right come two months,” he explained, “but the market might kill you in two weeks.” Fri, 06 Jun 2008 03:15:00 +0000 http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_150162531.html http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_150162531.html June is dairy month so let’s begin the festivities with a look-see into the giant (black and white) elephant, the mega-cooperative Dairy Farmers of America. Fri, 06 Jun 2008 03:14:00 +0000 http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_150162129.html http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_150162129.html According to two documents posted on Sen. Charles Grassley’s congressional website, the “grassroots” anti-ethanol media blitz that’s hitched today’s climbing food prices to farmer-backed biofuels is as fake as Astroturf. Fri, 23 May 2008 03:11:00 +0000 http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_141173855.html http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_141173855.html After the farm bill vote, it’s put-up or shut-up time for the White House: The president has promised to veto the $285 billion, five-year legislation so many times that he just may do so regardless the political and market consequences. Fri, 23 May 2008 03:10:00 +0000 http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_141173524.html http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_141173524.html “The Lord protects fools and children,” Dad often would say when he eyed Uncle Honey on a tractor. “That’s a wonderful thing,” he’d add, “because either way, Honey’s covered.” Fri, 09 May 2008 03:12:00 +0000 http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_123130303.html http://www.the-land.com/l_farmfood/local_story_123130303.html Since 1981, when I picked up my first pen, paper and paycheck as a journalist, six farm bills have come and gone. The writing of those six laws, however, was as easy as making oatmeal compared to the hemlock being brewed now with the seventh, and not-yet complete, 2007 farm bill.