Happy New Year to you all. I love the optimism and hope the start of a year brings. It’s a chance to press forward with renewed resolve. And who knows the importance of renewed optimism better than farmers and ranchers? ... Read more
To the editor:
Epistemology is what we on the farm called “a $10 word.”
I used to think 25 years was a really long time. Now, it seems like but the blink of an eye.
As Midwest Dairy wraps up the first year under our strategic plan, it has been exciting to evaluate how, under the guidance of our new vision and mission, we have been able to bring dairy to life and give consumers an excellent dairy experience in many creative ways to help build trust and s…
Man, that ended badly.
A few weeks ago, I was surprised to receive a message on Facebook from a young lady with a request that instantly brought a smile to my face. The daughter of longtime friends in Belmont, the sophomore had been tasked to find someone to job shadow for a class assignment and had asked if she c…
“Hope springs eternal,” as the saying goes. It’s human nature to hope for the best, even in the face of great adversity.
Our son’s first-grade class had an assignment to write about a Thanksgiving turkey. Now, our son should have a leg up on his classmates here, because he regularly accompanies me to check our flocks, and this summer, he proudly learned how to catch and hold a turkey by himself.
(The following is a Christmas wish letter recently sent to President Donald Trump from members of the American Dairy Coalition)
It’s no secret that the Waters of the U.S. rule, or WOTUS, has been enormously unpopular among the vast majority of landowners, farmers and many others since it was rolled out by the Obama administration in 2015.
Tweeter-in-Chief President Donald J. Trump has been quite clear in his opinion of CNN, the cable television news network. Indeed, Trump’s despise of the network — he thinks its initials stand for Certainly Not News — encourages supporters to use “CNN” as a slander.
With the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, dairy farmers across the country received some certainty in the uncertain world of dairy farming as we begin the new year. But more needs to be done.
This past year, I’ve traveled across Wisconsin to hear directly from our farmers about what they’re up against. It’s clear: Our farmers are facing a crisis.
In the world of journalism, many stories originate from scheduled events.
Note: Originally published in 1995, this column was one of the first remembrances from the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth. It also is the most requested and most reprinted piece I’ve written. By tradition, it returns every year. Merry Christmas.
If the calendar was a baseball game, mid-December would be the bottom of the ninth.
As we move toward the end of yet another financially challenging year in the dairy industry, it’s important to look forward to how we can best address the many challenges before us.
We have all heard them before, the “Life is like … ” complete the sentence. I’m sure if you are anything like me, you have even used them in casual conversation. Or if you happen to also be a constantly thinking and analyzing person like myself, you have tried to come up with your own witty …
How do we increase healthy, fresh foods in rural America? One way is to identify new opportunities for people to access food. Here are five suggestions for your community.
I wasn’t so much looking to, as Aldo Leopold wrote in “A Sand County Almanac,” avoid the spiritual danger of supposing heat comes from the furnace as I was to remind the squirrels their breakfast doesn’t come from the birdfeeder.
GIPSA, the badly named, hard-working mule inside the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is on the move again over objections that the Trump Administration’s ongoing USDA reorganization will bury it — and other, less obscure parts of the department like the Economic Research Service — in new lay…
While some vehemently dispute the concept of “global warming,” there seems to be more general consensus that climate change — with more frequent weather-related extremes such as drought, flooding and runoff from heavy rainfall and wildfires — is a reality in our world.
Times are tough for farmers across the nation, milk prices are low and dairy producers have been hit hard by tariffs on the products they export to some of our major dairy trading partners.
By this point, we are all exhausted by the endless rhetoric about America being a divided nation — a country of haves and have-nots.
I have a confession to make: I’ve been listening to Christmas music for going on two months already.
America’s farmers and ranchers are counting on Congress to finish strong this year. Just because we call these final weeks a “lame-duck” session, that’s no excuse for members not to finish the job they started.
Years ago, an enterprising neighbor operated a palm reading business from her home with just a secretary, fax machine and telephone. Her business model was simple: After clients faxed their photocopied hand print and sent some form of payment (rumor had it was $20), our neighbor telephoned t…
To the Editor:
Consolidation has long been one of the greatest challenges for family farmers and ranchers. Agribusiness mergers reduce innovation, limit choice and increase prices for farming inputs and make it increasingly difficult for farmers to receive a fair price at market.
Black Friday is the biggest shopping event of the year, the unofficial kickoff of the hectic holiday shopping season. For weeks now, retailers have been vying for consumers’ attention — and their dollars — through advertisements, fliers and “door-buster” deals. It all seems to start a little…
Nov. 11 marked 100 years since the end of World War I, which U.S. President Woodrow Wilson called “the war to end all wars.”
We live in a time when everything, from the shoes on your feet to where you like to buy your chicken sandwich, seems like a political statement. It can be frustrating that everything has become so political, but it’s also great to see people so engaged in the national discussion. I heard tha…
It’s Thanksgiving week, so let’s be generous: The White House trade policy, marked by its heavy use of import tariffs and presidential tweets, continues to confound economists and trading partners alike.
The farmer is the central cog in a system wherein all ancillary cogs profit because the central cog keeps turning. Seed and agrochemical companies, animal breeders, equipment dealers, crop insurance salesmen and bankers on the front end, and food processors and manufacturers on the tail end …
A week before American voters decided whether the midterm elections would deliver a red wave or a blue wave, OpenSecrets.org, the non-partisan group that tracks money in politics, made a spot-on prediction: the biggest wave on Nov. 6 would be green.
The always highly anticipated Wisconsin gun deer season, considered by many to be an unofficial state holiday, opens this Saturday, Nov. 17, and runs nine days, through Thanksgiving Day weekend.
My mom often tells me that I was born outside of my proper generation, and I would tend to agree. Every day, I find anomalies that set me apart from the typical person my age.
Humanity depends on three critical threes: Without oxygen, most humans will die within three minutes; without water, life expectancy is three days; without food, we’ve got three weeks.
Open Letter to Wisconsin Representatives on Farming and the Environment:
The National FFA Convention is always an inspiring event, bringing together more than 69,000 students and supporters in downtown Indianapolis for a week of competition, recognition, inspiration and networking.
I don’t know if he really made it through all seven and a half hours and 18 innings, but the Los Angeles Dodgers 3-2 Game 3 win over the Boston Red Sox prompted a friend to ask about personal favorite World Series memories.
To the Editor:
The nation’s telecommunications industry is changing at a rapid pace. This change is driven by the large number of people demanding equipment and services with high-speed Internet access. There has been a virtual explosion of new services being offered online. Smartphones, hand-held computer…
If war is hell, then trade wars must be a purgatorial stop along the way. For proof, just look where Election Day 2018 finds American farmers.
The battle lines have been clearly drawn. After what seems like months of ugly, mud-slinging and even downright false political ads, Election Day will finally be here in a couple weeks, on Tuesday, Nov. 6.
“Everything in this newspaper is important to someone.”
As September turned into October, I was recuperating from a cold I seemed to have picked up after attending the World Beef Expo in West Allis the weekend before. I had to get better fast as my biggest assignment yet was approaching — coverage of the World Dairy Expo at the Alliant Energy Cen…
“February” is one of the finest essays in Sand County Almanac, the 1949 book of superlative essays on nature and mankind’s role in it, by forester and conservationist Aldo Leopold. In it, Leopold, the father of wildlife ecology, tells the history of his Wisconsin “sand farm” and its natural …
With one our children off to college in Chicago and the other not far behind while maintaining a very full extracurricular and social life, Dave and I are getting our first taste of what it’s like to be empty nesters.
Wisconsin is known as America’s Dairyland, and for good reason. But many other livestock sectors also contribute to the Dairy State’s agricultural economy, as well as the overall economy.