Blog

The past week has been very busy. Our fifth solar system went into production.   We have been pleased with Harvest Solar and the job they have done for us.  The 99.36 KW unit is producing all our needs on good sunny days and feeding little power back out to electric [...]

While serving on the United Soybean Board nearly 15 years ago, I along with others formed the US Farmer and Rancher Alliance. (FRA) Those of us serving in leadership positions both farm and agriculture      industry saw a need to reach those consuming the food we produces. One of first things [...]

The Illinois farm Bureau publication “Farm Week” had a nice article printed from Illinois farmdoc website “Are U.S. Soybeans doomed to repeat history” in its July 21, 2025 issue.   It is well done and very informative. Having raised soybeans all those years and been involved in related activities. I thought [...]

On July 11th I spoke about food safety. I thought you might like to read what some other countries are doing.

The responsibility to insure we have safe abundant food is no small task. Having served I think 9 years on the US Secretary of Agriculture’s Foreign Animal and Poultry Disease committee I saw how big a job it was to protect our food and animals. It not only takes the [...]

First let me say sorry for the error last week. The last sentence in the third paragraph said Most Exports. It should have been MEAT EXPORT FEDERATION (MEF).   This week I thought I would talk a little about Illinois agriculture. Illinois has about 26 million acres of farm land. [...]

6-26-25 The one billion plus dollars American farmers are putting into the commodity programs each year is benefiting everyone in the world. We all think about human food, animal feed, bio diesel and ethanol gasoline but what about all the other products coming from checkoff farmer dollars. I was listening [...]

The American farmer contributes over one billion dollars a year for commodity programs. Commodity programs are all a little different, but all operate about the same way. The farmer when he sells his commodity has a small dollar amount held out of his check. Each individual commodity association program manages and [...]

Everybody benefits from commodity checkoff programs, funds collected at first point of sale, money taken out of farmer's checks when he or she sells a commodity. The big one we all benefit from is biofuels, gasohol, and biodiesel. Gasohol made by blending corn oil with petroleum oil (Gasoline) and biodiesel [...]