By Dave Carter
A couple months back, I happened to stand next to a Kansas grain and livestock producer at the back of a convention hall as a panel of international trade experts extolled the opportunities awaiting agriculture in the new world marketplace. I noticed that my friend from Kansas began to fidget as each panelist […]

Solutions require fresh thinking from ag producers
By Tom Lauridson, Ph. D.
Farmers as individuals tend to increase production in years when prices are low because we cannot manage industry wide supply ourselves. We can’t manage supply alone because of the large number and geographic diversity of farmers in the United States.
No one farmer can personally make […]

By Dave Carter
Nearly a century ago, agricultural settlers were lulled to the high plains region by the promise that rain would follow the plow. Immigrants staked out homesteads across the Rocky Mountain West on the assumption that the farming practices that had worked well in the East could produce bumper crops in the West.
And it […]

By Dave Carter
Someone once described agriculture as “the last hand-shakin’ way of doing business in the country.”
It is an apt description. For years, millions of dollars of merchandise traded hands across rural America on the security of a firm handshake.
It worked. It worked because a relationship stood behind each handshake. A farmer and a local […]

By Tom Lauridson, Ph. D.
Thanks in part to the National Farmers Union rally in March, Congress has been put on notice that rural America is headed in the opposite direction of the rest of the national economy. However, having Congress’ attention hardly solves the problem . . . so now the hard work begins; we […]

By Dave Carter
Spring is a time of optimism across the rural West . . . at least in most years.
As the recent moisture and warming sun starts to paint the countryside green this spring, farmers and ranchers find themselves up against some nearly insurmountable odds. Commodity prices seem wedged at historic low prices. Diesel fuel, […]