One of the first marketing lessons offered to me, a wet-behind-the-ears ag editor, by a steely and successful ag futures trader was as simple and useful as a feed bucket. “Markets hate …

Sir Isaac Newton — he of “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” fame — was a polymath who excelled in math, physics, astronomy, alchemy and theology. …

On Jan. 7, the day after Congress certified Donald J. Trump’s election as the next president of the United States, the U.S. “Border Patrol conducted unannounced raids throughout …

The four-page executive summary of the November-issued report on sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) doesn’t predict when or how the hopefully-named “green” aircraft fuel will be …

The Christmas tree was a scrub cedar hacked from the edge of the woods that bordered the farm. Big-bulbed lights, strung in barber pole fashion, generated almost as much heat as the nearby …

While the president-elect continues to nominate prospective members of his incoming administration, the outgoing Congress faces a hectic sprint to complete a long list of unmet legislative duties …

Nearly every autopsy of Vice President Kamala Harris’s stinging White House defeat begins with some variation of the phrase, “Voters pointed to the rising price of food as their chief …

Calls for $20 billion in “emergency” farm program payments won’t go away now that the proposal’s principal audience, voters, have done their duty. The idea’s chief …

Election Day, Nov. 5, will end the costliest, dirtiest American political campaign season in memory and it will likely also mark Opening Day for what could be the costliest, dirtiest post-election …

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission — that toy poodle of a government watchdog overseeing the world’s largest agricultural and financial futures contracts –– is being …

A late September, 200-mile drive through the sunny center of northern and central Illinois reveals blue sky, yellowing fields, and not one roaring red, green or silver combine gathering in any of the …

As American grocery buyers await a Federal Trade Commission verdict on Kroger’s two-year-old, $24.6 billion bid to buy competitor Albertsons, the European Commission took just 35 days to give …

When you set a record ag trade deficit for the third consecutive year, the decline isn’t an aberration or a coincidence. It is, in fact, growing proof that a key element of your national ag …

Few states or nations put on a dairy cattle show like the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wis., where 50,000 visitors and vendors from nearly 100 countries will see 1,800 owners exhibiting 2,500 or so …

Milton Friedman, the patron saint of free markets and a founder of the Nobel-adorned Chicago school of economics, took a very dim view of all tariffs — ours, theirs, anyone's. Writing in …

Nearly 45% of all agricultural workers in the U.S. today — 950,000 of an estimated 2.2 million farmworkers — are “unauthorized” migrants working illegally on American farms …

Trying to stem the flow of money in American politics is like trying to hold back the Mississippi River. It’s dirty, dangerous work that, in the end, is almost always washed away by a flood of …

Like most southern Illinois farms of my youth, my family had a closet filled with guns. It was just inside the living room and it held my father’s 12-gauge Marlin shotgun, his .22 caliber …

While Americans still face a long season of political campaigning, more than 80 other nations have completed their federal elections this year or are about to go to the polls. For example, …

The clothes we wore, like the crops we worked, marked the seasons on the dairy farm of my youth. Coveralls, for example, suggested winter while (ahem) “cover little” meant the hot, steamy …