March is when most people’s thoughts turn to spring and most farmers start looking forward to another productive year of growing food, feed and fiber. Until then, though, there's weather to …

House Ag Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson must not be a superstitious man. If he were, he would not have introduced the biggest bill of his congressional career, the “Farm, Food, and National …

Punxsutawney Phil, the shadow-obsessed groundhog, and Glenn “GT” Thompson, the chairman of the House Ag Committee, have something in common: both reside in Pennsylvania’s 15th Congressional …

If growing corn is a religion among Midwestern farmers, its Vatican is somewhere in central Iowa. That fact was confirmed in late January when a Des Moines-based ag consulting firm released a …

It’s been said that February is the longest shortest month of the year. If so, it might be because freezing, snowy January often feels like the longest long month of the year. That's true this …

A word of caution: Do not get between reality and political forces in Congress when Republicans and Democrats agree to spend more money on farm programs rather than reform the very programs that are …

As has been noted here before, I don't eat today what we ate every day on the dairy farm of my youth. Back then we worked like plow horses so we ate like plow horses: five times daily with a noon …

President Donald J. Trump loves to point out that farmers “love” him. The November 2024 election results prove it’s no boast. In fact, while the then-former president beat Vice President …

One of the most under-reported stories of 2025 — the departure of more than 20,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture employees — finally surfaced just before the quietest, most unwatched news …

Mark Twain would have loved this. The story goes that Twain, arguably America’s greatest writer and humorist, was the originator of the witticism “Figures don’t lie, but liars do …

There was so much blarney and puffery flying around the Cabinet Room during the Dec. 8 White House farmer/ rancher gathering that it became impossible to tell fact from fiction. For example, in …

To truly experience the Trump tariff rollercoaster, hop on the ear-popping ride American cattlemen, meatpackers, and U.S. beef eaters have been on over the past few …

On the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth, we marked seasons by the work more than by the month. The planting season, for example, usually began in April and often ended when we drilled …

While Congress spent most of the fall perfecting the useless art of finger pointing, the ag economists, farm finance experts, and ag policy wonks at farmdocDAILY kept grinding through the …

As the White House fought not to pay Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits to 42 million Americans, it already had ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reopen nearly 2,100 Farm …

My mother was born into dirt, poverty, and hunger on a tenant farm in east central Nebraska in April 1932. She was the third child — fourth, including her brother Gordon, who died before she …

Paradox seems to be the guiding principle of today's food policies. For example, the Trump Administration is arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court that the nation’s longstanding trade …

Earlier this year, the Congressional Research Service, the Senate and House’s self-described “exclusive” research and analysis group, “estimated 680,000 farmworkers are …

One of the oldest sayings in poker warns that if you’re in a game for 20 minutes and haven’t figured out who's the patsy — the player most likely to be the game's biggest loser …

The Trump Administration is digging two huge holes at the White House: one for the construction of the executive mansion’s massive new ballroom, the other to bury the export-dependent U.S. …