Author: staff

Did you know that almost 40 percent of all food in the United States goes to waste? Food that is safe to eat, nutritious, and available goes in our collective trash cans. We throw away 133 billion pounds of food each year. It’s a staggering statistic, especially when you consider that some of our neighbors are food insecure. I’ve served on the board of directors for an Indiana-based nonprofit called Cultivate Food Rescue for the past three years. The nonprofit’s mission is to collect perishable food, transform it into single-serve freezer meals, and distribute it to the community. Since opening…

By Ryan Hanrahan Reuters Lisa Baertlein, Karl Plume, and Timothy Gardner reported Wednesday that “President Donald Trump’s plan to revive U.S. shipbuilding using massive fees on China-linked ship visits to American ports is causing U.S. coal inventories to swell and stoking uncertainty in the embattled agriculture market, as exporters struggle to find ships to send goods abroad.” “Trump is drafting an executive order that would rely on funding from a U.S. Trade Representative proposal to levy fines of up to $1.5 million on China-made ships or vessels from fleets that include ships made in China,” Baertlein, Plume, and Gardner reported.…

It’s not just about the farmers who handle herbicides — large-property owners and scientists also consider the effort and effectiveness of applying plant-control products I was handed my first bottle of herbicide in my senior year of college, during an invasive shrub removal on the University of Georgia’s campus in Athens. I had taken part in invasive plant removals for years, both throughout Athens and in my hometown in Wisconsin, but all of those removals had been done by hand, with painstaking hours spent pulling up seedlings, cutting vines off trees, and chopping down shrubs. At this removal, we were…

Benson Hill Inc, a seed innovation company that was named Overall FoodTech Company of the Year in 2021, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. In its announcement, the company stated that it and its subsidiaries have voluntarily initiated the process, with plans to pursue a sale of its business under Section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code. As part of this effort, Benson Hill aims to sell all or a portion of its assets while continuing to support its farmers, partners, and customers throughout the proceedings. To maintain operations during the…

Shortly after 9:00 a.m. CT, May corn was down ½¢ at $4.68½ per bushel. May soybeans dropped 2¼¢ at $10.10¾ per bushel. Angie Setzer, partner with Consus Ag Consulting said after the market open, “Old-crop corn and soybeans found buying [Thursday], with news that the port fees would not impact shipments until November if implemented, helping to lend support. Wheat was lower on some unwinds of previous trades and an increased potential for rain in some parts of the wheat producing world.” May wheat markets started the trading session in the green. CBOT wheat was up 3½¢ at $5.60¾ per bushel.…

1. Soybean, Grain Futures Little Changed Overnight Soybean and grain futures were little changed overnight amid uncertainty about the ongoing trade war and mixed weather forecasts globally.  Tariffs on foreign goods entering the U.S. are scheduled to take effect on April 2 as each country will receive a number representing their own tariffs, the White House has said. That number will be used to determine what, if any, tariffs will be placed on products they plan to ship to the U.S.  U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed 25% tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico and a 20% tariff on…

Successful Farming‘s ‘Can Their Problem be Solved?’ advice column from farm financial adviser Myron Friesen and the question of planning for your retirement, but not your children’s. Problem: My wife and I have worked our tails off all of our lives. We have made it through some miserable times with weather, machinery, dust, and manure, not to mention the financial misery that brought us to our knees on several occasions when we thought we might lose everything. It’s kind of hard to imagine what we have, knowing what it took to get here. Here’s our dilemma: The farm is our…

By Ella Cao and Mei Mei Chu BEIJING, March 20 (Reuters) – China’s soybean imports from the United States jumped 84.1% in the first two months of 2025 compared with a year ago, but competitive pricing and a trade standoff with the U.S. is expected to boost purchases from Brazil in the months ahead. As the world’s top buyer of soybeans, China brought in 9.13 million metric tons of the oilseed from the U.S. in January-February, up from 4.96 million tons in 2024. “The rise in U.S. soybean imports is mainly due to the Trump effect, where concerns about higher tariffs led to a rush in purchasing,” Rosa Wang, analyst at Shanghai-based agro-consultancy JCI,…

By Ryan Hanrahan Newsweek’s Jasmine Laws reported Tuesday that wholesale “egg prices in the U.S. have fallen to $3.45 per dozen, reaching their lowest level in nearly five months, following a period of price volatility fueled by supply chain issues, bird flu outbreaks, and fluctuating consumer demand.” “Egg prices have experienced extreme fluctuations over the past year. On March 3, wholesale egg prices reached a record $8.17 per dozen, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The spike was attributed to tight supplies and seasonal demand,” Laws reported. “Since then, prices have declined more than 57% to…

PTx Trimble and Trimble have announced the new Trimble IonoGuard for precision agriculture.  The IonoGuard is engineered to enhance RTK GNSS signal tracking and hardware positioning performance by maintaining signal integrity during challenging ionospheric conditions. IonoGuard is available now on the PTx Trimble NAV-900 guidance controller via the latest PTx Trimble Precision-IQ firmware release. Ionospheric Disturbances Solar activity can cause Ionospheric disturbances such as scintillation and signal noise that can result in unreliable positioning. High-precision RTK GNSS users, especially in equatorial regions, are impacted by solar activity year-round, inflicting costly interruptions on agricultural operations.  Every 11 years, at the height…