As a present to my mom and my dad I volunteered to scan and organize our family photos into their new computer. Plenty of time to go through the drawers, tubs and moldy photo albums chock-full of 45 years of collective Latzke memories in sepia, black and white and Kodachrome. Sort the now scanned photos into manila envelopes labeled with each family member's name. [Read More]
The January cattle inventory report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed what everyone knew: The Southwest had a devastating drought, and disposed of millions of cows, driving the total herd to the lowest level since the early 1950s. He had purchased a son of TR Zato Heir, the famous bull from Turner Ranch, who re-energized the breed as it cleaned up dwarfism and started working toward fancy animals that would win in the show ring. If you look at Lowline cattle today, that is the ... [Read More]
This rule requires most schools to increase the availability of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat-free and low-fat fluid milk in school meals; reduce the levels of sodium, saturated fat and trans fat in meals; and meet the nutrition needs of school children within their calorie requirements. These improvements to the school meal programs, largely based on recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, are expected to enhance the diet and health of school... [Read More]
During the 2011 crop year, private crop insurance policies valued at over $113.5 billion covered more than 264 million acres of farmland, including all major grain crops and cotton, nursery, citrus, rice, potatoes, seafood and livestock. As of Jan. 16, the $8.89 billion in indemnities paid by crop insurance companies for the 2011 crop year losses surpassed the previous record of $8.6 billion paid in the 2008 crop year. Some sources expect that the federal crop insurance program will easily ... [Read More]
Return on equity is the bottom-line measurement of capital performance, given an appropriate balance with risk assumed to earn that return. Return on assets is another measurement used to measure the performance of all capital invested in a business, whether ownership capital or debt capital. Return on Relationship is a powerful measurement of business progress and success. [Read More]
Another video released and another industry that has to spend time and effort defending its actions and standards. What HSUS did, instead, was provided their canned comment about "appalling animal cruelty." Many farm and livestock organizations have extensive media training classes that help producers respond to questions when these stories surface. [Read More]
Fifteen years ago we began using different fertilizer rates for each individual field, and now we can fertilize each individual acre differently to optimize production efficiency." "We encourage members to do research on their own farm to know what will work to increase their production and give them an economic benefit in their operation." "This interaction provides critical feedback necessary to deal with new technologies, provides the tools necessary to begin conducting scientifically ...[Read More]
Erin Barnett with LocalHarvest, a California-based website dedicated to local food sources, said the buy local food movement is the result of a number of different factors that include the emergence of Community Supported Agriculture, farmers markets, a renewed emphasis on supporting local economies, and food safety scares. The study, "Building a Deep-Rooted Local Food System," was done by the Douglas County Food Policy Council with help from researchers at Kansas State University. According ...[Read More]
These industries fear potential interference to GPS receivers from the recently launched LightSquared communications network. The GPS community is concerned because testing has shown that LightSquared's ground-based transmissions overpower the relatively weak GPS signal from space. Although LightSquared will operate in its own radio band, that band is so close to the GPS signals that most GPS devices pick up the stronger LightSquared signal and become overloaded or jammed. [Read More]
Riley Pagett, a Woodward, Okla., native, just finished serving as the 2010-2011 National FFA president. Although Pagett served as an Oklahoma State FFA officer 2008-2009 and he was the Northwest District vice president, ending up as the National FFA president was no easy feat. There are six officers—national president, national secretary and four regional vice presidents (eastern, southern, western and central). [Read More]
I heard one rancher say this morning that we will probably pay for that nice of a winter, as he said it will probably be miserable in late March or April. Whenever our northern buyers quit coming to our area as they wanted to get our cows acclimated or adjusted to their colder weather--I figured our bred cow prices would drop drastically. However, with a little wheat pasture around and some moisture our local buyers started buying cows again about the time the northern buyers quit. [Read More]
After calling out his marching orders in the State of the Union address and completing his first 2012 campaign tour, President Obama has shown his playbook. During the State of the Union speech, Obama mentioned the word "jobs" 32 times (not including Steve Jobs or the Veterans Jobs Corps), "energy" 24 times, "manufacturing" eight times, and "milk" three times. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Obama toured an agriculture manufacturing facility and highlighted his plan to reform taxes by creating ...[Read More]
Mid-February is time to fertilize trees, including fruit and nut trees and shrubs. Pruning shade trees, summer flowering shrubs and hedges may be finished now. Use about 3 inches of bark for mulching, being careful to keep bark mulches 3 to 4 inches away from shrub and tree trunks. [Read More]
