There is a lot of noise right now around the phrase “Super El Niño.” Some headlines are already treating it as a done deal. Others are using it as a catch-all explanation for almost every weather problem around the world. That is not how professional weather, crop, or commodity risk should be evaluated. Here is …
A little‑known group of government cowboys called “tick riders” has quietly patrolled the southern U.S. border for over a century. The highly skilled cowboys, officially known as “Mounted Patrol Inspectors,” act as a living biosecurity fence between American livestock and a range of dangerous pests. Originally assembled as a frontline defense against cattle fever ticks, …
NEW FARMCON PODCAST – This week Kevin and Todd start out sharing the realities of getting older and facing it head on. Then, Kevin shares his current thoughts on the commodity markets and the pair dive deep into “data” in response to a reader’s email following our Scope 3/Biological Pivot story on Monday. Kevin goes …
A digital twin is essentially a living virtual model of a real-world system. In agriculture, that system could be a field, a greenhouse, a grain facility, a herd, or an entire farm operation. The important distinction is that a true digital twin is not just a one-time simulation or a prettier map. It is continuously …
The Invisible Layer: Why Agriculture’s “AI Revolution” is Awaiting the “Digital Twin” Read More »
For decades, the back of a cereal box told a simple story: calories, sugar counts, and a standard list of vitamins. It was a narrative of basic chemistry, designed for a yield-first agricultural system focused on volume. For seventy years, the industry optimized for filling the bin, often at the expense of the bowl. But …
Across the United States, the new generation of hyperscale data centers is starting to rival airports, factories, and even small towns in sheer physical footprint. These campuses stretch for miles, pack in millions of square feet of server space, carry price tags in the tens of billions of dollars…and they’re turning farmland and industrial acreage …
NEW FARMCON PODCAST – This week Kevin Van Trump shares his current thoughts on commodities, why he and the family “background” some of their real estate investments and how he got where he is by taking action while others are still researching their next steps. The two then discuss how most people get in their …
I received a lot of positive comments on my recent article about my failures investing in various Ag Startups, and many people asked for more insight into what I would do differently. I’ve thought about that, and rather than going into a ton of boring detail, I thought I would simply provide one big important …
USDA and the Export-Import Bank recently launched a new partnership to boost the country’s ag exports by making it easier and less risky for American sellers and their lenders to do business with foreign buyers. The partnership is built around a program called the “Financial Assurance to Revitalize Markets,” or “FARM Initiative,” which acts as …
FARM Initiative Puts New Financial Muscle Behind US Ag Exports Read More »
Corn diseases quietly removed about -2.5 billion bushels of grain between 2020 and 2023 across the United States and Ontario, according to a new multiyear study conducted across the US and Ontario, Canada. On average, the study finds that disease pressure costs producers an estimated $13.8 billion, even in a relatively “lighter” disease window. The …
It’s That Time of Year… How Corn Disease Losses Impact the Bottom Line Read More »
