A Roadmap to Better Decision Making

It's no secret that livestock manure can be a rich source of nutrients for crops. However, using manure as fertilizer comes with several disadvantages, including the risk of spreading deadly pathogens if not properly treated. But scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW) say they've figured out a way that could help farmers extract nutrients like ammonia and potassium from ...
Read More

Just as catching a disease early in humans can greatly improve the odds of beating it, the same holds true for plants. For many crops, by the time signs of disease are visible it can be too late to prevent yield losses. A startup called "InnerPlant" has genetically engineered plants to emit a fluorescent glow when they are under attack from fungal ...
Read More

Argentina was not much of a competitor in the global ag commodities market last year due to a historic drought that nearly halved 2022/23 soybean production versus the previous season and cut the corn crop by more than -30%. But thanks to the influence of the El Niño weather pattern, heavy rains in November and December finally broke the drought ...
Read More

The United States is an enormous country with approximately 2.43 billion acres of land. That land, of course, is a finite and precious resource that is also one of the best investments on the planet. Some Americans own a pretty sizable chunk of US land and those top private landholders are always of great interest to the agriculture community. Every ...
Read More

The El Niño weather event that was officially declared last year is believed to be nearing its peak, according to the latest outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). While El Niño conditions will stick around for another few months, the impacts to global weather patterns will continue to lessen as El Niño weakens and ENSO-neutral conditions return ...
Read More

Farm equipment manufacturers have invested billions in state-of-the-art technology that has helped make US row crop producers the most efficient in the world. Unfortunately, nearly one-third of US farmland acres lack sufficient broadband service to capitalize on digital technologies, and the lack of access is even greater in less developed parts of the world. Farm equipment maker John Deere hopes ...
Read More

Every year, rural ag lender CoBank examines key factors expected to shape agriculture and market sectors that serve rural communities. The 2024 Year Ahead Report forecasts a continued slowdown in global growth, and increasingly stretched consumers here at home that will continue to be burdened with high prices. While high costs will also continue to weigh on the agriculture economy, ...
Read More

If humans have any chance at all of living on the Moon or colonizing other planets, we've got to first find a way to grow food in those alien environments. The first stumbling block to accomplishing this is soil, arguably one of the most important elements to growing healthy crops. Recently, scientists have had some success with two different techniques, ...
Read More

According to an early 1920s study, only 6% of farmers in the corn belt states had tractors, with the rest saying as long as they had to keep enough horses or mules to do cultivating, they might as well use the animals for all their other farm fieldwork as well, so no need for a tractor. Remember, horses and mules ...
Read More

In the 2023 edition of "America's Farms and Ranches at a Glance," the USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) finds that the majority of farming and ranching operations in the US during 2022 were still family-owned. What's more, only around 26% had any debt. A "family farm" is of course one where the majority of the business is owned by the ...
Read More