Agricultural production this year in Ukraine is likely to be hampered by the ongoing conflict with Russia. Forecasters already predict shortages of key crops around the world, especially wheat, corn and oilseeds.
Jeff is a good fisherman and a good person. He is the prince of a friend everyone wishes for — honest, generous, funny, with clever left-field humor that endears him to everyone, and optimistic except when he fishes with my son Jon and me.
The U.S. Academy of Sciences released a report on Feb. 2 which indicated that mortality for U.S. adults is “steepest for white adults in rural areas who tend to be the least educated and have the lowest income, dramatically reversing the centuries-old pattern of lower mortality in the countr…
This ongoing saga of a farm family dealing with alcoholism began in Farm and Ranch Life articles in October 2013. This is the twelfth report about Dan and Darla (not their real names) and their two children, a 15-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son.
During the next few months, my wife Marilyn and I will leave our cherished farm in western Iowa to move to a condominium in Pella, Iowa, for our next phase of life. It’s not easy because much of our life is tied to our farm and the home we constructed, as well as to family, friends and neigh…
Passing the farming/ranching operation to successors has become the most pressing issue of callers to agricultural hotlines in the Upper Midwest lately, according to their managers. Farm owners’ worries about fairness to all successors in their estate plans tops their list of concerns.
Economic stress and its accompanying behavioral health perils are persistent for many dairy producers, which makes this form of agricultural livelihood more troublesome than most segments of agriculture.
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A few years ago, my wife Marilyn suggested to me that I should write down personal observations that might be useful to others. Her suggestion was important to me because passing “the Marilyn test” is something I depend on prior to sending articles for publication, including this Farm and Ra…
Last month, when I visited with several farmers and farm journalists on the telephone and with people who attended a town hall meeting at my local Shelby County Fair, nearly everyone I asked told me they are worried about increasing political and ideological divisions among agricultural prod…
Yup, it happened again. A few weeks ago my wife was driving our lawn-mower tractor and pulling a cart piled high with weeds and tree branches when the tractor ran out of gas. She was getting her Japanese gardens ready for another year of exotic plants and flowers.
“I got one,” my 7-year-old granddaughter announced a couple Sundays ago while fishing with her dad, her two cousins and me.
The suicide rate of the general population of the U.S. declined during both 2019 and 2020, according to preliminary analyses by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in an April 13 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Little did I know when I signed up for Mr. Lumpkin’s course in Folk Music and Literature at the University of Colorado 55 years ago that he would influence my appreciation for farm culture.
Paul W. Johnson, the former head of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources after that, passed away on Feb. 15 at age 79. He influenced many farmers and non-farmers alike with his conservation-minded approach to agriculture.
In June 1991, a panel of representatives of their fields presented insights about sustainable agriculture and sustainable mental health during the annual conference of the National Association for Rural Mental Health in Pittsburgh.
Although some people prefer the same foods every day or must eat the same items daily because that’s all they have available to them, most of us prefer options that vary in their nutritional benefits, taste and methods of preparation. Eating diverse foods is a healthy and tasty adventure in …
This holiday season stirs farmers to reflect on this year’s productivity and to consider if there are good reasons to be optimistic about the nearby future.
Last month, two military veterans wrote to me. The first asked me to write about the origins of Veterans Day; the second professed his appreciation for living in a rural area. He also encouraged me to write about why many people in military service have rural and agricultural backgrounds, an…
Most people are familiar with the prayer, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
“Can I see your scratch?” my 4-year-old granddaughter asked when she visited me at a Des Moines hospital in January. I had undergone triple coronary artery bypass surgery a couple weeks earlier.
The question, “How has science shaped agriculture?” generates as many differing opinions as there are methods of farming. Opinions range from “only with advanced technology developed through science will farmers be able to feed the people of the world” to “only those farming practices that h…
This year is testing the endurance of nearly everyone in the U.S. and around much of the world. It’s still too early to tell how the co-occurring crises stemming from the COVID pandemic, the protests about racial and economic inequality, and recent efforts to dominate the world by China and …
If the current prolonged downturn in the farm economy, now augmented by the COVID-19 pandemic, continues to be like the Great Depression of the 1930s, agricultural producers and many people in agriculture-dependent industries will not behave the same after this crisis remits. Whether the cur…
Last weekend we burned our CRP land and an adjoining parcel of CRP ground owned by another person who had the good judgment to go to church instead.