Friday Roundup

Harvest-time, high efficiency roundup today. Hope all is well, and you have a great weekend!

"Why Small Towns Breed Pro Athletes" - "Only one-in-four Americans come from towns of fewer than 50,000 people, but nearly half of NFL players and PGA golfers do..." Raiders QB Jason Campbell, who grew up in Taylorsville, MS (pop. 1,341) says, "you have nothing else to do [there] but sit outside and throw a football at trees."

"Farmland: The Next Boom?" - "Is farmland going to be the next gold?" Wealthy non-farmers are joining farmers in paying too much for ground. Real-estate investment trusts that would allow regular investors to specifically target ag land are in the works.

"In Rural Missouri, an IT Outsourcing Company Challenges India" - Onshore Technology Services, founded by Gulf War vet Shane Mayes, teaches software development skills to unemployed or underemployed people in very rural areas and offers prices for IT services competitive with overseas companies. "While I was in Turkey for the Air Force, a sort of zealous patriotism that I have began to solidify."

Finally - and most importantly, given yesterday's outage - "There is an alternative to accessing your FarmVille farm outside of Facebook." If any future outages are like this most recent one, though, farmers may have nothing to fear. Zynga, the makers of FarmVille, assured its customers, "Wither will be off until all is well and your puppies will not get hungry and run away in the meantime, either."

Well, that's a relief. Happy Friday!

Wednesday Roundup

Welcome to Wednesday! I hope you are all having a good week; in my part of the Rural Republic, fat cattle are going out today and high moisture corn will be coming in tomorrow. So, without further ado, here is (some of) the news of the day.

As I wrote about here, a major concern for many rural communities is the out-migration (or "brain-drain") of young people from their hometowns. The High Plains Journal reported this week on a presentation by Weldon Sleight, the dean of the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture, on the college's philosophy of encouraging agricultural entrepreneurship - going "back to our base" in farm country - to revitalize rural areas. Also important, according to Sleight, is instilling a sense of community pride both in youth and adults. This includes supporting local, small businesses. "It kills me," he says, "when people drive 40 miles to go to Walmart when their local hardware store is about to close."

However, not everyone is convinced that focusing so much attention on getting young people to stay (or come back) is the best way to "bring new life" to small towns. Kathie Starkweather of the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Nebraska told Radio Iowa this week that small towns would be better served to "let them go" and target, instead, Baby Boomers and senior citizens. Many people over 50, she says, are interested in starting small businesses and small towns offer what they want: "“The basic quiet, not having to be involved in the rat race but also being allowed to participate in the community.”

To change subjects a little bit, the Visalia (CA) Times-Delta ran a story about a University of California study examining tensions between six "semi-rural" cities in California and the neighboring farmers. The author detailed frustrations on both sides, such as farmers having equipment stolen and vandalized, and city dwellers being irritated by dust and noise. Perhaps not surprisingly, though, the "authors of the university report indicate that the chances for compatible relations between farmers and urbanites will mostly require farmers to adjust or revise their traditional practices."

Finally, NPR had an interesting report on Cuban agriculture that could serve as something of a cautionary tale. "After five decades of state-controlled agriculture," the story says, "the country struggles to feed itself, forcing the government to import some 70 percent of the island's food." When all of the farmland was nationalized with the rise of the communist regime, those who had farmed it walked away. Now, the government is trying to encourage food production by giving anyone willing to farm a free ten-year lease on federal land. Some of those taking advantage of the program are highly educated former employees of the government who are eager for entrepreneurial opportunities, however limited. As one new farmer says, "We can't all be intellectuals, because then there'd be nothing to eat."

Now that's food for thought.

Friday Roundup

It's a busy, busy time of year in the Rural Republic, so we've been kind of on again and off again with our daily roundups. We'll try to keep this site somewhat responsive to our readers' interests, so if you feel something's missing on the days we don't post a roundup, please let us know. Conversely, if you'd rather see us focus less energy on roundups and more on something else, we'd like to know that, too. We're a no-budget, volunteer outfit here, but we aim to please!

So, for your consideration, here are some stories that caught my attention today.

The U.S. government has been pouring a lot of money into expansion of rural broadband recently, but not all broadband is created equal. Apparently, some of the broadband connections in rural areas of the United Kingdom are inferior to a much lower-tech solution: carrier pigeons! The BBC has a report on a competition held in which ten pigeons with USB drives strapped to their legs took on a five-minute video upload. Seventy-five minutes after the pigeons were released and the upload was started, the birds had reached their destination 120 km away, while the upload was only 24% complete.

Moving back across the pond and heading north, a column in The Williams Lake Tribune details a British Columbia feedlot's creative attempt to find a niche market. Seeking to "produce a product that is equal to Japan’s Kobe beef, where Wagyu cattle are fed a beer a day and massaged with saki before they are slaughtered," Bill and Darlene Freding are experimenting with feeding each of their cattle a litre of wine every day. Reportedly, the results so far have been delicious... and, as the author says, "the cattle aren't drunk, just happy."

Some other cattle that may not have been so happy were reported having been "rustled" near Chadron, NE. KRVN tells us that, while cattle rustling is no longer the hanging offense it was in the "Old West," the state of Nebraska still takes this crime very seriously. Thirty-year-old Jacob Otte was convicted of two different instances of stealing about 10 head of cattle and reselling them in another part of the state. The penalty: two consecutive 3-5 year terms in prison, plus about $17,000 in restitution (mainly to the insurance company that covered both ranchers' cattle). Don't mess with Nebraska cattlemen.

And don't mess with Texas... or, at least, the Texans in Hemphill County in the northeastern corner of the state's panhandle. The Texas Observer has an interesting article about the residents of the county and their confrontation with billionaire T. Boone Pickens, who has been systematically buying up water rights in rural Texas to sell to the state's sprawling cities. In another "water is for fighting over" story, the county is ground zero for a legal battle in which Texas courts will decide whether or not groundwater is - like oil and gas - owned in place by the person with rights to that water and, if so, whether a groundwater management district placing restrictions on pumping is an uncompensated "taking" of that property. It obviously gets complicated with legal jargon, but read the article: the people trying to sell their water rights are somewho both victims and victimizers in this scenario. The same story will no doubt be played out across the High Plains in the coming years.

So long for now, and have a great weekend. I hope sometime soon, we all get a little time to relax!

Wednesday Roundup

Dan Maes, the embattled GOP candidate for governor in Colorado, recently compounded a campaign-finance snafu by stating, "If people want a seat at the table, what's the first thing they've got to do? Write a check." As uncomfortable as this observation may make us with the political process, ag-industry groups seem to subscribe to the same theory. According to Agri-Pulse, political action committees (PACs) representing food and agricultural industry groups have increased contributions to candidates in congressional races this year, compared to the 2008 election.

As it turns out, this may be a prudent strategy. At least two issues with regard to the federal government and its relationship with agricultural producers are in the news this week. First, Progressive Farmer Senior Editor Victoria Myers reports on concerns from farm groups such as the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) about what she calls an "impending train wreck" with the return of the estate tax. As I mentioned here, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack thinks exemptions will be created that cover most farmers and ranchers, but Myers quotes the NCBA's executive director of legislative affairs as saying that, "as things stand today the estate tax, or death tax, will revert to pre-2001 levels January 2011. Those tax rates are graduated, with 55% being the top bracket..." As Myers points out, many farms and ranches are asset-rich (especially with today's high land values), but cash poor. If heirs in this situation are forced to pay 55% of the value of their inheritance in taxes, farms may have to be broken up and sold in order to do so.

Another story involving federal policy appeared in The New York Times under the headline, "U.S. Meat Farmers Brace for Limits on Antibiotics." The Times links the timing of expected FDA guidelines intended to prevent the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria with the recent salmonella outbreak and egg recall (even though, as the reporter adds parenthetically, no drug resistant strains of salmonella have been implicated in the egg cases). According to the article, many medical and health experts are calling for action that would prohibit most uses of antibiotics on healthy animals, either for disease prevention or for speeding growth (the latter of which appears to be the scope of the the forthcoming guidelines). Opposing these experts are meat producers and many veterinary scientists, who cite Denmark's experience with similar regulations as evidence that they may be counterproductive.

As a cattle feeder, I can attest that overly restrictive guidelines would probably result in many more treatment expenses for our operation, as well as a likely increase in the number of animal deaths. We give chlortetracycline (CTC), a broad-spectrum antibiotic, to pens that seem to be experiencing a large number of sick cattle at once. The most efficient way of distributing CTC is to mix it with the feed for the entire pen, which of course includes some currently healthy cattle. If we were to wait until the cattle are visibly sick, however, some of them would already be too far gone to save. Those that do survive generally have lower weight gain. This in turn makes the beef at your supermarket more expensive. As such, I concur with what one pork producer told The Times for this article: "In the end, the producers will do what is right... My only concern is that we make decisions in a scientific fashion, not a political fashion."

Of course, many of these kinds of decisions will be made by politicians, who almost by definition will be making them in "a political fashion." So, it might not be such a bad idea to figure out how to "get a seat at the table."

Tuesday Roundup

Back after a few days of hiatus, driven mostly by really, really slow news days (or at least news being focused elsewhere), it's your daily roundup.  

First, thanks to everyone who's followed our page on Facebook.  We're now at 100!  It took us just over 5 weeks to get to the century mark.  How quickly can we get 200?  If you like what we're doing, recommend us to your friends. 

I'll start with the quirky story, and save the controversy for the finish. 

Dekalb County, Georgia, is suing a resident for growing too many crops on his property, apparently against county zoning regulations.  From the story, it sounds like he's got quite the variety of crops, and does quite well for himself and his neighbors.  Unfortunately, the proverbial overzealous regulator (I like to think of the bad guy in the first Ghostbusters movie), combined with the tightening of government budgets everywhere due to the economy, resulted in his being highlighted as someone they could probably get some fines off of.

Corn harvest is moving along.  Brownfield Ag News reports that 13% of Indiana's crop is already in the bins, and moving along.  Meanwhile, the Nebraska Corn Board has compiled pictures and reports from FFA students across the state, depicting the trends toward harvest in the Cornhusker State. 

Finally, once again, water is for fighting.  Only this time, in the Land of Enchantment.  The New Mexico Environment Department filed a petition to designate 1,450 miles of waterways, 29 lakes and about 6,000 acres of wetlands in federal wilderness areas as "Outstanding Natural Resource Waters."  The New Mexico Cattle Growers Association filed for a restraining order to prevent the designation of that land until more information could be gathered.  However, the State Supreme Court rescinded that order, and it looks as though designation hearings will go on apace.  The fight isn't over yet, as the petition will now be heard Water Quality Control Commission. 

According to the AP story, the only two areas currently under the "outstanding natural resource waters" designation, the Rio Santa Barbara and streams in the Valle Vidal area.  A quick review of the Google and a little local knowledge make me tend to agree with those to designations, at least on the surface.  Both areas are high-mountain watersheds in the Sangre de Cristo range, and probably do little but make good camping areas and then get that water somewhere else more useful.  There's no information on where all of the areas listed in the new petition are, so I can't comment on that one, although there are bound to be more than a few that might infringe on grazing lands (despite claims from the Environment Department that grazing will be unaffected).  It's also not exactly clear whether all of the land is contained within "federal wilderness areas," or if that just refers to the location of the wetlands.  More to follow, to be sure. 

Whether it's grazing in federal wilderness areas, or farming and ranching on lease land around on military-owned land around a military range like Pinon Canyon or elsewhere, it's going to be an incredibly touchy subject.  After all, peoples' livelihoods are at stake, however not only do they not have property rights, but the land is owned by the folks who make the rules, run the courts, have bottomless pockets, and always have eminent domain to fall back on.  Sometimes, it seems land is for fighting, too. 

Friday Roundup and Open Thread

Today's roundup is a little thin, partly because it seems to be a fairly slow news day for rural issues, and partly because we really got going on silage in earnest this afternoon (so I haven't been home much today). Nevertheless, I hope something here is of interest to you, and that you have a good weekend.

First up is a story from our friends in Canada. One frequent complaint among farmers is that a large percentage of non-rural people think their food magically appears at the supermarket, and are ignorant of what it takes for it to get there. Thirty-five farms in Manitoba have signed up for a project to help alleviate this problem in Canada: on September 19th, they will be available for public tours during the province's first Open Farm Day. According to one participating farmer, "It's very important because it connects people back to what they eat. It's just a good think [sic] to see that, okay this chicken running around is now roasted chicken dinner on a Sunday." Indeed.

If you read my "Subsidiarity" post a while back, you might remember my reference to farm subsidies as a Faustian bargain. Well, the Iowa Farm Bureau may agree with that assessment. In what Brownfield news refers to as "to our knowledge, the first time a farm group has made it part of their policy," the organization passed a resolution calling for the end of direct subsidy payments to farmers and their replacement with an improved revenue insurance program that would cover both crops and livestock. Interesting, but I predict they will gain little traction on this issue for the foreseeable future.

In the "perception is reality" department, The High Plains Journal reports that a Creighton University survey of rural bankers' economic optimism showed a decline for the second straight month. Contrast that with a story I linked to just over a week ago under the headline, "Reports show encouraging growth in rural economy," and what do you get? If you're like me, it's confusion.

Finally, Budget Travel magazine has released its list of "America's Coolest Small Towns." Sadly, there seems to be a pretty large "cool" dead zone in the middle part of the country, with Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and both Dakotas completely shut out of both the Top 10 and the "Best of the Rest." Hang in there, though, Midwesterners: football season has started, and hope springs eternal.

With that, have a good weekend, take care, and please say a prayer or two tomorrow in remembrance of those who died 9/11/01. They are not forgotten.

Thursday Roundup

Good morning, good morning, good morning! Welcome to the Thursday Round up. Let's get started.

I hate to start off a post with a story this depressing, but I believe there is no other issue of more importance. PJTV posted this video on illegal immigrations impact on ranchers and rural communities along Arizona's border. No matter what your stance on this delicate issue, immigration, this video is something that you must see. If you are to read (watch) one article from todays post, please make it this.

Coming up faster than we know is harvest, the holiday season and then the turn of a new year. Oh, the opportunities that new beginnings hold! Well, the new year also holds a surprise for producers as well. Okay, it really isn't a surprise because we all know it will be happening. What is it you might ask? The EPA's interim Tier 4 emissions regulation will be in effect. So no matter whether the tractor you drive is Red or Green, all new tractors will have to meet these stringent (ridiculously over stringent in my humble opinion) emission regulations. Click on the colors for information about what you will see from two leading ag equipment manufacturers, Case IH and John Deere.

Even though harvest keeps on rolling, we cannot keep it in the bins! There is some very strong demand for US ag commodities on the global stage from the effects of the Black Sea drought. The recent demand has caused supplies of commercial cash grain to slide by 2% this last week. This will be welcome news to farmers expecting to harvest a large corn and soybean crop this year.

Thank you for joining us here at the Rural Republic. I hope everyone has enjoyed their abbreviated work week and have a fabulous Friday-eve day.

Wednesday Roundup

Well, the good news is that we all made it back safely from our whirlwind trip; the bad news is that I am still working on my upcoming post. Like the exchange students along with us, I wasn't quite able to finish my "homework." If you look carefully at today's roundup, though, you may get an idea of what I've been reading up on.

The Daily Yonder has some fairly interesting analysis of a new Bureau of Labor Statistics report on unemployment in rural areas. Using the author's somewhat tounge-in-cheek nomenclature, most of the Great Plains falls into the "What Recession?" category of low unemployment. What the post fails to mention is that much of the area has seen a steady population decline (as I discussed here), so there are fewer people to do at least the same amount of work. And only people in my family (including myself) seem to be crazy enough to move back out here without a job lined up in advance. Still, the unemployment levels look much better here than what they have in much of the South, where many counties are saying, "What Recovery?" instead.

According to The Dallas Morning News, the problem of high unemployment is contributing to excellent results for military recruiters - particularly in rural areas of the South. The article quotes the Department of Defense's data, saying "Southern states account for 36 percent of the nation's young adults... but provide 41 percent of the nation's recruits."

If some of those rural recruits would like to get into farming when their service has ended, they may be able to get some assistance, according to DTN/The Progressive Farmer. The University of Nebraska-Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture (NCTA) has a relatively new program - available to young veterans from anywhere in the country - called "Combat Boots to Cowboy Boots." A major goal of the program is to help revitalize rural areas by "send[ing] students back to the farm as owners instead of as hired hands."

Other young people may want to stay involved in agriculture, but may not be able or willing to directly work on the family farms many of them hail from. Another DTN article reports that these types of jobs are actually going through something of a boom, with a high demand in the industry for young adults with a practical familiarity with farming. One drawback to this is that, while the jobs may be related to agriculture, more often than not they are not in the small, rural communities that would be grateful to see their young people return.

The people replacing some of those young people, according to a Wall Street Journal blog could be... lawyers. A blogger on the legal profession named Eric Cooperstein is cited as encouraging lawyers to consider moving to the country, writing (among other things), "The folk in small towns sometimes get divorced, commit the occasional DWI, and get in car accidents. They need local lawyers and they do not want to pay for some lawyer from the city to drive out to the rural courthouse to represent them."

With that in mind, let me leave you with this thought from Will Rogers (with a wink toward my attorney friends): "Make crime pay. Become a lawyer."

Monday Roundup

Greetings Rural Republic goers and happy Labor day! I hope y'all are enjoying the extra long weekend. Here's a little back ground to the holiday that people have come to see as the signal that Summer has ended and that Fall in all its glory, Football, harvest and post season Baseball, is upon us. Growing up in rural America on a farm, all I can basically recall is that it was just another day with work to be done. So we celebrated our holiday by, you guessed it, laboring! Now to the stories of the day...

As harvest rolls on across the fruited plains, a new yield report has been released by Informa. The new yields could have a substantial impact on grain prices. It also leads nicely into the next story.

As the world watches commodity prices climb the UN has called a meeting over the looming concerns that food prices will rise. The impact of the Russian export ban is still being felt along with anticipation of wheat yields from the southern hemisphere.

The quality and safety of our food is a major concern to us all. The latest egg recall illustrates just how delicate this balance can be. We charge todays farmers and ranchers to provide us with safe, quality staples and usually never give it a second thought. Recently the FDA has developed new guidelines for the judicious use of medically important antibiotics used in the raising of livestock. The Competitive Enterprise Institute illustrates how detrimental the new guidelines would be to meat production in this country. So as you grill up that burger today, remember to thank a rancher for supplying you with such a safe, quality and inexpensive product.

I hope y'all are enjoying the last of the extended weekend. I wish you the best of it with BBQ's, a little R&R and good times with friends and family. Thanks for joining us.

Weekend Roundup and Farmer Rig of the Week

Well, it's Labor Day weekend, but more importantly, this weekend marks the return of football season.  Part of the rural mentality is its tendency toward local patriotism, and to me, that's best represented by the attachment people have to their local teams, and the intensity of the "friendly" rivalries between schools and states. 

Speaking of local preference, Business Week has a story on the results of a study regarding a program in South Carolina supporting "SC Grown" labels of origin.  The study suggests that the program could create as many as 10,000 jobs per year.  While I'm skeptical of a number that large, it certainly doesn't hurt the sales of products.  Such programs are growing nationwide, spurred on by the conjunction of the "local food" movement and economic interests.  While I don't necessarily entirely agree with "local food," that such labels support agriculture is undeniable.  It might even bring people a step or two closer to their food; when they can recognize where their steak or vegetables came from, they might even have to recognize that they came from a farm.  And that's a good thing.

More on highway funding.  Bloomberg reports that highway funding does more to support rural transportation than urban transportation.  That's not surprising, given two obvious factors: The first being that the cost of living to support construction crews is often lower in rural areas than in urban ones, and the second being that in rural areas, diverting traffic is a matter of adding a little width to the road, while in urban areas, it could be a function of closing down and diverting multiple major arteries to repair one overpass.  It's good to consider, however, when you're looking at transportation funding numbers.

WANE-TV in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, is reporting that farm incomes in that state are likely to increase this year as much as 20%.  This is expected as a result of normal economic factors, such as lower costs of fuel, fertilizer, and other consumables, in addition to the fact that China is buying US corn for the first time in 15 years.  While global trade has its disadvantages in an industry where the cost of labor plays such a major role in price, it has its advantages in opening markets and expanding the number of consumers, as well. 

Finally, every week, I want to add a new segment to the weekend roundup, highlighting the ingenuity and resourcefulness of farmers everywhere.  I call it the Farmer-Rig of the Week.

Photo by Sky News

We've got two entries, though neither are pure farmer-rigs.  First is an AP story on retro-fitting rollcages and seatbelts in older tractors to increase farm safety.  I'd say not being crushed by a few tons of tractor is a good thing.  Second is the tale of The Police Tractor.  From Sky News, police in Lincolnshire, England have created a police tractor.  They won't be engaged in any high-speed chases, or hunting down criminal cow-tippers, however.  The idea is to go around to local rural gatherings, and use the tractor to display their interest in fighting rural crime.  I'm not sure how effective that will be in actually fighting crime, but it's a pretty cool rig, if you ask me. 

Have a great weekend, everyone!  If you're traveling, drive safely!  Have fun rooting for your teams!

Thursday Roundup

Greetings fellow blog goers! It is Thursday and only one more workday remains between you and a nice, long three-day weekend. But first, here's what is happening today.

This story saddens me. Growing up rural, each and every year I would look forward to the county fair. Animals, parades, questionable carnival rides and time spent with friends hiding out in the equipment on display were all apart of the excitement. But I'm afraid one fair tradition has come to an end. After 160 years the Michigan State Fair has been cancelled.

Speaking of fairs, the Colorado State Fair is underway in Pueblo, CO. Recently the it held the Colorado's Touchstone Energy Cooperatives Junior Livestock Sale which netted about $360,000 for youth. Check out how much the Grand Champion Beef went for.

The combines are rolling through the fields in the Corn Belt. Brett reported on this yesterday that harvest is ahead of schedule but is sooner always better? Doesn't seem so as yield reports are coming in lower than expected. I would sure hate to try marketing crops right now!

I touched on this possibility in Drought Sparks Wheat Prices Ablaze and it looks like we are at the start. It is thought that because of the drought in Russia the grain handling infrastructure would come under stress as soybean and corn harvest came under way. It is becoming apparent that this could hold true. The Gulf terminals, from where most corn is exported, are filling rapidly with corn. And we could see more stress on this infrastructure as demand for US wheat could rise as Argentinean and Russian wheat crops are hurt by drought.

That is all for today. I hope y'all have a good rest of the week and enjoy your three day weekend. I know I will. Cheers!

Tuesday Roundup

Happy Tuesday, everyone!  We've scoured the interwebs for some of the latest in news affecting agriculture and rural communities today.  So let's get started. 

First, a mandatory story about the salmonella outbreak and resulting egg recalls.  It turns out that the FDA investigated the farms in question after the outbreak, and found a whole slew of violations, including rodents near feed grain, flies and larval flies (maggots).  Who would have guessed those would have been found on a farm?  In all seriousness, there were likely some serious violations, particularly in sanitation practices.  But I think the media's going to blow this just a little out of proportion for a population that is shocked to find that mice like to eat grain and flies come from maggots. 

At a dual press conference in Wichita and Little Rock, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials touted a plan to improve the nation's transportation and freight capacity, focusing on rural roads and intercity freight.  From the Houston Chronicle story:
60 million people who live in rural America equal the population of the nation's largest 100 cities.

"Too often what we found, the needs of rural America ... are not understood," [AASHTO Director John] Horsley said.
...
The report notes that 66 U.S. cities with a population of 50,000 or more do not have direct access to interstate highways. The list includes Jefferson City, Mo., which is a state capitol. In Arkansas, Hot Springs and Jonesboro are on the list, although the state has the 12th largest highway system in the U.S., Arkansas highways director Dan Flowers said.
California has 19 cities on the list, Texas has seven and Georgia and Wisconsin have three each. No other state has more than two.
Many two-lane rural roads were constructed decades ago and don't have shoulders or emergency lanes. Three times as many fatal crashes occur in rural areas as in cities, so upgrades can be justified on the basis of safety alone, the association said.

Certainly, improvements can be made in much of rural infrastructure.  The difficulty of getting crops to market in a timely manner, and fighting with road and rail freight over the costs of doing so, has long been a major issue to farmers.  You can read the whole AASHTO proposal here. 

An aid package from Washington, DC directed to farmers in embattled Senator Blanche Lincoln's state of Arkansas might arrive behind schedule, according to Arkansasbusiness.com. You may or may not insert your own cynical comments regarding government largess appearing a couple months before a close election here.

On the international front, Voice of America news has a story about efforts to improve access to latrines in rural Cambodia.  Such forms of sanitation, that we often take for granted, could be had relatively cheaply and make huge strides in the health and indeed the economy of poor countries around the world.  This story is about latrines, but beneath it, it's always about access to clean water.  As Nick noted last week, water's for fighting over, and there's a reason for that. 

Finally....

No word on whether or not the landowner was out hunting when it was found, but the AP reports a farm in North Carolina recently uncovered a 65-carat emerald. Where would you move if you made such a discovery?  Beverly?  (Hills, that is)  Would you stay right where you were and keep digging?  Would you have some other plan? Let us know in the comments, and have a great day!

Monday Roundup

Happy Monday y'all! Here's the Monday open thread.

It looks as though the HBO movie "Temple Grandin" had a great night at the Emmy's. This wonderful biopic about the life of Temple Grandin illustrates her life growing up with autism and overcoming tremendous odds. Thanks to a mother who refused to give up and a teacher taking her under his wing, Temple has earned a doctorate in Animal Sciences and made tremendous contributions to the humane handling of livestock. And, I couldn't be more proud to have her working for my alma mater, Colorado State.

Food for thought: Artificial Meat? This is what some scientist are saying will be needed to support the earth's ever growing population. Even so, the Malthusian Theory has been in existence since 1798 and agriculturalist have always risen to meet the challenge. Will we be able to this time?

A member of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), a domestic terrorist group that uses violence to achieve an animal rights agenda, is set to go to court.

The Health and Human Services announced $32 million for rural healthcare to increase access to healthcare.

This just in: Producers believe that genetic modification will be the top technology needed to feed the world.

Have a wonderful Monday and a wonderful week! Cheers!

Weekend Roundup

Good morning, good morning, good morning! It is Saturday!

The big news story of the weekend, Hurricane Katrina's 5th anniversary. It's hard to imagine the devastation and even something else to witness it first hand. What I would like you to think about while you read the article is this, "how would a rural community react to this tragedy versus what we saw, and still see, from the Big Easy?" The difference I saw would blow your mind.

Despite the rally in commodity prices, the USDA sees very low inflation of food prices. Good news for consumers in the lovely economic times we are living in.

Yesterday, I attended the workshop sponsored by the USDA and DOJ on competition in the livestock market and the newly proposed GIPSA rules . Yep the Department of Justice. First time for everything. Quite an interesting day. Here's what you missed.

As food demand goes on the rise, what will become of the basic necessities needed to grow those crops? A once ignored industry has found its spot in the limelight, but what will be the impacts on fertilizer markets as a result?

As the old saying goes, "Whiskeys fer drinkin', waters fer fightin'," still holds true to this day. Water is an important issue to rural communities whether it be for municipal or agricultural usage. Here is a report on the Colorado Water Congress.

Well I hope y'all enjoy your weekend! Until next time, good afternoon, good evening and good night!

Thursday Roundup

Well good morning and a happy Friday-eve day to you all. Here are just a few tid-bits to get the ole gears a turning:

Animal agriculture came under attack yet again. The Humane Society of the United State and the Animal Rights 2010 Conference hosted Taking Action for Animals (TAFA). Good insight into their cause as well as some stellar quotes!

Farmers are gaining speed in the new #78 Farm American car. Even though Bristol is over and done, thought I would put this out on peoples radar. Sure to be more to come.

A memo from the Obama administration has surfaced and it isn't good. It reveals plans for the Federal government to seize more than 10 million acres! Not only would this be a tremendous blow to agriculture, but also to rural communities whose schools, fire departments depend upon funding from the tax revenue the land generates.

Out in rural America we don't worry about a commute like our city cousin, but this is ridiculous. A 60-mile traffic jam! Officials are saying it could be backed up for weeks. It really makes you think about how incredible our transportation system and infrastructure really is.

Lastly, some food for thought, err, some thoughts about food. There is a lot of worry going around about the safety of our food and how horrible all those hormones in our meat can be. Check out this video and let Mr. Loos enlighten you.

Until next time, good afternoon, good evening and good night!