Spreading out from behind my home are acres and acres of farmland. As the year rolls around, it sometimes sways with deep green wheat, sometimes rustles with the leaves of soybean plants. I can just sit there on my back porch with a frosty glass in my hand, gazing at the amber waves of grain, and say, "'Bout time we brought in that wheat. I never got all this stuff about farming being a hard way to make a living. It's very pretty and obviously very productive, and it has been very easy to...

I learned that the easy part of becoming an organic grower is to stop using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to grow their crops. The very difficult task is to learn how to compensate for that change by building up the quality of the soil so that they can begin to compete with conventional farmers, in terms of revenue and profits. The soil in the organic field on the other hand has been improved so much that it not only produces superior crops, it is now almost impervious to the impact...

Wisner said the grain markets are offering 30 to 35 cents extra to store grain long-term, even up to 50 cents for delivery next July. When members of the Northeast Iowa Agricultural Experimental Association, which owns the farm, want to meet to find out the latest in crop research and marketing tips, they're often herded in a maintenance shop. On Thursday, members sat in the cavernous "classroom" void of modern technology for presentations and air conditioning to listen to Iowa State...

With more acreage going to corn, there s less acreage for wheat or soybeans, and that constrains supplies of those crops and helps keep prices up. It makes you wonder why producers of the major subsidized crops wheat, corn, soybeans, rice and cotton couldn t somehow also survive without federal handouts. The Agriculture Department predicts that net farm income this year will reach a record of more than $87 billion, nearly 50 percent above the previous year. Today, farmers constitute only...

The original barn and home still stand in the middle of the farmyard, along with modern silos, grain bins, and numerous calf huts. Loren does most of the planting, but Marvin is there to haul grain and help where he is needed. In fact, talking about cabs brought up one of his favorite memories of farming years ago being able to unthaw in the nice warm barn after a cold day in the field on a tractor without a cab. All of the equipment is kept so clean that Marvin and Viola commented on...

Clark has been in the farming business since 1983 and worked in an agriculture consulting business before that. Precision agriculture relies on information, technology and management to help farmers distribute the necessary fertilizer and chemicals in the specific areas that need them. Shannon Norwood, the multi-county extension agent for precision agriculture in north Alabama, said there are two main components of precision agriculture: the global positioning system and geographic...

The company, which is already marketing its products, is a new generation producer cooperative that requires a producer to be a member in order to sell to the plant. The company's primary product will be soybean meal, while biodiesel fuel will be one of the company's byproducts, company general manager John Nelson said during a Fort Scott Area Chamber of Commerce-sponsored ribbon-cutting ceremony for the business Tuesday at the plant. The company's primary product will be soybean meal,...

The grain is first crushed and fermented, followed by as many as three distillation steps. Are biofuels everything they're cracked up to be? Following the president's proposal, we would need 35 billion gallons of fuel if corn remains the primary source. n The exorbitant price of farm land has risen to a point where new farmers wanting to grow crops other than those for biofuel are squeezed out of the market. Since 70 percent of the corn grown is fed to livestock and poultry, this means...

While August s torrential rains left many flooded corn and soybean fields in their wake, the total impact may not become evident until harvest or even next spring. There are a lot of concerns about nitrogen losses, erosion problems, soil compaction and crop diseases, and we re going to have to wait and see what happens, said Mark Licht, a Carroll-based Iowa State University Extension field agronomist who conducted a crop scouting workshop in Rockwell City on Aug. There are a lot of...