Regardless of your choice of radio stations, this week you can’t avoid commentaries regarding America’s Thanksgiving traditional protein source – turkey. As we have come to expect, HSUS and other anti-animal agricultural groups have weighed in with their own versions … Continue reading →

Driving to a site visit this morning in Northwest Iowa I went past quite a few country elevators. In the past with ‘normal’ yields there have been huge piles of corn stored on the ground at these locations, often 1 … Continue reading →

I have tracked the Iowa-Southern Minnesota live weight at slaughter (www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/NW_LS720.txt) for many years. My original interest was in defining the impact of summer heat as measured by the significant annual decline in sales weight for barrows and gilts that … Continue reading →

If you drive anywhere in the upper Midwest where there are pig production facilities you are bound to occasionally sense an ‘aroma’ in the air as producers apply a year’s worth of manure to agricultural lands. While there is still … Continue reading →