by Ken RootAgricultural and business interests got a jolt last week as the Budget Reconciliation Deal of 2015 cut three billion dollars out of crop insurance. The drama was short lived as leaders promised to reinstate the reduction in payments to crop insurance...
by Ken RootI grew up in the 1950?s in rural Oklahoma. Although the region was settled only fifty years earlier, the thin soil quickly gave way to wind and water erosion. As a result, most farm houses established on homesteaded land, were empty. Weathered shells that...
by Ken RootAs we move into the fall season in the upper Midwest, Idyllic weather that floats over us for a few days or a few weeks each year. September?s chilly dawn comes later each day but it is stacked with colors from hazy gray at the horizon to magenta at mid sky...
JOHANNESBURG - The key thing I've seen in the northern portion of South Africa is that the farmers use dry weather to their advantage but also respect the characteristics of red soil that will blow away if given the chance.The landscape of farms is now popcorn dry....
?The issue is not about money, it?s about philosophy.?That has been the most descriptive statement I've heard from members of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees who are on the joint conference committee that has been trying to merge two very different farm...
We all remember where we were on that terrible day in 1963, if we were old enough then to have been aware and are young enough now to have retained our mental faculties.The Kennedy assignation was the end of innocence for America. It was the realization that we were...
I am amazed the ethanol uptrend lasted this long without antagonistic government action. I am amazed at how much ethanol we are currently producing. Now we will see if ethanol producers really start marketing and not just delivering a commodity to a guaranteed...
(Ken Root has just returned from an agricultural tour of Ireland. He has been leading groups on international trips for almost forty years but this was his first to the Emerald Isle.)Ireland is as green as they say. The sky is often cloudy, and rain is an almost-daily...
Family members walked down the center aisle of the small Catholic Church, each carrying a rose that they placed in a vase below the cremains of ?Granny Franny? whose life was being celebrated on this clear summer day. Her family, from husband James to great...
I met Larry Cleverley at the Downtown Des Moines Farmer's Market back in 2006 as he was selling a selection of salad greens and vegetables. A colorful, intelligent and articulate man with a certain edge is his demeanor made me realize that he had chosen to be where he...
