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Smithfield Foods awards 12 Impact Grants nationwide
Smithfield Foods has awarded more than $280,000 in Impact Grant funding to 12 nonprofit organizations working to strengthen communities where Smithfield employees live and work. These grants build on the more than $24 million Smithfield invested in 2025 to strengthen communities nationwide, including donating more than 16 million servings of protein to neighbors experiencing food insecurity. “Through our Impact Grant Program, we are proud to partner with local organizations that are addressing...
Finding positivity in a bearish ag marketplace
The January WASDE report typically moves the market with traders reacting to the final year-end numbers for production and supply. After a bearish report was released last Friday, the commodity markets have seen price movement to the downside in both corn and...
2024 farm equipment sales are looking to be a mixed bag
Combine sales closed out the year ahead of 2022 levels, while almost all tractor segments saw declines in both the United States and Canada. The latest data from the Association of Equipment Manufacturers shows total U.S. farm tractor sales fell 5.1 percent in...
USDA: Large family farms account for bulk of commodity production
Large-scale family farms accounted for a majority of the value of commodity production in 2022, according to a new report from USDA’s Economic Research Service. Specifically, these farms accounted for 51 percent of cash grains and soybeans, 56 percent of hog...
Looking at your farm budget with a different perspective
We know the story. It’s been the top of mind subject in farming for the past few years. Grain prices are slowly declining and crop inputs are slowly rising. That intersection is different as each farm has a different break-even level. As we enter this year, that...
Mom’s Meals continues to help Food Bank of Iowa fight food insecurity
Today, Mom’s Meals donated 4,000 shelf-stable meals to the Food Bank of Iowa to support its school pantry program. 2023 was a year of unprecedented demand for nutritious meals- in fact, 1 in 10 adults and 1 in 8 children face hunger in Iowa. Chris Choi, CEO of Mom’s...
El Nino and its effect on global weather patterns
If you’ve been keeping up with the weather reports lately, then you’ve probably heard a lot about El Nino and its impact on the current weather. Shane Hubbard, research scientist at the Space Science and Engineering Center at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that...
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Food Bank of Iowa receives donation of almost 240,000 eggs
Today, the Iowa Egg Council, Rose Acre Farms, and Hatch partnered together to make a generous donation of almost 240,000 eggs to the Food Bank of Iowa. This comes at a time when food donations are critical, as communities like Greenfield and Spencer are still...
Beef exports climb even higher while pork sits below last year’s pace
The value of U.S. beef exports topped $900 million in May, the highest since June 2023, according to data released by USDA and compiled by the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF). USMEF President and CEO Dan Halstrom said exports trended higher year-over-year to...
Vilsack says clock is ticking on passage of new farm bill
United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack says that everyone is on the same page with the goal of getting a new five-year farm bill done. However, he also says that time is getting tight for the completion of a new farm bill and is calling for all sides to...
Thirty million farm acres abandoned since 1986
In 2022, a University of Wisconsin study claimed that U.S. farmers had converted several million acres of pristine grassland and other “semi-natural areas” to cropland. Researcher Tyler Lark said that was in response to the Renewable Fuel Standard and ethanol...
High-tech equipment increasing demand for larger farm sheds
We talk at length about the changes we see in technology and the larger equipment we are seeing in the fields. While we focus so much on how the technology is changing the face of farming and how it makes us more efficient with our resources and inputs, we tend to...
