OK...it's once again time for your audacious commentator to give his hot takes on the agriculture stories that will make news in 2021. This year I've enlisted the help of Homer Simpson who truly knows something about predicting agricultural events before they happened (witness the Simpson take on a
In a normal year we would be debating several worthy agricultural stories as the most important. We certainly would be taking a hard look at the continuing dicamba herbicide saga. 2020 saw the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit de-register dicamba formulations in the middle of the growing s
Movie plot: In a heroic effort to save the world's soybean crop from dastardly evolving weeds the Environmental Protection Agency authorizes Big Ag – staring Bayer AG and BASF – to unleash the flawed herbicide dicamba in a desperate all-out assault. The EPA acknowledges the holy h-e-double-toothpick
A couple of federal court cases working their way through California's appellate system spell big trouble for Big-Meat. Most recently the North American Meat Institute was slam dunked sideways by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on its effort to stop California Prop 12 from going in
In the history of our planet there have been five previous major mass extinctions. Now there's a sixth mass extinction brewing.... the Holocene extinction. The Holocene is comparable in scope to the one that wiped T-Rex and all his dinosaur brethern off the face of the earth. Until recently a majori
Last month our worst fears were confirmed after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a pair of COVID-19 safety violation related fines against Big-Meat giants China WH-group owned Smithfield Foods and Brazilian-owned JBS. Mismanagement at Smithfield’s meat packing plant in Sioux
As COVID-19 unrelentingly spread across the U.S. this summer it has become abundantly clear that our agricultural system – from farm to fork – can't handle a pandemic. The novel corona-virus exposed huge cracks in food processing and delivery that must be addressed by Congress.
Big Meat and Big Dairy have planted their flag on what they believe these food-wanna-bees can call their products. In their worldview words like meat, milk, and butter are verboten. And they’ve heavily lobbied states to enact laws restricting veggie-based-proteins and other meat alternatives from ca
There is one week set aside each year to salute newspapers for the important role they have played in our nation, a role that goes back to the beginning of
It’s no secret to anyone paying attention that the POTUS is the nation’s science and climate change denier-in-chief. It’s a given undisputed fact at this point. But sometimes behind the scene what government does compared to what the POTUS says are two vastly different things. Four years ago the 201
Now there's a chance to right some of these wrongs. Last month USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service published a proposed rule in the Federal Register looking to improve organic integrity. The National Organic Program; Strengthening Organic Enforcement rule aims to provide greater certainty for cons
Twenty years ago, when the death of 2-year-old Shelby Duis outraged Iowans, I was confident the Spirit Lake tragedy would soon bring change to our state.
I probably
