Pivotal Issues Blog

By: Dave Mowitz Farmer evaluators test a variety of the latest advances in shop tools. Here’s what they had to say about each. With a retail price of $649, the Wilton Tradesman vise had better be good. Wilton Tools, known to make the Cadillac of vises to the trades, claims the Tradesman 1765XC is virtually […]

By: Ray Bohacz For those of you who have seen more growing seasons than you care to admit, few things today are the same in farming. Procedures that 20 years ago were considered the norm are now relegated to nostalgia. Long gone are the days of moldboard plowing, walking the beans, cultivating between the rows, […]

By: Eric Prostko Not long ago, I watched an older interview of Georgia Bulldog legend Hershel Walker, who calmly stated that a football “ain’t that heavy” after carrying it 40-plus times during a game. The same might be said about field corn weed control programs. They ain’t that heavy either. Although the Southeast is not […]

By: Gene Johnston Some things about chemical drift are out of your control. They include wind speed, temperature, air inversions, and chemical volatilization. Rather, says Travis Legleiter, University of Kentucky Extension weed specialist, if drift has you worried, concentrate on the things you can impact. They include: Read More

By: Dave Mowitz At a recent dealer invention reduction sale conducted by Sullivan Auctioneers in central Iowa, I saw the bottom of the late-model large machinery market. At that auction, a 2014 Kinze 3660 ASD 12/23 planter that had covered 5,822 acres (pictured at right) brought $72,000. Next up was a 2013 Deere 1770NT CCS […]

Growing and producing a high-quality silage crop starts now. “With feed costs close to 60% of a dairy operation’s budget, the choices a producer makes now will not only impact the upcoming growing season but also profitability down the road,” says Jon Erickson, Mycogen Seeds commercial agronomist. Erickson offers the following tips for producers to […]

By: Gene Johnston If a calf does well early – even before he’s born – he tends to do well later. Mark Hilton, beef cattle technical services veterinarian for Elanco, says that if a calf doesn’t get adequate colostrum in the first day of life, he’s three times as likely to get BRD (bovine respiratory […]

By: Natalina Sents From how we get our news, to the way we keep in touch with family and friends, Facebook has transformed many of our habits since its start nearly 15 years ago. For farmers, the social media platform gives an opportunity to offer a glimpse into their operations, and lives, like never before. […]

By: Laurie Bedord When Paul Overby returned to his family’s North Dakota farm in 1993, he realized his operation would need a good set of records in order to manage the nearly 1,800 acres it covered. “I had my own computer and spreadsheet software, and I’d been using Money Counts for personal budget and finance,” […]

By: Raylene Nickel It’s no insurance against setbacks, but having a whole-farm plan in place can help your family stay on course when difficulties unfold. “It’s often tough to communicate as a family because you tend to focus so much on the day-to-day business operations of producing a commodity,” says David Marrison, Ohio State University […]