For many beef producers, preparing for the onset of calving includes assessing what vaccines should be given to newborn calves to ward off infectious diseases. A better approach may instead be to assess the what threat are important at that age, and formulate a plan to protect against those …

Within the dairy and livestock industry we spend a majority of our time focused on animal comfort and care. We know this is extremely important, we also know that it is vital to the success of our operations and is highly valued by consumers. But let me ask you this, how much emphasis are we…

Sitting on my couch with a cup of coffee, I look out my picture window and see a beautiful glistening blanket of snow. It seems like every other day South Dakotans are seeing a flurry of snow. It is piling up all over. One might be inclined to look out and say, “Oh no, not again. What is thi…

I glanced at my alarm clock one morning.

02/19/19 — The U.S. and China have been negotiating on trade for the past 80 days, working to come to some agreement on trade issues between the #1 and #2 economies in the world. However, to date, the elusive agreement has not been reached, and both sides are running out of time to reach an …

This week I was prompted to think of times in the past when our country made major changes to our society in order to avert disaster. All the instances I can think of were in response to an immediate threat. Most of the time that threat was a war.

Many corn and soybean producers have an additional crop insurance decision to make by March 15, which is the deadline to purchase federal crop insurance coverage for 2019. The supplemental crop option (SCO) crop insurance alternative was included in the 2014 Farm Bill and will be continued i…

Editor's note: To commemorate the passage of the Smith Hughes Act of 1917, Mr. Hanson has written a historical summary of events that occurred in the South Dakota agricultural education program. Over a two year time frame a series of articles will share how the South Dakota program originate…

It is a busy time of the year for all of us instructors at the South Dakota Center Farm/Ranch Management. We worked closely with our producers throughout the year on keeping the bookwork up-to-date. Once the income and expenses have been finalized for the year and the balance sheet completed…

Blowing snow boiled across the road, creating the illusion that the highway was a cascade of milk. The sky was clear, and visibility was excellent. That is, down to about a foot above the road, where visibility was zero. Were it not for the reassuring rumble of rubber on asphalt, I could hav…

For those of us who have slid, shoveled, and skated through the wildest up-and-down February weather in years, here’s a warm thought: corn planters are rolling in southern Texas.

Q I want to start some cuttings from an American elm. Got any pointers? Timing to make the cuttings? Do I need to constantly mist the cuttings or just the soil? Temp – air and soil? Any and all info is greatly appreciated.

The new year now feels old once you get into a busy season like calving. There are many spans of time in cattle country that can make us feel there’s too much to do, or too little time in each day.

“Wow, score!” I thought to myself as I reached for a cookbook with more than 1,600 recipes from 17 countries.

02/12/19 — This week top U.S. trade negotiators will be in China, negotiating a trade agreement with China that seems more important than any other fundamental in the marketplace. After all, Friday we had a ‘two-for-one’ USDA report that cut world production of grain a lot (5 mmt soybeans in…

The South Dakota House of Representatives passed a bill Monday that would create procedures to regulate the growth, transportation, and processing of industrial hemp, which was authorized in the 2018 Farm Bill.

One of the issues that intrigues us as agricultural policy analysts is the factors that influence crop prices over long periods of time. Recently we decided to seriously examine corn prices. While agriculture was important in the early history, it was not until 1862 that the federal governme…

Sometimes, when you think about what a small percentage of our population is involved in agriculture and the even smaller percentage involved in livestock, you might ask why that is.

While many of you are in sire buying mode this time of year, more are deciding whether this year’s bull calves retain the ability to become sires.

The latest USDA crop production report and the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report were both released on February 8. These reports were originally scheduled to be released in mid-January; however, they were delayed by the partial shutdown of the Federal government. …

Everybody talks about the government, but nobody does anything about it. That statement has been true ever since the first barely-sentient creature slithered out of the primordial ooze and filed the paperwork to start a campaign finance committee.

The President of the United States should not be the only federal official required to offer the nation’s citizens an annual report on the “State of the Union.”

If you’ve raised beef cattle for any length of time, you’ve likely encountered the heartbreak of losing a young calf out of a good mother. Calves get stepped on and break their legs, get caught out in freezing cold, or drown in a stock dam. Things happen.

Q I have a friend who has voles in her yard, and it sounds like a lot of the yards in St. Onge. What can they do about them? I think it is funny, but the voles are active this winter, under the snow.

“What should I make for dinner?” I asked my older daughter when we were at the grocery store on a very cold February day.

In last week’s column, I implied that my life has turned out pretty well despite graduating college with a degree in English. I should have mentioned that has mostly been due to my lovely wife.

02/05/19 — We turn the clock over to February this week, and that means it’s outlook time, with USDA in late February typically providing their Ag Outlook for the coming year for crops and livestock. We’ve basically had five good crops in a row, with above trend yields now going on some kind…

With the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill in the rearview mirror, it’s an appropriate time to look at farm bills and other factors that have an impact on the farm economy over a longer period of time to see what they might tell us about the next four years. It turns out that the two events in t…

As an instructor with the South Dakota Center of Farm/Ranch Management (SDCFRM) program, I am not sure I am proud of the title of this article. In the past few months, I have signed up a number of new clients and, after working with them the first day, they tell me, “Where were you five year…

There are those who believe that our Valentine’s Day tradition began in 1620 when Rudolph Valentino, weary and bedraggled from his heroic journey to a local shopping mall, stood on Plymouth Rock and, reading from the original Magna Carta, proclaimed, “Every man shall be free to determine the…

Let’s start with two terms and their definitions that are drawing increased attention in U.S. agricultural circles

When Internal Revenue Service (IRS) workers returned to their jobs Jan. 28 after the recent, 35-day government shutdown, an estimated five million pieces of unopened mail awaited.

Dear readers,

During the next few weeks, many farm operators will be finalizing their crop insurance decisions for the 2019 crop year. March 15th is the deadline to purchase crop insurance for the 2019 crop year. Profit margins for crop production this year remain very tight, which makes the 2019 crop ins…

Can you find your pulse?

Question from a reader

When I was young, I loved books. I couldn’t stop reading them. I’d read them on the bus to and from school. I’d hide them under my desk in class and read when the teacher wasn’t looking. My favorite thing to do was read by flashlight under my blankets late into the night, long after my paren…

01/29/19 — This week on Jan. 30 and 31, the lead Chinese negotiator Liu He and a team of a dozen negotiators will come to Washington to continue the trade negotiations with the Trump team led by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Recall this wh…

Crop producers are now in the process of doing their crop income and expense estimates for the 2019 crop year. One of the big questions for farm managers is whether to expect any ARC-CO payments from the 2018 crop year in October this year. For the 2017 crop year, very few counties received …

Do you ever buy, or receive as a gift, a tool that you are apprehensive of using? Today, I’d like you to search your farm management “toolbox” for anything that is similar to being stashed underneath wrenches in a tool chest or may still be by your chair from Christmas gift exchange. I am of…

Travel south from our area and you’ll eventually find yourself among people who are very different than us. People who, when they hear the words “ice fishing,” envision retrieving the cubes from their mint julep.

While most cow-calf operations are still in waiting mode for calving season, many sheep producers are, or soon will be, up to their eyeballs in new lambs.

In general, daylilies are very tough plants. The wild ones are sometimes called ditch lilies, because that is where they like to grow. They like lots of sun, like they would get growing alongside a road with no trees. It is very important to select a sunny spot to plant daylilies. They will …

There was no “shutdown”—not in the U.S. government sense, anyway—on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth.

As I pushed a cart through a retail store, my husband motioned for me to join him.

A while back somebody asked me why I haven’t written one of those articles that challenges people’s thinking in a while? I shrugged and said I really didn’t know that I hadn’t, but I’d do my best to come up with something. So, I pose the question in the headline as an opportunity to think cr…

01/22/19 — The market seems to have a case of the winter blues here in January. Not much movement in the markets so far in 2019, but what movement there has been has been mostly positive. Negotiations between the U.S. and China on trade are ongoing, and that is a positive development for agr…

The caller told me in clear and certain terms that he didn’t like what I’d written in an Agweek news article: that many U.S. farm organizations and commodity groups are deeply concerned about disruptions in American ag exports. “Fake news,” the caller said.

During our interminable Northern winters – when it’s so cold outside that liquid nitrogen stays liquid – it’s difficult to get the amount of physical activity recommended in the Federal Exercise Directives – Ultrathin People (FED-UP) guidelines.

Just about all gardeners know of someone that says that they have a “black thumb” and cannot keep any plant alive. In fact, maybe some of you reading this article sometimes feel that way. I wrote about someone that felt that way when trying to keep their poinsettia alive. Poinsettias are “su…