If the last few days of mid-May are any indication, this summer could be a real scorcher. While some don’t venture outdoors much except on weekends, for many outdoor work continues as usual.

John Montgomery 

While Gov. Sam Brownback's modern-day version of the Homestead Act is a good incentive to get people to move to parts of Kansas now suffering from severe population decline, reviving the state's rural communities is going to take a serious and comprehensive job growth plan, too.

Recently I received a call where the client had found an abandoned baby squirrel in the yard.  “What should they do with it” was the question they had for me. 

Vance Ehmke points a lot of fingers in his recent column on crop insurance fraud. By doing so, he paints farmers as thieves. I disagree.  I am a farmer who is past president of the National Corn Growers Association, and am still active in farm policy issues. I farm in eastern Kansas, and this issue affects us all. 

          All welcome the resolute posture the GOP has taken exposing the future insolvency of social security and Medicare. 

Personally, I would like the Congress to consider broadening the source of funding for this critical need.  Surely, the requirement of funding the elderly in their last fifteen years could be handled differently.  Why require just the laborer to contribute to a national benefit?  Land, labor, capital, and management are the sources of revenue enjoyed by our citizenry.  Why not lower the requirement to labor and spread this through all sources of revenue coming to our citizens? 

Wheat and More….or less

Remember the old saying…you can’t trust a dog to watch your lunch.

One step closer to cold tolerance in sorghum.

Recent research funded by the Sorghum Checkoff is getting closer to finding cold and drought tolerant sorghum hybrids that could help increase sorghum yields in the future. World Food Prize winner, Gebisa Ejeta of Purdue University, is working on a project to develop a commercialized cold tolerant sorghum hybrid. The objective of this project is to transfer cold tolerant genes from a Chinese cold tolerant line to selected sorghum inbred lines to create a hybrid that can germinate in cooler soil. This will give sorghum farmers a longer growing season and potentially increased yields. South Dakota sorghum farmer, Jerry VanZee, said although research takes time, the Sorghum Checkoff’s work with researchers is helping to bring more profitable hybrids and better management tools to growers. “Cold tolerance is a big step for sorghum,” VanZee said. “Here in South Dakota, as well as some southern states, we could get a lot more out of our sorghum if we could plant a few weeks earlier. This type of research will help make sorghum more profitable to grow.”

By Daryll Ray

For most of us of a certain age, the experience of the agricultural sector in the 1980s is seared into our minds. The average value of all US farmland had relentlessly increased from $82 an acre in 1954 to $823 per acre in 1982 - the best land was selling in the vicinity of $3,000 per acre. Beginning with the explosion of the export markets in the early 1970s, US farmland prices increased at double-digit rates from 1973 to 1981.

KANSAS JOURNAL

TRIBUNE - Sunday night, Christy Hopkins took the first of her malaria pills.