An Aug. 31 windshield cruise around northeast Iowa showed many yellowing areas in otherwise still-green soybean fields.  Uniform yellowing and leaf drop indicates maturity, but the patchy areas can offer signals of nutrient deficiency, too much or too little moisture, or disease symptoms.  A current and knowledgeable report on how to read the signals was recently […]

The Patriot Post has a clear summary of a federal judge’s injunction against the Environmental Protection Agency’s “over-reach” in its latest regs tightening the Clean Water Act. Somehow, EPA has interpreted “navigable waters of the United States” to mean anyplace outdoors which might get rained on. Judge Ralph Erickson of the District Court for the District of

  These are links to previously posted reports relevant to what you grow on the farm, and how you grow it. Each link will take you to the original article, unless the original website has removed its report.  These links appeared earlier in our “Healthy Farming News” section on the home page.   Farmers joining human

German ag minister Christian Schmidt has sent a letter to all states within the country announcing his intent that Germany will “opt out” of genetically modified crop cultivation, using new European Union provisions allowing that action. This move follows a similar ban announced by Scotland. Until now, Germany has tightly restricted cultivation of GMO crops,

Plunging stock markets, disappearing debt and weakening currencies have encouraged investors to buy about $25 billion in U.S. farmland over the past decade. A small slice of that cash has come from investors keen to own land managed with “sustainable” technologies: non-GMO diversity instead of chemical-dependent, biotech monocultures.  We expect those ecologically mission-minded investment firms

Finally, a research organization has assembled a virtually complete spectrum of information on glyphosate’s health effects — and published it in a single, well-written document. The 80-page report, titled “Banning Glyphosate,” was released Aug. 20 by the Institute of Science in Society. You can review it at this link. Eight world-recognized researchers cooperated to assemble a