from an alternative point of view.
Good morning! Welcome to the February 19th edition of Farm News and Views. This is Bob Bragg.
A couple of ag headlines bring home how weather often has a negative impact on farmers and ranchers. For example, an estimated 300,000 head of cattle were drowned due to flooding in northern Queensland, Australia, last week. The heavy rains have followed a drought that has plagued farmers and stockman in that state for the past seven years.
Good morning! Welcome to the February 12th edition of farm news and views.
Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809, 210 years ago today, in Hardin County, in northwestern Kentucky. His father, Thomas, was a farmer who eked out a living on hard scrabble farms first in Kentucky, where they lived until Abraham was seven years old. After his father lost his farm in a land title dispute in 1816, they moved 100 miles northwest to Spenser County Indiana. His mother died there two years later, and his father remarried in 1819. Abraham grew up on the Spenser county farm, which probably helped form Abraham’s work ethic and character. In 1830, Thomas gave up on that densely wooded, hilly, and rocky farm, and moved his family, with help from his 21 years son, to Macon County Illinois, south of Decatur. Abraham then when out on his own and worked at a number of different jobs before practicing law and entering politics with election to the Illinois State Legislature in 1834.
Good morning. This is Bob Bragg with the February 5th edition of farm news and views.
Trade has been a hot topic in agricultural news over the past week. When it was reported last Friday that Chinese negotiators announced that China would purchase 5 million metric tons of soybeans, the futures markets reacted with a giddy uptick on soybeans. But by Saturday morning, the balloon had burst, because everyone realized that there was no time table associated with the sale. While 5 million tons of soybeans sounds like a lot of beans, the phantom sale amounted to less than 4% of 2018’s total crop of 4.6 billion bushels, and soybean exports to China are already running way behind the quantity of beans that U.S. farmers had sold to China by this time last year.