Most people don’t hold investment money in the Ag commodity space. That may be changing as investing in things like corn is made easier via ETFs — exchange traded funds. Jake Hanley with Teucrium explains the oftentimes complex commodities trading industry and how his company is simplifying — or ...

Fruits and vegetables have been bred over the past half century for the primary objective of transportability and shelf life. The tradeoff: taste and nutrient density. As marketplaces mature and consumers are afforded increasing food options in the produce section, might a play toward taste, nutr...

Most of the fertilizer applied to fields, doesn’t actually get absorbed by the plant. That’s an economic as well as environmental liability for Agriculture. Technological advances in adjuvants, fertilizer amendments and biologicals aim to change farming. In this episode of The Business of Agricul...

Frank Tiegs started farming in the Columbia basin region of Washington in 1975. Then he bought an apple packing facility. From there, the operation has expanded mightily to involve 140,000 acres of farming and 15 food processing facilities. Upon Frank’s recent passing, his son Keith re-joined the...

Indiana appears poised to become the twenty-fifth state to restrict — or outright ban — ownership of Agricultural real estate by foreign entities. Many people — from both within and outside of Ag — have been calling for such legislation. Currently, twenty four states have similar laws on the book...

A full three quarters of farmworkers in the U.S. are migrants and many are here illegally. Add in food service, meat processing, and the ancillary industries that feed the food business and you’re talking about a LOT of foreign-born workers who work to put food on America’s table. Is the migrant ...

In the last episode Todd Thurman joined Damian to cover a topic most in Agriculture have never considered: Are we permanently over supplied with Agricultural commodities? Pointing out the reasons demand won’t outpace - or even keep up with - our productive capacity, Thurman and Mason painted a pi...

We in Agriculture love production! For example, we’re producing about 50% more corn, soy, and pork than we did just a quarter century ago here in the U.S. The playbook for decades has been: find more global markets to peddle our commodities so we can keep doing what we like doing, which is produc...

It’s setting up to be a challenging year for farm economics. Add to that: it’s an election year, Washington DC is as dysfunctional as ever, and we still don’t have a Farm Bill — which was supposed to have been passed last year. What’s the outlook financially for farms. What about trade policy? Do...

Nationally, between 30 and 40% of farmland is rented to an operator from a land owner. But how are rental rates for this hugely valuable asset class determined? Are the rental rates fair? What causes variability in values? Howard Halderman of Halderman Real Estate and Farm Management explains the...

Kyle Beaver is a self-admitted Jack-of-all-Trades who, at age 25, turned a Google search into a mushroom business. Six years later he’s refining Ten Mile Mushrooms and launched a subsidiary. The business still grows some fungus for consumption but has morphed into a supplier of ready-to-fruit sub...

Agricultural trade events can be a lot of fun, but are they always valuable? And who are they valuable to? Brandon Wipf, South Dakota farmer and co-chair of Commodity Classic 2024, joins Damian Mason and XtremeAg’s Kelly Garrett to talk trade events. How do these two business-minded farmers get v...

Blake Matthews returned to the Idaho family farming operation twenty years ago. Upon his return, he began experimenting with a new array of products and practices, including bio-nutrients. First, he used bio-nutrients to help his sugar beets bounce back after applying glyphosate. He moved on to p...

22 years ago, immediately after graduating from college AND getting married, John Carroll and his new bride flew to Brazil to start farming. John’s family, with a farming operation in west central Illinois, had just purchased farm land in a newly developed Ag area of Brazil. Today John and his fa...

In Agriculture we generally have the perception that farmers as price takers are being short-changed as “middle men” make all the margin. While it’s popular to talk about “cutting out the middle man,” how realistic is it to actually happen? Ryan Moe and Todd Thurman join Damian to discuss who the...

Ag commodity marketing is too complex, largely misunderstood, and the industry is full of products and services you probably don’t even need to profitably market your grain. That truth bomb — along with many more — is courtesy of Joe Vaclavik of Standard Grain. Mr. Vaclavik, a former grain trader...

Interest rates appear to be stabilizing, wage and food inflation are still worsening, and predictions for America’s Ag sector are a bit dour for 2024. What’s going on at the macro-economic level and what does it mean for Agriculture? Compeer’s Chief Risk Officer, Bill Moore, joins Damian to discu...

Cost of production set a record in 2023 as the most expensive crops ever planted. How things turned out for the P&L statement depended on weather, yield, and how well operators navigated the commodity markets. Prices for land, labor, fuel, machinery, and crop inputs aren’t subsiding, nor is the i...

Canada is the world’s number one exporter of oats — a commodity enjoying an upswing in demand thanks to snack bars and oat milk. Did you know almost every bushel of oats goes straight to human consumption? With horse racing’s decline in popularity, human oat consumption is the key to future growt...

Calvin Koeller's Illinois farm operation is about to lose a couple miles worth of farm land to an electrical grid expansion. This new electric line project was defeated a few years ago but, with support from the Inflation Reduction Act — and some Illinois politics — the Grainbelt Express Electric...

Currently, pork profitability (or lack thereof) has certain observers comparing the industry to the late ’90’s when pork was in turmoil. It was that era, in fact, that set the stage for today’s (mostly) vertically integrated hog production model using contact grower farmers. Adam Krause, a contra...

If you’re in business, at some level, you’re in sales. So, how exactly would you rate your sales game? Do you ask the right questions? Is your product knowledge keeping up? Do you understand the needs and problems of the customers you seek to serve? St. John (“Sinjin”) Craner, a sales and marketi...

The Mississippi River is low and that’s causing shipping problems for Agriculture. Mark Milam with Independent Commodity Intelligence Services joins Damian to discuss issues of transportation, supply, and distribution of fertilizer for crop year 2024.

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The chasm between beef and dairy is being bridged as the two industries fuse in a trend that could be good for beef, dairy, consumers, the marketplace, and maybe the environment. The advent of sex-specific semen made a whole lot of dairy cow uteruses available. Meanwhile the beef industry needed ...