Dr. Jim Gerrish, well-known rancher, researcher, grazing educator, and co-founder of the Missouri Grazing School returns to Kansas this August to kick off Amazing Grazing II for Ruminants Great and Small. A workshop entitled "Ranch Management for Successful Winter and Year Round Grazing of Beef Cattle" will be held from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM [...]
By Tom Parker MCPHERSON, KS – Successful farming is all about timing, and for John and Karen Pendleton of rural Lawrence their start in farming couldn’t have been more auspicious. It was, everyone said, one of the best years for agriculture they’d ever experienced. Fields were green and lush from plentiful rains that turned crops [...]
By Tom Parker MCPHERSON, KS – If someone told Billie Chesney or Rebecca Hall they needed to meet this guy or talk to that person they’d track them down no matter how far apart or the amount of time it took, their journeys across the state shot through the bug-spattered windshield with a small video [...]
By Tom Parker MCPHERSON, KS - History has a way of repeating itself, which means that if military historians and strategists peer back far enough, certain precedents can be found to illustrate patterns and models useful for the prediction of the near-term future. Unfortunately, Dr. W. Chris King told members of the Kansas Farmers Union [...]
The last thing Roger Johnson expected when he knocked on the door of a ramshackle house in western North Dakota was to see the curtain part by the long blued barrel of a rifle. Johnson, then a credit counselor for a farm crisis program, was far outside of his normal territory. The farmer, an old [...]
By Tom Parker MCPHERSON, KS- The early 1970s were good times for American agriculture, with expanded exports to the Soviet Union creating higher profits for producers, stimulating rural economies and revitalizing farm implement manufacturing. News from the agricultural sector was generally upbeat. Then, on June 30, 1975, Time magazine ran an expose piece entitled “Dirty [...]
MCPHERSON, KS- “Celebrating the International Year of Family Farming” was the theme of the annual Kansas Farmers Union convention, held Jan. 3-5 at the Ramada Topeka Downtown Hotel and Convention Center. Farmers and ranchers from across the state convened to discuss policy, climate change, the farm crisis of the 1980s and how its memory still [...]
Well, no farm bill so far, surprise, surprise! Going to be 2014 before they finish it, if they finish it. If the conferees finish the farm bill I have a serious concern that the urban legislative vote will not vote for a farm bill that significantly cuts the nutrition program and I haven’t heard at [...]
TOPEKA, KS.- The public is invited to a screening of the documentary The Farm Crisis at 6:00 P.M. Saturday, January 4, 2014 in the Grand Ballroom of the Topeka Ramada, 420 SE 6th Ave. Narrated by NBC News reporter Harry Smith, The Farm Crisis examines the tragic circumstances faced by farmers for most of the [...]
TOPEKA, KS.- Kansas Farmers Union, the state’s oldest active general farm organization, will hold its annual convention at the Ramada Hotel, downtown Topeka, Jan. 3-4, 2014. “This is going to be a great convention,” KFU President Donn Teske said. “It will be, above all, fun, interesting, and educational.” During the two-day convention, an array of [...]
