The U.S. Department of Transportation has removed a regulation meant to force trains carrying crude oil or other flammable liquids to adopt electronic braking technology by 2020. Electronically Controlled Pneumatic brakes — or ECP brakes — are meant to stop train cars and keep them from slamming into each other when a train derails. Illinois…
President Donald Trump’s administration will “unleash the power of E15,” allowing the 15 percent gasoline-ethanol blend to be sold year-round. The…
Josh Davis likes to name his pigs after flowers: Petunia, Iris, Violet and Daisy. That’s not the only thing that sets him apart as a hog farmer. For the…
Farmers and agriculture groups are digging through the details of the new North American trade deal, called the United States Canada Mexico Agreement,…
Michael McEnany always knew he wanted to be a farmer. Both of his grandfathers were, and he “always loved tagging along with my Grandpa Ed.” Both of his…
Congress has spent weeks trying to meld the House and Senate versions of the next farm bill into one agreeable piece of legislation. Left in the balance…
Recently, we received a question from Mark Porter, who wanted to know more about the state of state parks in Illinois.
Corn and soybean fields as far as the eye can see are the typical sights of summer throughout rural areas of Illinois. But next year, ‘fields of green’…
Gary Smith has worked at the grain elevator at Okaw Farmer’s Co-op in Lovington, Illinois, for forty years. On his desk sit two computer screens, where…
An increasing number of farmers is using cover crops to keep water, soil and nutrients from running off fields. But while many studies have shown the…
The details of the federal government’s $12 billion aid package for farmers affected by trade disputes are out — and soybean farmers are the major…
Thirty-eight calves, between two and four months old, moo and kick at the dirt floor in a steel barn in Brush, Colorado. One by one, a handler leads…
Jenn Glaser lie in bed with a severe pain in her right hip. In the last few days a large abscess had developed under her skin–an infection from injecting drugs. After six years of heroin addiction, Glaser had had many of these but always managed to take care of them on her own. She avoided…
New research suggests that no-till farming could help mitigate climate change. A study from Iowa State University, released Monday, examined Midwest land use between 1850 to 2015. As agriculture and the practice of tilling spread, less carbon was being stored in the ground and more was going into the atmosphere. That added to the carbon…