This Week in Ag #43
12.04.2023 Fred Nichols

This Week in Ag #43

December 8th is #NationalChristmasTreeDay. This of course sets up the great debate, real or fake? While every family weighs the pros and cons of choosing the Tannenbaum they rock around, a popular nation is that fake trees are more eco-friendly....

This Week in Ag #42
11.27.2023 Fred Nichols

This Week in Ag #42

What’s fueling regenerative agriculture? Sustainability, climate concerns, ESG-driven investors, soil health and heightened crop input costs are all major contributors. Another may be the shift in demographics. Millennials (born 1981-1996) recently passed baby boomers as the USAs most populous generation....

This Week in Ag #41
11.20.2023 Fred Nichols

This Week in Ag #41

This is American agriculture’s big week – Thanksgiving! Our celebration of food takes center stage on family dining tables from sea to shining sea. Not only do we honor the 1% who currently feed us, we also reflect upon the...

The Road to Sustainability
11.20.2023 Larry Cooper

The Road to Sustainability

“Sustainability is a way of thinking: At Huma® we’ve been thinking sustainably for over 50 years.” We make that statement at the top of the Sustainability section of our Huma® Website. And we stand by it. But what, exactly, does...

This Week in Ag #40
11.14.2023 Fred Nichols

This Week in Ag #40

I’ll never forget the sage words an old farmer told me when I announced my intention to start farming in the late 1990s. I explained that I was not leaving my marketing job and that I was also doing a...

This Week in Ag #39
11.09.2023 Fred Nichols

This Week in Ag #39

Clocks turned back one hour in most of the country over the weekend (a notable exception was Arizona). There’s a popular belief that daylight savings time was intended for farmers. Agriculturists are, of course, infamous early risers, said to awaken...

This Week in Ag #38
10.31.2023 Fred Nichols

This Week in Ag #38

When you’re carving your Halloween pumpkins this week, be sure to thank a bee. That’s because pumpkins are not self-pollinating plants. Unlike cotton and soybeans, where pollen produced within a flower fertilizes the ovary of the same flower on the same plant, pumpkins have...

This Week in Ag #37
10.24.2023 Fred Nichols

This Week in Ag #37

One of the greatest inventions in history is the combine. The concept of threshing and separating grain in one operation revolutionized our food system, as well as redefined our labor force. Consider that in the mid-1800s, 90% of the US workforce was...

This Week in Ag #35
10.10.2023 Fred Nichols

This Week in Ag #35

Last week I was a guest on the TopSoil Webinar series hosted by Mitchell Hora of Continuum Ag (you can check it out here). I mentioned how western growers seem further along in their regenerative agriculture journey. That’s largely driven by regional attitudes...

This Week in Ag #36
10.07.2023 Fred Nichols

This Week in Ag #36

#Harvest23 is in full swing. You probably have a sense of what farmers are currently doing. But what are farmers currently thinking about? Well, at this time of the year… A LOT!

This Week in Ag #34
10.03.2023 Fred Nichols

This Week in Ag #34

Earl Butz, one of the most famous and popular US Secretaries of Agriculture, once told me that a key competitive advantage for US farmers in the global marketplace is our built-in natural infrastructure. Our Great Lakes and river system is perfectly...

This Week in Ag #33
09.26.2023 Fred Nichols

This Week in Ag #33

In commodity crop production, we talk a lot about bushels per acre. Because that’s how farmers get paid. But what exactly does bushels per acre mean? A bushel is the unit of measure we use in the USA (other parts of...