Like many early small communities, Good Thunder, Minnesota, just outside Mankato, has its roots in agriculture. Named for a local Dakota chief, this town on the Maple River was a bustling center of commerce in the late 1880s. With an influx of settlers, the town boasted multiple churches, grain elevators, flour mills and hardware millinery stores. Other businesses took root in the growing town including…

In 1975, a young farmer from Watertown, Minnesota began his farming career. Born and raised on a dairy farm, his family has been a part of National Farmers since the early 1960s. Through his nearly 50 years of membership, he has produced dairy, grain and livestock commodities, and marketed them through the organization. He is now solely focused on growing grain. When National Farmers began…

Two longtime serving staff members in National Farmers Organization have passed away. Tim Ennis, 77, of Waukee, Iowa, passed away September 10. Doris McElwain, 88, of Corning Iowa died August 18. Ennis’s economics degree and farm background qualified him to join his National Farmers in the 70s. He worked for the organization for nearly 40 years. Tim grew up on a dairy farm near…

Greetings from the upper Midwest. Many September days the weather was picture-perfect, allowing good corn silage and soybean harvests. The corn fields dried down rapidly, and that job is largely in the rearview mirror. For the most part, the crop looked good considering the late, wet spring that we had. This area has been blessed with a bountiful hay crop with most farmers getting four or five cuttings….

Hoard’s Dairyman recently published its annual list of the Top 50 milk cooperatives in the United States. This year’s list had some bad news concerning farm numbers. Total membership in the Top 50 was down by almost 2,000 farms in a single year. No surprise there, I’m afraid. The 18th largest organization on the list bucked the trend, however. Its numbers for both members and volume…

Well, the attitude of fund traders continues to swing wildly in approximately three to four-month cycles. In August the Chicago Mercantile Exchange was just starting to crash, supposedly because the stock market had a big correction. The stock market recovered all of its lost territory in less than ten days. As of mid October, the CME live cattle futures is almost back to where it was on…