Blake Hurst

Twitter-transmitted pictures of spring 2019 in the Midwest have made my feed a stream of continuous heartbreak. Video after video of flooded fields and homes, stuck tractors, ruined crops, with pictures of tornado damage serving as the visual exclamation point to the slow-moving disaster that we’re living in the central part of the nation. We’ve have several hundred acres under water on our farm, our fields are dotted with wet spots and ruts, and we’re the fortunate ones, given what I see on my social media feed. It is a helpless feeling to watch as farmers and homeowners throughout the Midwest suffer from this disaster of historic proportions.

Merry Christmas! Yes, I know I’m a few days late, but it’s been that kind of year. Everything has been late.

I think there is a fairly large contingent of journalists covering climate or agriculture or both who think we could stop climate change with a single admission by a major farm organization that the only logical reaction to increasing atmospheric carbon is abject terror.

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has announced plans to move the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture from their present homes in Washington, D.C., to somewhere, anywhere else but Washington.

The French grocery chain Carrefour has announced that they will be using blockchain technology to provide complete traceability for the products they sell.

The national media spent the last year sending reporters out to the middle of the country, trying to figure out what makes us tick.

The kids get on the bus every morning at 6:05. That’s because their bus ride in the tiny Alton school district in Oregon County, Missouri is an hour and a half long. 

“And wouldn't it be nice to live together, in the kind of world where we belong” -The Beach Boys.  Suzy Friedman, of the Environmental Defense Fund, has channeled the Beach Boys in her recent opinion piece in Agri-Pulse, writing a sincere and attractive description of the kind of world where we belong, and yes, it would be nice.

Thoughts on the Secretary of Agriculture needed to lead USDA in a Trump administration