Some of you have been with me long enough to remember my early days at DTN. The company was on its way to the top of the ag media industry led by its Editor-in-Chief Urban Lehner. Urban joined the company in mid to late 2003, and if I recall the story correctly I was one of his first hires. I’ve talked about the memorable job interview I had with Urban in November of 2003, at a Cracker Barrel [...]

Later today, January 10, 2025, USDA will release its annual data dump that includes monthly grain supply and demand guesses, annual crop production (the “final” numbers until changed again), quarterly grain stocks estimates (as of December 1, 2024), and winter wheat seedings. We know the time for this annual silliness because the usual posts talking about the high anticipation of the event is already starting to float to the top of the cesspool we know as social media. [...]

Anyone who has seen the classic holiday cartoon “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is familiar with the scene when Linus takes the podium, says “Lights please”, and proceeds to tell the nativity story from the Gospel of Luke. Fewer of you are likely familiar with another story of a historic figure, this one actually born on December 25, reportedly. (I wasn’t there. I can’t verify this as a certainty.) See if this sounds familiar: “Medieval, in some disrepair, the [...]