During the harvest season you will see many semi-trucks and trailers on the road hauling grain to nearby elevators or farms.
A semi-truck refers to the actual truck, which has an engine along with a cab. Sometimes it’s also called a semi-tractor. A semi-truck engine has 350 to 600 horsepower.
A semi-trailer ...
Farmers use many tools to produce the food that ends up on our plates. Among them are crop protection products, also known as pesticides.
Crop protection helps control weeds, pests and diseases that starve food crops of the nutrients, sunlight and water needed to thrive.
Pesticide is a general term that covers ...
As you drive by corn and soybean fields you may see some signs at the edge of the fields.
Seed companies and farmers post these signs to promote their particular varieties of corn or soybeans. It’s sort of like having mini billboards in the countryside.
Some think that these signs are posted ...
The number of kernels per ear of corn is an important contributor to the grain yield potential of a corn plant. Ideal growing conditions and a hybrid’s genetics determine ear size and exceptional yields at harvest.
The number of kernel rows multiplied by the number of kernels per row equates to ...
Years ago detasseling corn was a common summer job for teenagers in our county especially since DeKalb was home to DEKALB seed corn and there were several fields of seed corn grown locally.
Then, most of the corn tassels were removed by hand. Today, machines remove most of the tassel, the ...
The DeKalb County 4-H Fair Livestock Show has been held at various locations over the years. For many years the 4-H Fair was held in conjunction with the Sycamore Farmer’s Club Jr. Fair and local Granges. The Sycamore Farmer’s Club Jr. Fair ran from 1940-2006.
From the early 1930s to the ...
Public health and food safety experts do not have any evidence to suggest that COVID-19 can be transmitted by food or food packaging.
The USDA provides this information pertaining to food safety during coronavirus:
Q: Can I become sick with coronavirus (COVID-19) from food?
A: We are not aware of any reports at ...
It’s June Dairy Month so let’s talk about how dairy cows are milked.
Many years ago milking was tedious; farmers milked cows by hand. The milk was collected in a bucket below the cow. As times changed, mechanization was necessary to produce more milk.
A mechanical bucket milker was created to make ...
Have you noticed changes in the food available at your grocery store? The COVID-crisis has impacted the supply of many foods. This has resulted in unavailability of some of your favorite brands, product shortages and even price changes from paper towels to meat.
There are many steps in the food supply ...
Most businesses were doing well before the coronavirus. Agriculture was not.
COVID-19 is just the latest in a string of misfortunes that have kept the farm economy down for several years: weather disasters, a trade war and even before that, commodity prices have been below the cost of production.
“None of us ...
