Guest Blog

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has issued its Federal Automated Vehicles Policy. Although this policy applies solely to on-road vehicles, CNH’s recent introduction of a concept autonomous tractor suggests that NHTSA’s policy may have agricultural implications too.

The holiday season will soon be here, that time of year when belts shrink and stretchy pants become your best friend. The big three of holiday celebrations come one after another, with scant time for the waistline to recover.

Of all the farming projects I’ve undertaken, our home garden has been the least profitable.

Prussic or hydrocyanic acid (HCN) is a natural compound that can sometimes build to toxic levels in plants. Among forage crops, plants in the Sorghum genus (including sudangrass, forage and grain-type sorghums, sorghum-sudangrass hybrids and johnsongrass) are most likely to cause this problem.

Being very small farmers, we don’t own brand-new equipment. The men of my family are good mechanics who can keep older machinery running rather than spend the total worth of every crop we’ve harvested in the past 15 years on anything straight off the assembly line.

Plants can be affected by micro-organisms of several types including bacteria, viruses and fungi. Most have what scientists refer to as “perfect” reproduction, i.e., spores are released into the air and can then move to other locations and other plants, resulting in infection at new locations.