Food and Drug Administration to ban the use of leftover pet food in hog and chicken feed for fear it could spread mad cow disease because it contains cattle parts. Now hogs are contaminated with a chemical blamed for killing dogs and cats, and new concerns have arisen that the meat could enter the human food chain. Concerns over feeding and living conditions of livestock and poultry have helped fuel the growth of organic farming, which does not use meat byproducts and hormones in feed. The...

Department of Agriculture reported Monday that 55 percent of Nebraska's wheat crop is in good to excellent condition while only 11 percent is in poor or very poor condition. Last week's widespread and heavy rain has given farmers better soil conditions for planting corn and soybeans than they have seen since drought conditions began to emerge in 1998. Across the country, only 23 percent of the corn crop is planted, compared with 48 percent a year ago and 42 percent on average for this...

corn and soybean production and consumption during the 2007-08 marketing year will be important benchmarks, a University of Illinois Extension marketing specialist noted that considerable uncertainty will persist for several months. soybeans, along with large unshipped sales, suggest that exports for the year might exceed the current projection of 1.08 billion bushels," said Good. soybean crop will likely be based on the NASS report of planting intentions, the five-year average planted to...

As traders expected more corn planting progress than USDA published, beans were traded up and corn down amid expectations for more corn getting planted. In other news, South American weather has been less than ideal for corn harvest but serious problems have not been reported yet. It might be a good idea to price some corn now as it has now been two weeks in a row that corn plantings have not been what traders thought they should be. Argentine farmers made some progress last week in their...

You dont put bacteria genes into corn crops so you can grow acres of it to feed cows, pigs and chickens in feedlots so Americans can center every meal around meat. The scare thing about genetically modified plants is that they spread their altered DNA into other plants being grown for food and also into the wild. Raise your hand if you think its a good idea to splice genes from very different species into the the plants we grow for food. The rats who ate modified corn were found to exhibit...

As for other crops, there has been a "surprisingly fair yield" but it would have been much better if there was rain to go along with it, Teague explained. While many were glad to see sunny and dry weather through last winter and early spring, this area has seen so much of it that a serious drought has developed. The wheat crop was a total loss for grain, although the leaf and stem that can be used for livestock feed was salvageable. drought monitor report with southern sections of the...