Irrigation’s impact on agriculture during the drought of 2012
The drought of 2012 was the worst since at least 1988, spanning the entire Corn Belt, from Ohio to Wyoming, and costing the agribusiness industry billions of dollars.
The drought of 2012 was the worst since at least 1988, spanning the entire Corn Belt, from Ohio to Wyoming, and costing the agribusiness industry billions of dollars.
The way farmers use crop insurance has fundamentally changed — and that’s been costly for taxpayers.
Thanks to a drop in market volatility and grain prices, farmers may pay up to 10 percent less this year for crop insurance.
Nearly a year after China re-opened its doors to imported U.S. corn, one former U.S. representative is recruiting Illinois farmers into a mass-action lawsuit as plaintiffs. Thousands of farmers – along with major agribusinesses Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill – are suing the Swiss chemical company Syngenta for selling a genetically modified strain of corn in the United States before its approval by China.
Each summer, hundreds of seasonal workers leave their homes in Texas and Mexico and travel more than 1,000 miles north to work in the corn fields of central Illinois. Many of those hundreds make their way to Rantoul, a village of about 13,000 people in Champaign County and the summer home of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign football team's training sessions. As the sessions get underway in mid-August, the hundreds of migrant workers wrap up the first wave of agriculture work in nearby corn fields.