The Agriculture Council of America (ACA) calls on ninth-grade to 12th-grade students to submit an original, 450-word essay or a two-minute video essay about the importance of agriculture. This year's theme is "American Agriculture: Feeding the Future, Filling the Gaps" and the deadline is Feb. 1, 2012. The ACA asks teachers and parents to encourage student participation.

For most of us, April 27 of 2011 was just another day of a bucolic spring. Pasture was turning green for stockers, cows were delivering the last calves of the spring crop, the CME Feeder Cattle Index was dropping below $135, and we were carping about either the price of gasoline or the price of corn. But for residents of Alabama, April 27 was filled with sirens, dozens of dark funnel clouds and, when the day was over, 247 fatalities and 23,553 homes lost.

Enforcement action by the Internal Revenue Service has actually increased in recent months in the farming and livestock field.

Estate tax planning has never been an art of certainty, but the last two years have brought about a new era of uncertainty.

Seeing a family business successfully transfer from one generation to the next is a goal of many that is, unfortunately, achieved by only a few.

Beef consumption in Argentina registered in 2011 its lowest per capita total in 53 years, having dropped approximately 50 percent from 216 pounds in 1958 to 106 pounds last June, according to the Institute for the Promotion of Beef. “One of the motives was the 2009 drought and the other that cattle breeding profits have plummeted. Farmers turned over to soybean, which is far more rewarding,” said Gonzalo Alvarez Maldonado, IPCV president.

Feed costs have been in an increasing pattern since 2007. The cattle industry has been slowly adapting to these new economics.

From an 11-year-old who buys a steer at his county fair and donates it to the local food bank, to a high school senior who buys a heifer at her county fair to benefit a memorial scholarship fund;