The current farm financial climate in Kansas has a lot of the same characteristics of the 1980s farm crisis. Then, as now, net farm income leading up to the farm crisis was near record levels but dropped very quickly.

Life is interesting. It’s been almost 34 years since my dad passed away, and I can remember things he said many years before while I’m forgetting what I went into the next room for five minutes ago. Someone told me that passing through a doorway causes the short-term memory to reset. I hope that’s my only problem.

Hello and Happy New Year’s from southwestern Virginia! I am Lance Phillips, and I’m pleased to be sharing some of my favorite old tractors and haying equipment through this column. I’ve been a pharmacist for almost nine years for a local grocery store chain that serves parts of four states in our area, and I do a little farming when time allows.

After a long season of making hay, preparing your hay and forage equipment for winter storage can seem to be a tedious and even needless chore. After all, what could possibly happen to a round baler or trailed mower as it hibernates in your machine shed?

The fall of 2016 was an extraordinary season in the stretch of country in south-central Idaho that I call home. After a dry summer, where we saw nary a drop of rain from the first of June through September, the heavens opened and we got nearly a year’s worth of moisture in the months of October and November.

In January, the National Alfalfa & Forage Alliance (NAFA) is kicking off the first-ever Alfalfa Checkoff – U.S. Alfalfa Farmer Research Initiative. The new checkoff is a farmer-funded investment in alfalfa-related research to help drive innovation and profitability in the alfalfa industry.

Harvest season has wound down, but hay markets have not yet heated up heading into the final month of 2016. Here’s a list of factors (some naughty, some nice) impacting hay producers and marketers as winter approaches.