The old adage of farming being a “way of life” no longer rings completely true. Farming is very much a business these days, much like any manufacturing or service industry in town. Even the smallest dairy operations can show assets in excess of $1 million, as milk quota, in many cases with this size of unit, is the main contributor to the farm balance sheet.

The global food system needs to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels to succeed in feeding a growing world population, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said. “There is justifiable concern that the current dependence of the food sector on fossil fuels may limit the sector’s ability to meet global food demands. The challenge is to decouple food prices from fluctuating and rising fossil fuel prices,” according to an FAO paper published during the UN Conference on Climate Change.

In late January, the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association and the American Feed Industry Association (AFIA) jointly sponsored the International Poultry/Feed Expo in Atlanta, Georgia. It is truly one of the largest and most well-attended trade shows and conferences in the world. Now, you are probably asking yourself, why would a show about chickens and feed have anything that would interest a dairy producer? I used to wonder the same thing, but I have come to understand that an international show like this is a place for new ideas, technologies and production practices that form the basis for future adaptation in other species.

We’ve all heard of the Peter Principle, which states that “in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” One special flavor of the Peter Principle is something I call the Derek Principle (my apologies to those of you who share the name), after a brilliant software designer I once worked with, a young man who could apply his creativity and ability to work tirelessly toward the solving of some of the greatest technical challenges our company ever encountered. So skilled was he in the disciplines of coding, flowcharting and testing against all conceivable possibilities, that his manager naturally made the mental leap that Derek would make a terrific manager, able to lead and inspire others to the same high level of performance.

When you think of great communicators in history, who are some of the first people that come to mind? What do you think made them so good at sharing their message? Is it merely because they speak the same language as you do, or is it more than just the words they use? Of course, choosing the right words at the right time is at the heart of effective communication. But, I think most top-notch communicators are great because they know their message, their audience and how the two come together.

In the Supreme Court term which began in October, the court has been called upon to decide what is a religious minister and what is not, whether a GPS monitoring by police is a search or not, and whether the Congress can mandate that individuals buy health insurance or not. In the midst of those weighty decisions, it recently decided what a pig is. This tale begins with a cow. Early in 2008, undercover photographers for the Humane Society of the United States caught workers at a California slaughterhouse mistreating a non-ambulatory cow. It was shocking footage.