Another day comes to an end. Dinner with our boys was eventful, as always, sharing the new adventures of kindergarten and preschool while trying to catch up with the day’s events with my husband all at once.

“[Extrapolation] is similar to interpolation, which produces estimates between known observations, but extrapolation is subject to … a higher risk of producing meaningless results.” —Wikipedia article on Extrapolation

I flew my Mooney aircraft to the southeast corner of Nebraska, landing in Beatrice. While visiting a good friend there, I found myself embedded in the farm communities quite different than ours in Michigan. Let me describe my visit. Center pivot irrigation is king. And this year, especially so. Most crop fields are irrigated – and those that are not really suffered with the dry year. The dryland corn yielded 40 to 60 bushel corn, and the irrigated corn, while not yet harvested, is expected to be just under normal.

The Pennsylvania Soybean Board has awarded a $5,000 grant to the Center for Dairy Excellence to reprint the “Something to Treasure” brochure. Originally produced in 2011, the educational piece showcases the many contributions dairy farm families make to their local communities and economy. More than 30,000 copies of the brochure were distributed in the past 12 months.

Two Utah State University dairy experts are working to enrich knowledge in Azerbaijan, a struggling country with limited information about modern dairy practices. USU’s Kerry Rood and Allen Young made a summer trip to Azerbaijan, formerly part of the Soviet Union. Azerbaijan is 39 percent of the size of Utah, but has more than triple Utah’s population. Rood and Young traveled as part of a USDA Foreign Agricultural Service project aimed at helping the country upgrade its agricultural productivity and veterinary science program by bringing updated information to universities.

A federal study prompted in 2008 by a series of newspaper articles says Lower Yakima Valley dairies and several farms are "likely" sources of nitrates contaminating private drinking water wells. However, federal officials said the EPA study was limited and doesn't prove a larger trend of nitrate contamination across the entire 576-square-mile area southeast of Yakima, Washington. Nor does it blame the region's entire nitrate problem on the dairies.

A new report by U.S. and Mexican researchers suggests an uptick in the number of illegal migrants headed to the U.S. in the first half of 2012 and a slight decrease in migrants returning to Mexico. The report says the U.S. Mexican migrant population appears to have stabilized and may be growing slightly. According to the report, "the size of the Mexican-born population in the U.S. has fully recovered from losses experienced during the recession."

After a 15-day extension that ended Oct. 11, the window for public comment has closed surrounding a request for the EPA to waive the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The RFS was created under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and required 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel to be blended into gasoline by 2012. In 2007, the standard was expanded to include diesel fuel and it increased the volume of renewable fuel required to be blended into transportation fuel from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to 36 billion gallons by 2022. Proponents of the waiver hope it would help dairy and livestock producers by lowering the cost and improving the availability of corn for feed.

Higher corn and grain costs have resulted in food producers, particularly in livestock and dairy, seeking bigger lines of credit and long loan terms. Rising prices for fuel, fertilizer and seeds are also contributing factors. According to The Wall Street Journal: Overall agriculture loans at banks, thrifts, and credit unions rose 11 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to SNL Financial. Bankers expect demand for agricultural loans to continue to increase.