A new livestock auction, a new regional processing plant and new small market crops are among some of the new ag projects percolating in North Dakota. The North Dakota Agricultural Products Utilization Commission (APUC) will review funding requests for seven projects totaling $381,065 at its quarterly meeting next week. APUC is a program of the North Dakota Department of Commerce which administers grant programs for researching and developing new and expanded uses for North Dakota…

Continue Reading

Congress ought to bring back the Transition Incentive Program. The program gave landowners an additional two years of payment if they rented or sold land coming out the Conservation Reserve Program to beginning farmers. TIP helped Richie and Michael Heinrich, Medina, N.D. Richie is a recent graduate from North Dakota State University and Michael is a senior at NDSU. Both are back home farming with their father and starting their own operations. “We were lucky to have landowners…

Continue Reading

I am impressed with the new leaders of the North Dakota Farmers Union and North Dakota Farm Bureau. They may represent a new era for Dakota agriculture. Elwood Woody Barth was elected president of the North Dakota Farmers Union in November. He replaces Robert Carlson, who decided not to run after holding the post for 15 years. Barth has served as vice president of the organization since December of 2008. He was first elected to the State Board of Directors in 2003 as the District 5 Director…

Continue Reading