During a speech by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack he commented that while things look bad today he looks back on the way things were 150 years ago. That's when President Abraham Lincoln created the Department of Agriculture, every farmer's USDA friend. While Congress is bickering over spending, and pretty much everything else these days, Lincoln and that forward thinking Congress created this new department. And it thrives today, more "nutrition program" than "agriculture program" this…

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From the file - which I tag as "I am not making this up" comes the move by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration which is considering changing current regulations related to ag equipment. The agency requested public comments on rules for off-road machines ni the context of the FMCSA regulations. And they extended the comment period until Aug. 1. Essentially, the agency thinks that if farm equipment is driven on the road the operator should have a commercial driver's license and they…

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Writing about equipment is fun when you've covered the tech changes seen in our business for the past 25 years. However, I don't get to do much writing about cars and trucks (although we just profiled the Ford F-150 recently). In following the "on-road" machinery industry, I've watched plenty of change - but few are as interesting as the move by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today. They've approved the E15 standard for cars, provided they're made in 2007 or later, which means my…

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