USDA lowered its forecast for 2009 corn production in the latest report out today, due to lower yields. Despite the decrease, yields are still expected to be a record and production is still expected to be the second highest on record.

The late, wet harvest has any elevators are reporting high moisture content and low test weights on corn, but there may be a silver lining in that for producers who supply corn to ethanol plants.

Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” may not be a “real” news show, but the lighter side takes itself seriously enough to have big name political guests and do semi-serious interviews with them.

During POET’s Project LIBERTY Field Day, 16 companies showcased equipment to help farmers make the process of harvesting corn cobs and residue quick, easy and profitable. Project LIBERTY is POET’s planned 25 million-gallon-per-year cellulosic ethanol plant in Emmetsburg.

Randy farms 5,000 acres outside Janesville, Wisconsin. He is the fifth generation to farm the place, part of which was granted to an ancestor by President James K. Polk in 1848. The framed land grant hangs in the farm office with a receipt for a John Deere plow from 1852.

The Environmental Protection Agency loves family farmers. Let me count the ways…ethanol, atrazine, carbofuran, water quality issue related to livestock operations…the list goes on. Like a drunken sailor ...

According to USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, this year’s corn harvest is proceeding at “the slowest pace since at least the mid-1970’s, when National crop progress tables first appeared in the Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin.”