Two recent University of Nebraska-Lincoln students have developed a robot to "do the work that no farmer should."
BLOOMINGTON — Whether exploring local agriculture, snagging a corn dog on the midway or catching a view from the top of a Ferris wheel, the McLean County Fair is a summer staple for many in the community.
Every July, Congress begins to pack its collective bag to escape the scorching heat and suffocating humidity of Capitol Hill. And that’s just inside the Senate and House; outside it’s even worse.
GIBSON CITY — The CEO of a Central Illinois ethanol production plant thinks there is still plenty of room for the ethanol industry to grow, despite the current uncertainty in the worldwide trade market.
Once, when walking across the Charles Bridge in Prague, a friend asked if I knew the story behind the stunning, 14th century marvel under our feet. No, I replied, mostly because my education did not require much European history.
SPRINGFIELD — Fresh flowers grown in Decatur, Bloomington, Mattoon and across Central Illinois will greet visitors to the Governor's Mansion on Saturday when it reopens after $15 million in renovations.
WAPELLA — Every year on the Fourth of July, Brooke Cooper and her family take lawn chairs out to a pasture on their rural property east of Wapella, aim the chairs to the southeast and wait for dusk to fall and the fireworks show from Clinton to begin.
NORMAL — For Illinois Farm Bureau spokesman Adam Nielsen, the 2018 farm bill is as intriguing as the world’s most popular sport.
On the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth, July was a slow, sweet bridge between spring’s hard hustle and fall’s quickening step.
BLOOMINGTON — Central Illinois farmers braced Friday for the fallout from the U.S.-China trade dispute and retaliatory tariffs that were placed on U.S. soybeans and other products after the United States imposed higher tariffs on Chinese imports.
WASHINGTON — The world's two biggest economies fired the opening shots Friday in a trade war that could have wide-ranging consequences for consumers, workers, companies, investors and political leaders. Soybeans, a critical Central Illinois crop, is at the center of the dispute.
There’s an art and elegance to letter writing that electronic communication — email, texting, direct messaging, Twitter, and other ethereal forms — simply can’t capture. The biggest difference is also its most ironic: paperless communication encourages brevity and emphasizes urgency.
Prince Edward Island, caressed in eastern Canada’s provincial arms of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, is a lovely place to visit in June. Its sparkling red sand beaches, miles of white-blossomed potato fields, and rolling carpets of lush pasture form a color-soaked postcard for tourists and l…
WASHINGTON — The Republican-led House has narrowly passed a sweeping farm bill that would toughen work requirements for food stamp recipients.
Dublin, even in June sunshine, can’t entirely shake its smoky, troubled past. Bullet holes the size of grapes still pockmark the pillars and walls of the General Post Office, the epicenter of the 1916 Easter Rebellion and its cobblestone side streets look more 18th century than 21st.
WAPELLA — Scotty May has been farming in the Wapella area for more than three decades, but seems to find something new all of the time. Each year, he plants a patch of sweetcorn before hitting the fields to plant corn and soybeans.
June has always been a big month for me. I was born in June, graduated from high school in June, was readmitted to the Big U in June (it’s a long story) and, starting in June 1993, this weekly effort began quietly in the Galesburg Register-Mail.
Forty years ago, Waylon and Willie asked the nation’s mamas not to “let your babies grow up to be cowboys” because “… they’ll never stay home and they’re always alone, even with someone they love.”
Success in sports, business, and politics requires skilled leaders who know their jobs and know how to fold disparate talents and personalities into something greater than the logical sum of its parts.
If you think writing a farm bill makes for strange bedfellows, just look at who’s allied against President Donald J. Trump’s up-and-down trade talks with China: the deeply conservative Wall Street Journal and the decidedly undecided Financial Times, or FT.
WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders suffered an embarrassing setback Friday when conservatives scuttled an ambitious farm bill, part of a high-stakes power play as they once again exert their oversized sway in the House.
WASHINGTON — In an embarrassment for House Republican leaders, conservatives on Friday scuttled a bill that combines stricter work and job training requirements for food stamp recipients with a renewal of farm subsidies popular in GOP-leaning farm country.
BLOOMINGTON — U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis said Thursday that if everything goes the way he wants in the new farm bill, which is set for a House vote on Friday, Central Illinois residents should see benefits.
There’s something fundamentally wrong with a legislative process that delivers a Farm Bill so deeply flawed that groups as politically diverse as the ruby red Heritage Foundation and the ocean blue Environmental Working Group (EWG) join forces to publicly condemn it.
CLINTON — DeWitt County farmer Marvin Finfrock was able to breathe a small sigh of relief this week while planting corn near Wapella.