Articles by Blake Hurst

In this opinion piece, Blake Hurst discusses how the word "natural" has impacted society in ways that makes the words "genetic engineering" seem like the bad guy.

In this opinion piece, Blake Hurst discusses why Rural America needs Congress to act fast on a stimulus package.

I’m flat busted. My Missouri corn and soybean farm is bankrupt, financially incompetent, a lousy credit risk, upside down--you pick the financial euphemism for a balance sheet that is downright ugly. I’m still paying my bills on time and eating good, due to some profitable years in the recent past, but any honest appraisal of my farm’s future income and liabilities is dark indeed. Of course, if there is any comfort to be found in shared misery, every other producer of corn and soybeans in the U.S. is in the same position.

Twitter-transmitted pictures of spring 2019 in the Midwest have made my feed a stream of continuous heartbreak. Video after video of flooded fields and homes, stuck tractors, ruined crops, with pictures of tornado damage serving as the visual exclamation point to the slow-moving disaster that we’re living in the central part of the nation. We’ve have several hundred acres under water on our farm, our fields are dotted with wet spots and ruts, and we’re the fortunate ones, given what I see on my social media feed. It is a helpless feeling to watch as farmers and homeowners throughout the Midwest suffer from this disaster of historic proportions.

Merry Christmas! Yes, I know I’m a few days late, but it’s been that kind of year. Everything has been late.

I think there is a fairly large contingent of journalists covering climate or agriculture or both who think we could stop climate change with a single admission by a major farm organization that the only logical reaction to increasing atmospheric carbon is abject terror.

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has announced plans to move the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture from their present homes in Washington, D.C., to somewhere, anywhere else but Washington.

The French grocery chain Carrefour has announced that they will be using blockchain technology to provide complete traceability for the products they sell.

The national media spent the last year sending reporters out to the middle of the country, trying to figure out what makes us tick.