An Urban's Rural View

"Cold War" is a misleading historical analogy for the U.S.-China relationship. The two countries are indeed serious rivals, but they're also economically interdependent.

Competition with China means the U.S. must rebuild its infrastructure and protect against losing its semiconductor-manufacturing base.

Even if you only skim this piece, be sure to read the final paragraph.

The financial markets' current concerns about inflation are overdone but the inflation of the 1970s teaches precautionary lessons.

Government, environmental groups and farmers are all talking about the need to work together to solve environmental problems.

As optimal temperatures move north, Siberia's permafrost will melt, potentially opening up a vast new area to farming. But will anyone want to farm it?

The public may be underestimating just how effective the vaccines against COVID-19 will be.

If you believe a paper from two prominent economists, the national debt is far from out of control.

So much has changed in the last four years, the issues are so different, that the next four can't be a carbon copy of Tom Vilsack's earlier eight.

It's easy to pooh-pooh Former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman's choice for USDA's most important function. But actually, he has a point.

Calls for an Infrastructure Week diverted criticism from President Donald Trump but otherwise led nowhere. Washington needs to focus a whole year on doing something about infrastructure.

DTN's lead analyst makes a strong argument for USDA not to accept China's ending-stocks numbers.

The president-elect has given some clues about his approach to China but many questions remain.

It's amazing what these virtual-meeting technologies can do. This year's DTN Ag Summit will be virtually the same as if we were all in the same room.

Maybe with an end in sight we'll overcome our pandemic fatigue and take the precautions necessary to get through the winter.

Exit polls suggest the urban-rural political divide wasn't as big this election as it was in 2016.

Once considered a futuristic fantasy, vertical farming is now taken seriously by big outfits like Driscoll's, the lead player in the berry business.

They may both be superpowers, but the U.S. and China don't get much respect these days in surveys of international opinion.

This has turned out to be a hard-luck year for the Midwest's major-league baseball teams.

No, COVID-19 isn't going away soon, but when it does, many things will have changed.