An Urban's Rural View

The Black Death of the mid-14th century teaches some interesting lessons about the current pandemic.

The coronavirus may not be the end of the world, but it's changing the world dramatically, for people in both the city and the country.

Some people may be overreacting, but when a disease spreads rapidly and we don't really know the infection rate or the death rate, it's natural to assume the worst.

The EU's negotiators clearly want to reach a deal with the U.S., but politically their hands remain tied.

The coronavirus underscores the need for China to better regulate its wet markets.

Peace has not broken out between the United States and China. The lull in hostilities is at best a truce, and an uneasy one at that.

How domestic migration from blue states to red could complicate the nation's demographic picture in unexpected ways.

The intriguing theory of DTN's lead analyst about the relationship between stock prices and corn prices.

A think tank predicts the collapse of the cattle and dairy industry by 2030.

For agriculture, it beats the status quo; for American business, it falls way short.

USDA keeps debunking the misperception that big companies own all the farms, but the myth persists.

The U.S. and China are at odds over the protests in Hong Kong. If China cracks down, U.S.-China trade could be among the casualties.

If we're talking about the period from the rise of agriculture to 1700, Thomas Robert Malthus was actually right about the inability of food production to keep up with population growth. It's the modern era he was wrong about.

Generous European Union farm subsidies help entrench Eastern Europe's increasingly autocratic rulers.

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue deserved to be criticized for his comment on small farms, even though some of the criticism was over the top.

Many trade commentators have been a lot tougher on President Donald Trump's phase-one China deal than I was.

Farmers and ranchers are rightfully happy with the trade deals with Japan and China. But they shouldn't go overboard in their enthusiasm.

McDonald's is teaming up with Beyond Meat on a test of a new meatless burger offering in Canada. Burger King is already selling a competitor, the Impossible Whopper. A test of taste versus ideology looms.

Negative interest rates sound like a borrower's dream. Or should we say pipe dream?

The transition of homo sapiens from hunter-gathers to farmers used to be considered a good thing. Now some scholars are challenging that view.