News, Insights & Interviews Archive

Sioux County, Iowa Two tracts were sold in Sioux County, Iowa, on October 22, 2025, when the heirs of Donald and Janet De Groot sold 120.17 acres of high-quality Lincoln Township farmland at public auction through Zomer Company. The property was offered in two tracts, with Tract 1 (80.13 acres, CSR2 94.5) selling for $26,500 per acre and Tract 2 (40.04 acres, CSR2 90.5) selling for $18,500 per acre, totaling approximately $2.86 million. Located just northeast of Hull, both fa

Listen and subscribe on SPOTIFY | APPLE When lifelong dairy enthusiast and former IT professional Brian Burgett  began researching milk digestion, it wasn’t for a new business venture. It was for his daughter. What began as a personal mission to help her navigate dairy sensitivities has evolved into a potentially industry-shifting proposal: a new certification seal for A2 milk products, called “NonBCM7 Certified.” BCM-7 – “beta-casomorphin-7, is a peptide derived from the di

Jon Kinzenbaw has been a tractor guy for most of his life. The founder and CEO of Kinze Manufacturing in Williamsburg, Iowa, has a lot of them in his personal collection — more than 600, to be precise. But he decided it was time to let some of them go. On November 4, Kinzenbaw held a long-awaited auction, handled by Sullivan Auctioneers, a BigIron company, marking the first time he had ever sold part of his collection. The tractors up for grabs were mostly duplicates, but tha

Even the place where the backhoe was invented was not enough to keep the manufacturing going. CNH confirmed that it would end production of its agricultural and construction equipment next year in Burlington, Iowa. That means 200 employees will lose their jobs, according to the Des Moines Register. CNH’s U.S. operators are based out of Oak Brook, Illinois, and its global headquarters is in the United Kingdom. The company warned a year again of potential long-term obstacles at

When you rely on certainty, what choice do you have but to express optimism and skepticism at the same time when it comes to China buying U.S. soybeans? China had quit buying American beans altogether in response to President Donald Trump’s global trade war, which levied some of its most powerful focus on the biggest customer of U.S. soybeans. The Trump administration this month trumpeted an agreement that China would resume soybean purchases. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Be

Some rural communities provide the perfect setting for the nation’s growing demand for data centers to provide artificial intelligence for an industry that is exploding. But many residents in town are kept in the dark until the deal for a new data center is done. Rural America offers large tracts of land, cheap power and favorable zoning regulations to build high-capacity data centers. But an increasingly common feature in the development process is the use of non-disclosure

The Federal Reserve has continued what has recently become a slow step down in interest rates as it navigates limited federal data, rising inflation, a slower job market, and the continued tariff uncertainty. The Fed reduced its target range for the federal funds rate by 0.25 percentage points to 3.75%-4.0%. This is the second reduction by this rate this year and is less than what President Donald Trump has pressured the independent body to do. The partial federal government

There has been a renewed focus on federal country-of-origin labeling for beef after President Donald Trump’s administration announced plans to quadruple the amount of beef imported from Argentina, where Trump’s political ally is the president. Cattle ranchers have been incensed that Trump would allow more beef imports into the U.S. and pressure them to lower their prices. Fourteen Republicans from the U.S. House of Representatives followed the criticism by releasing an open l

Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts Cattle, corn, and soybeans filled Liz Strom’s life as she grew up on the family farm in central Illinois. She still goes back to the farm when her schedule allows. But these days she is thinking about more than just her family’s farm. Strom, an accredited farm manager and Vice President at Murray Wise Associates in Champaign, Illinois, is watching farmland values. She saw them rise quickly but doesn’t expect them to fall with that same for

In a world where farmland prices continue to dominate headlines and coffee shop conversations, Johnny Klemme invites us to look deeper — beyond the numbers, beyond the market reports — to explore what value  really means. Klemme is an advisor, mediator, broker, auctioneer, and family farmer, as well as co-owner of Geswein Farm & Land Realty in Lafayette, Indiana. Johnny Klemme bio: Geswein Farm & Land Realty – Co-Owner, Advisor, Broker, Auctioneer Family Farmer – West Lafayet

President Donald Trump’s plan to quadruple beef imports from Argentina has drawn sharp criticism from U.S. cattle ranchers who warn the move could devastate domestic producers. Ranchers, already strained by drought, wildfires, and high input costs, say cheaper Argentine beef could undercut a recovering U.S. market. While the administration argues that increased imports may lower prices for consumers, industry leaders like Justin Tupper of the U.S.

A historic New York farm could soon set a record in the Hudson Valley with a staggering $90 million listing price. Known as Mill Farm, the 2,150-acre property in Ancramdale has been assembled over 43 years by investment banker Daniel Slott and features 15 barns, 10 homes, a waterfall, and organic-certified hay fields. Surrounded by conservation land and just two hours from Manhattan, the farm is billed by Compass as a “living landmark” and one of the largest working farms nea

At the Borlaug Dialogue in Des Moines, Iowa, world-renowned chef and humanitarian José Andrés called on President Donald Trump to restore the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Andrés—whose nonprofit World Central Kitchen has fed millions in disaster zones—warned that dismantling USAID endangers lives worldwide by cutting off access to food, water, and health aid.

When a 150-year-old farm in west-central Indiana went up for auction this September, there were a couple of things that made it stand out from the typical properties in the Midwest. First, the land had been in the same family since just after the Civil War — a rare legacy in the farming community. But it was the second detail that surprised the realtor handling the sale. “They had created a reverse irrigation or subsurface irrigation system. I’ve never sold a farm with that b

An Illinois community watched more than 30,000 bushes of soybeans spilling out, workers scurrying for safety, and parts of town temporarily losing power. But it avoided serious injuries when a grain bin collapsed. The video shows the moments before the bin fell and then the eventual collapse.   The grain bin was 90 feet tall and had stood in town since 1972 until it gave way. Witnesses noticed a bulge forming in the concrete and rebar, according to WCIA-TV in Champaign ,  bef

A financial leader who committed to the health of rural families and bought a farm in western North Carolina to reconnect with his farm roots died on the farm in an all-terrain vehicle accident, according to North Carolina authorities. Doug Lebda was the founder, chairman, and CEO of LendingTree, the online lending institution headquartered in Charlotte and established in 1996. Authorities say Lebda had been riding on an ATV last Sunday on the family’s property. A family memb

As family farmers continue to wait for an aid package that President Donald Trump last month claimed that he could fund with tariff revenue, they now watch as the administration considers doubling its financial support for Argentina. The partial shutdown of the federal government could be slowing Trump’s $10+ billion package for U.S. farmers. But the optics of working on giving Trump’s political ally, Argentine President Javier Milei, four times that much doesn’t sit well wit

Land O’Lakes CEO Beth Ford wanted to stress the urgency of the situation. “What is happening right now is devastation,” Ford said of the struggles of many American farmers. Ford was one of the featured speakers at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit on Tuesday in Washington, D.C. Fortune began the series in 1998 to highly some of the most influential women in business. Ford has served as CEO of Land O’Lakes, the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based agricultural cooperative, since

Mallory Devries was growing more specialty mushrooms than she could have imagined. The operation in an adjoining tent to their home was becoming so big that she and her husband realized that they would need outside labor to handle it all. Customers showed up from miles around.

Farmers and farmland investors would like to harvest some optimism in their fall fields that the partial federal government shutdown can...