Food Trek

The new five-year farm bill is expected to reach $1 trillion for the first time.

State climatologist Trent Ford with the Illinois State Water Survey said, as of Wednesday morning, the Town of Normal has received 4.3 inches of rain since April 1. Only 1992 was drier, said Ford.

For a second consecutive year, McLean County has led all Illinois and U.S. counties in total production of both commodities with almost 71 million bushels of corn and 22 million bushels of soybeans harvested in 2022, according to the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS).

The end of expanded federal nutrition benefits come at a time when central Illinois food banks already were struggling to ensure everyone is fed.

Central Illinois congressman Eric Sorensen says he's optimistic Congress can come to agreement on a farm bill this year. The Democrat from Moline was recently appointed to the U.S. House Agriculture Committee.

Over the next five years, the Diverse Corn Belt project will be conducting research to discover opportunities that can be created from diversified farming systems and investigate the impacts of transformed crop rotations.

Are these robust prices squeezing new and beginning farmers — defined by the USDA as producers with less than 10 years experience in the field — out of the land market?

Agronomists, farmers and researchers met at the Illinois State University Farm in Lexington on Tuesday to discuss Lake Bloomington-Evergreen Lake (LB-EL) watershed planning efforts, along with farm conservation practices that can help reach watershed goals.

In Episode 9 of the food and farming series Food Trek, Tory Dahlhoff and co-producer Allison Walsh check in with the Central Illinois FarmFED Cooperative in Mount Pulaski, in Logan County.

Today on Food Trek, host Tory Dahlhoff searches out the real definition of farming's biggest buzzword of the last few years: regenerative agriculture. Where did the term come from, and what does it really mean?