About 30 years ago, I was lucky to take a trip across Ukraine as part of a college history course. We visited Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia. We visited former German towns in southeastern Ukraine where my ancestors farmed before leaving for the Kansas
Janzen Ag Law Blog
Latest from Janzen Ag Law Blog - Page 3
Making Hay: A History of Hesston Corporation
I love reading corporate histories, especially when they are about agribusiness. I just finished Factory on the Plains: Lyle Yost and Hesston Corporation, which tells the story of Hesston farm equipment from its humble beginnings through the eventual consolidation…
A Deeper Dive into the New Autonomous John Deere Tractor
John Deere’s introduction of a commercial-ready autonomous tractor is a big deal. According to the press materials, the tractor is fully capable of cultivating a field by itself without a driver. This is a big first step to fully driverless…
What was Revealed at the John Deere Autonomous Reveal?
John Deere and other brand tractors have been on a steady march towards autonomous driving since the introduction of GPS guided steering (autotrac) was introduced in the mid 1990s. In recent years, tractors have added automated headland turning, machine-syncing that connects…
The Year in Reverse 2021
One of my favorite times of the year is the end of the year. I like to take some time to look back at what happened and reflect about how things have changed as we all made another trip around…
Farm Emissions and Carbon Math
I recently have been talking to farm groups about how farmers can generate and sell carbon credits by building up carbon in their soils. I always start this discussion by explaining that a carbon credit can be generated for each…
The Six Building Blocks of a Soil Carbon Contract
Carbon is number 6 on the periodic table and is made up of six building blocks—six protons and six neutrons. Contracts too, have their own building blocks. Because there are a flood of new contracts being offered to farmers to…
Using Midwestern Dairy Cows to Power California Trucks
In the past two years, I have reviewed more contracts related to construction of anaerobic digesters than in prior two decades of my career. For years, the financial case for building these mini power plants did not exist. The upfront…
Rethinking Carbon's "Additionality" Requirement
To generate a carbon credit, a producer must demonstrate a metric ton of C02 (or its equivalent in greenhouse gases (GHG)) was sequestered in soil because of the farmers’ efforts. Seems simple enough, but there is usually another requirement called “additionality”…
An Interview about Row Crop Machinery Technology
I was recently interviewed by Tim Roy, ASA Capitale Analytics, for The Journal of the International Machinery & Technical Specialties Committee of the American Society of Appraisers (The MTS Journal). The interview focused on ag tech in row crop machinery…