, 1990; the <\/p>\n
North American Bison Cooperative<\/a><\/p>\n , 1993, to<\/p>\n United Spring Wheat Processors<\/a><\/p>\n (Spring Wheat Bakers) 1996-2003. <\/p>\n I wrote about differences between U.S. and Canadian marketing systems, and a protest at the border. Not all of the value-added efforts worked. I covered American protests on the Canadian border. In 1992, I was one of the Forum reporters covering Ed Schafer at the North Dakota Republican Convention, as he captured the nomination for governor.<\/p>\n Contributed<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n In 1993, a big topic was a shift into a wet phase that has persisted until today. The resulting fungal diseases, especially <\/p>\n fusarium head blight<\/a><\/p>\n (\u201cscab\u201d) changed grain production and marketing. Corn and soybeans, and a westward shift for barley, durum and hard red spring wheat, were common topics. Small rail lines were abandoned and revived by short-line railroads. I covered the advent of inland grain terminals, and the rise of rail rates to markets in the Pacific Northwest.<\/p>\n I wrote about NAFTA, the <\/p>\n North American Free Trade Agreement<\/a><\/p>\n , passed in 1994, and its hotly debated impacts on farmers.<\/p>\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n In 1994, I covered the establishment of the <\/p>\n Golden Growers Cooperative<\/a><\/p>\n , a corn group that joined with<\/p>\n American Crystal Sugar Co.,<\/a><\/p>\n in Moorhead, then led by mercurial <\/p>\n Joe Famalette<\/a><\/p>\n , and <\/p>\n Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperativ<\/a><\/p>\n e in Wahpeton to start ProGold, LLC, a $250 million corn wet milling plant. Within a few months of grinding corn in 1997, the company\u2019s economics forced it to lease the plant to Cargill Inc., which has managed it ever since.<\/p>\n Along the way, at The Forum, in 1995 I investigated members of the North Dakota Ready Militia, a group of like-thinkers with the Michigan Ready Militia that had spawned <\/p>\n Timothy McVey<\/a><\/p>\n , who bombed a federal building in April 1995. I investigated John Vasquez, their \u201ccommander,\u201d who had been drummed out of the North Dakota and Minnesota national guards, for lying about his mental health conditions.<\/p>\n Contributed<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Also in 1996, I covered Bill Clinton\u2019s second run for president at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago for The Forum. In Chicago, U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minnesota, played his guitar in a party for the newly-formed <\/p>\n Blue Dog Democrats<\/a><\/p>\n at the <\/p>\n Buddy Guy Legends<\/a><\/p>\n club. I covered trade issues \u2014 the World Trade Organization, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The North American Free Trade Agreement. (Later, I\u2019d cover Peterson when he became chairman of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee.)<\/p>\n I wrote about the \u201cFreedom to Farm\u201d farm bill that freed farmers to shift to specialty crops like edible beans, sunflowers and canola.<\/p>\n A true oddball story: in 1996, I wrote about the Leppert family of Dickey, North Dakota. Their three sons married three of the grown daughters of the anti-Semitic<\/p>\n Rev. Gordon Winrod<\/a><\/p>\n , a Missouri cult leader (and acquaintance of Gordon Kahl) who was sent to federal prison for engineering the kidnapping of eight of the 11 children off their farms in LaMoure County, North Dakota. (I called up former colleague Jim Corcoran about that, as he\u2019d written about fringe groups.)<\/p>\n Contributed<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The 500-member <\/p>\n AgGrow Oils LLC<\/a><\/p>\n , of Carrington, led by agricultural researcher<\/p>\n John Gardner,<\/a><\/p>\n and president <\/p>\n Keith Peltier<\/a><\/p>\n , was ahead of its time, pressing oilseeds for oil, rather than extracting it with solvents. But in 1999 construction ended in operational failure, when the construction company failed to perform, and the ensuing legal battles with bonding companies.<\/p>\n In 1999-00, I served as president of the North American Agricultural Journalists (NAAJ) \u2014 a big honor. I had loved competing for The Forum against the best of the NAAJ. But it was time for me to move on.<\/p>\n At the end of 1999 (after covering the Y2K drama) I resigned from The Forum and joined Agweek.<\/p>\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n I started at Agweek on Jan. 3, 2000. The publication was led by Herald Publisher Mike Maidenberg and Pulitzer Prize-winning Editor <\/p>\n Mike Jacobs<\/a><\/p>\n .<\/p>\n Contributed<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The Herald then was part of Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, based in Miami, Florida. Kevin Bonham was my first editor and was a \u201cmanagement cut\u201d in the first company-wide layoff, and was followed by Kim Deats. The publication had gained national notice for its market coverage.<\/p>\n In 2000, I wrote about Dakota Halal Inc. (later Central Dakota Beef & Sheyenne Valley) a specialty beef packing plant at Harvey, North Dakota, which showed promise and then suddenly lost its markets for Muslim buyers after the Sept. 11, 2001, Islamist attack on the Twin Towers in New York City.<\/p>\n In 2001, I wrote a cover story when Monsanto sued a Cass County farmer, allegedly for saving \u201cRoundup Ready\u201d soybean seed. The case ended in a draw.<\/p>\n Mark Luinenburg<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Similarly, I wrote a string of stories involving specialty crop farmers suing chemical maker BASF and the \u201cPoast and PoastPlus\u201d labeling lawsuit, where farmers won $62.5 million for specialty crop growers in a national class-action lawsuit that went to the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n Besides going to Washington annually for the NAAJ, in 2000 I traveled with the U.S. Grains Council to China, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n In January 2002, I wrote \u201cBank Robbery?\u201d about the infamous Wimbledon (North Dakota) Grain Co. financial meltdown. The case led to a new state law indemnity fund to protect farmers and launched a specialty in covering grain marketing disasters. (Think Anderson Seed, Inc., of Mentor, Minnesota, and H&I Grain of Lake Preston.)<\/p>\n In 2002, I accompanied Eric Aasmundstad, the enterprising president of the North Dakota Farm Bureau, and a delegation led by then-North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven, selling edible beans, wheat and barley (but not \u201cbarley malt\u201d).<\/p>\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Also in 2002, Duane Huber, the Wimbledon, North Dakota, insurance man (reputedly the largest Farmers Union agent) was convicted of farm program fraud. I interviewed him in federal prison in Duluth as his family carried on with his crop insurance business.<\/p>\n In 2006, Forum Communications Co., of Fargo purchased the Grand Forks Herald and Agweek. (FCC had purchased the Worthington Globe, so everything I had worked with was now owned by The Forum.)<\/p>\n I was relieved to again work for a family-owned company that didn\u2019t strive for an unrealistic 25% return-on-equity. The Forum replaced my laptop computer that I\u2019d literally worn through the A-key. I wrote a column on that.<\/p>\n In 2008, I went to Washington, D.C., to cover former Gov. Schafer as he was sworn in as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture in the George W. Bush administration. I sat in the press gallery as Schafer marched in for President George W. Bush\u2019s State of the Union address. In 2011, I traveled with Howard Dahl of Amity Technologies Inc., of Fargo, to Russia and Ukraine.<\/p>\n The years have been filled with stand-out topics \u2014 Waters of the United States, the effects of the Conservation Reserve Program.<\/p>\n I covered the case and subsequent bankruptcy of <\/p>\n Tom Grabanski<\/a><\/p>\n , the Grafton, North Dakota, farmer, who with partners went farming in Colorado in 2007. It was a complex crop insurance fraud case.<\/p>\n In late 2014, I covered the case of brothers <\/p>\n Aaron and Derek Johnson<\/a><\/p>\n of Northwood, North Dakota, convicted of applying Rid-X a sewer chemical, onto potatoes to make them melt down in storage and create a storage loss for crop insurance losses.<\/p>\n While controversies are memorable, my job was to cover agriculture as it is, which is mostly honest and profitable. I was proud to write about farmers, ranchers and agribusiness leaders creating a life for themselves and producing crops and livestock for our food supply. I initiated the \u201cCrop Stop,\u201d a device for simply dropping in with random farmers on their farms and ranches, asking them how things were going that day.<\/p>\n In 2012, <\/p>\n Darrell Duane Smith<\/a><\/p>\n came from Iowa to sell investments in his fraudulent biofuels deals, and tax credits. One of the stand-out stories was not a criminal, but about mega-farmer <\/p>\n Ron McMartin<\/a><\/p>\n , the once-50,000-acre beet and potato farmer, who went bankrupt with $64 million in debts, including $42 million to a single bank. (The bank accused McMartin of civil fraud, but no charges were filed.)<\/p>\n In 2015, Agweek added AgweekTV, and I became a backpack video journalist. In 2016, I covered the Dakota Access Pipeline protest and interviewed farmer\/rancher operators, wearing sidearms.<\/p>\n In 2019, <\/p>\n Jerry Hennessey<\/a><\/p>\n , the grain cooperative manager from Ashby, Minnesota, went to jail for stealing $5 million from the Ashby, Minnesota, co-op, which assisted his pursuits in big game hunting.<\/p>\n In 2020, I reported on outstanding legal work to right the misdeeds of the <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Agweek is all-ag<\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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For the brand<\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
AgweekTV\u2019s rise<\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n