Around the time Charles Dickens penned his epic Tale of Two Cities, another historic tale of Midwestern frontier villages began to unfold. Separated by 20 miles and the untamed Missouri River, Rock Port, Missouri, and Auburn, Nebraska, were mirror images of what was taking place everywhere from the Mississippi to the Rockies. This is a […]
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Posted inElection 2020
Letter from Langdon: Hey Democrats, What’s So Scary about Missouri?
In 1860, only 11% of Missouri votes cast went to Abe Lincoln, with the balance of the vote split among three secessionists. By 1864, Lincoln recovered to collect 69% of votes cast. That’s an impressive turnaround to be sure. Sometimes Missouri giveth, and sometimes Missouri taketh away. Missourians favored Hoover in his first term but […]
Posted inAgriculture
Letter from Langdon: Who Will Lead USDA? Nominee List Grows Longer.
To a farmer, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is an authority figure. USDA can be your banker, your salesman, your regulator, and your benefactor all wrapped into one. For outdoor enthusiasts, USDA maintains the National Forests you visit. For rural communities, USDA is a source of loans and grants that help maintain critical services like […]
Posted inAgriculture
Letter from Langdon: Will Biden Talk about the Pig in the Room?
From livestock markets to ethanol, big corporations seem to be winning the policy war in D.C., as well as in states like Missouri. It hasn’t always been this way. The American Agriculture Movement still had access to large populations of disaffected farmers from across the Midwest when, in 1979, they held their massive tractor drive […]
Posted inPolitics and Government
Letter from Langdon: ‘Big Boats’ Swamp the Little Guys in Missouri
A few years ago when Missouri’s falling population dribbled one whole congressional district down the drain, Republicans didn’t waste much time gerrymandering a popular Democratic member of Congress, Russ Carnahan of St. Louis, out of a constituency. Some might say it was payback (or fear) for the fact that Carnahan’s father Mel, former U.S. representative […]
Posted inAgriculture
Letter from Langdon: Monopoly Forever
The Missouri House of Representatives has passed a bill put forth by the Missouri Senate, SB 391, that outlaws something called “local control.” Odds are good that Governor Mike Parsons will sign it. They’ve been working on this for awhile. The waiting game is finally over. Local control was an obstacle to corporate-owned livestock and […]
Posted inAgriculture
Letter from Langdon: Recovering from the Flood, His Cup Runs Over
Limestone is present beneath almost every county in the state of Missouri. Its uses vary from neutralizing acidic soil to low-cost surfacing on rural roads. But here at Langdon, as in all the other Missouri River valley communities impacted by last year’s flooding, we are using limestone rock for filler. We have holes in our […]
Posted inEnvironment
Letter from Langdon: The ‘Maybe Disaster’ of Northwest Missouri
Recovery continues in and along the Missouri Valley in Iowa. And in Nebraska – where a dam burst on the Niobrara River leading to the collapse of many Missouri River levees and flooding downstream in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri – the landscape is bleak. As is too often the case, it ain’t over till […]
Posted inAgriculture
Letter from Langdon: Notes from the Flood
EDITOR’S NOTE: Throughout the flooding in the Midwest along the Missouri River, we’ve stayed in touch with Daily Yonder columnist Richard Oswald, whose land and structures near the Missouri River have been inundated. Richard has provided frequent email updates about conditions and consequences in northwest Missouri and other parts of the Midwest. The emails are […]
Posted inAgriculture
Letter from Langdon: 40 Feet High and Rising
Anyone living next a stream, creek, or river will tell you that in times of flood, it’s important to know how high’s the water. Even Johnny Cash. In these modern post-Cash times on many of America’s waterways, the Corps of Engineers can tell on an hourly basis not only how high it is but how […]
