French farmers are always up in the air about something. But this is something they're happy about. It's a service that lets them analyze soil quality from orbiting satellite imagery. According to an article in the Nov. 5 edition of The Economist, a company called Sevepi provides detailed analyses several times a year of hectare-sized (about 2.5 acres) areas for about $15. Precise prescriptions for growing crops can be obtained quickly, and less expensively than with traditional methods, by measuring electromagnetic radiation reflected from farmland. 
    The spectrum of this radiation can reveal, with surprising precision, the properties of the soil, the quantity of crop being grown, and the levels in those crops of chlorophyll, various minerals, moisture and other indicators of their quality. If recent and forecast weather data are added to the mix, detailed maps can be produced indicating exactly how, where and when crops should be grown. To read the full article, click here http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14793411

     An NPR business reporter interviewed a specialty glass manufacturer last Friday morning as I was driving to a PASA conference in Chambersburg, Pa. The business owner is against the ropes. A collapsed economy took away his market - replacement windows for existing commercial and institutional buildings, and new product for new construction. At one time, there were 80 workers at his plant, operating the towering and expensive machines he needed to produce for his market.  He's going to hang on, he hopes, until business picks up. But he's never going to get big again, he said. Instead of 80 people, he'll got back to 15, tops.
     When I started writing about agriculture, way back in the last century, the  mantra you heard over and over again, was "Get big or get out." Some of the guys I knew, back in the day, got big AND got out, and not of their own free will.
      Sometimes I think in agriculture even when we know the history we tend to repeat it. Maybe the times they aren't achanging.


     For me, this video laid an egg.      http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1439023/funny_chicken_video/