As the producer of a product you know is safer and less expensive than (and superior to) its closest competitors, a dairyman or woman must find it frustrating to lose market share to slick-marketed beverages, inferior dairy products and milk copycats.

The new Congress has brought with it a rather significant shift in political attitudes toward a comprehensive immigration reform package. Before the November elections, immigration was not on the radar screen. Targeted bills were receiving little attention, and comprehensive solutions were more or less dead on arrival.

But in the wake of the President’s re-election, there were open discussions about the margins by which Hispanic voters supported Democrats. Going back to the election of 2000, President Bush received 31 percent of the Hispanic vote.

The other day, after addressing a large agricultural group in St. Cloud, Minnesota, a young producer stated that the livestock cycle is still alive and well, despite comments from other attendees to the contrary.

I agree that cycles exist in livestock, as well as weather and economics. Many segments of agriculture have recently been in a supersized super cycle which extends to much of rural America.