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April 17, 2015
Farm News. Farm Views.
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End of solar cycle to bring lower temps?
Simon Atkins was willing to cut his audience a little slack. "I know it's hard to believe because you haven't seen it on CNN," Atkins, a climate economist and disaster risk forecaster, told an audience of farmland owners and farmers. Atkins was schooling his audience on some alternative theories about weather and climate change at the Peoples Company Land Investment Expo.
 
""This is what we've done over the last 15 years, solar research. It goes up, down, up, down," he said. Atkins was describing the solar cycle, the cycle of sunspot activity on the sun that affects weather on Earth.
 
 
Bridge to a solution
For Tom Wombles, a severe injury to his legs in September 2013 turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the farm drainage industry. Wombles was involved in an accident on Sept. 4, 2013. "I was supposed to be in meetings with a pipeline installer, and I lost a very large job," said Wombles, who owns an excavating business in Pike County.

Tile Bridge
After 25 days in the hospital and multiple surgeries, Wombles was home. He wasn't exactly in the mood to revolutionize an industry, but that's sort of what Wombles has done. "I was just mad at the world. I was injured. I wasn't able to work. But I had this thing keep coming into my mind. There was a better way to do tile repair," he said.
Maintain control with easements
There's the easy button. And then there's the easement button. For landowners faced with utility projects marching across or under their land, drafting a good easement agreement can be the key if something goes wrong. "There's nothing worse than a bad easement," Laura Harmon, senior counsel for the Illinois Farm Bureau, told an audience of farmers and landowners at a meeting at the Pike County Farm Bureau.
 
Grain Belt Express
The meeting was conducted to bring members up to date on the Grain Belt Express transmission line and the proposed Dakota Access crude oil pipeline. Both projects are slated to be built through western Illinois farmland.




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