By J. Larry Miller

The weather this past week has been nothing short of wonderful with cool temperatures, heavy morning dew and soils damp with moisture. Crops are certainly looking very good with the possibility of corn yields being the best ever on some farms. Soybeans are looking very good also but it will be another 30 days before the outcome will be more certain. In the next couple of weeks we will be having our annual Corn Yield Tour which will give us a better handle on the yields in Franklin County.

Larry Miller, executive director Franklin County Farm Bureau

All of these are only predictions at this point but as farmers we know it is not certain until it is in the bin.

On Tuesday, I attended a conference at Rend Lake College concerning hydraulic fracturing of oil wells. As most of you know the Illinois General Assembly passed legislation regulating this practice and the governor recently signed it into law which experts say is the most restrictive in the nation. This conference provided information about the law, the process of fracturing, the possible development of new oil exploration and economic boom that could result. There were 300 people that attend which indicates the interest that this project has generated.

This exploration has resulted in an economic boom in North Dakota, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Because of this new technology the U.S. has surpassed Russia in natural gas production and could well be the leader in oil production by 2017!

I have believed that this technology and the economic development that would follow is very real. With this being said, we have sold several plat books to oil groups that have been doing work at the courthouse for the last couple of years that were involved in the developments in other states.

There is a website www.energyindepth.org that provides a lot of good information about energy development in this country. Information such as our CO2 emissions are now the lowest since 1992. This was an excellent conference provided by our own Rend Lake College.

This July has marked the 20^th anniversary of the Great Flood of 1993. There were catastrophic damages throughout much of the Upper Mississippi River Basin with 47 deaths, flood impacts over $15 billion, 72,000 homes were damages and one 200 mile section of the Mississippi River was left without a bridge crossing.

On Monday and Tuesday the Illinois Farm Bureau co-sponsored breakfast meetings to discuss Policy Development issues with local farmers. We discussed fracking, animal rights, farmer image and EPA regulations. Those in attendance not only left the meeting with a full stomach but became better informed on these issues.

Remember we are farmers working together. If we can help let us know.