Enrollment for the 2008 Direct and Counter-cyclical Program started June 25 and will end Sept. 30. The 2008 DCP was authorized through the passage of the Food, Conservation, & Energy Act of 2008.
For the 2008-crop year, Farm Service Agency computes DCP payments using base acres and payment yields established for each farm.
Direct payments provide no incentive to increase production of any certain crop, because the payments are not based on producers’ current production choices.
This field of sunflowers was planted earlier in spring southeast of Hillsboro and will have no problem ripening in time for fall harvest. But agronomists are saying it’s not too late for producers to plant sunflowers as an alternate double-crop following this summer’s wheat harvest.
The window for double-cropping after the wheat harvest is almost closed if a producer wants to make sure the second crop develops before freezing weather.
This may have been an ideal year for planting soybeans after wheat, considering the high price and high soil moisture to bring beans up. The lure to plant soybeans also was heightened because they fix nitrogen into the soil so that increasingly pricey fertilizer could be avoided.
Producers who did that are in good shape. But Kansas State Extension agronomists are also saying it’s a good time to contemplate sunflowers as an alternate crop.
Now is not the time to backtrack on one of the few positives of this nation’s horribly inadequate energy policy. In case you haven’t heard, some lawmakers have set their sites on this nation’s plans to use more renewable fuels.
Here’s what I’m talking about. More than 50 House Republicans joined forces to ask the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce the renewable fuels standard, which requires the nation to use a specific amount of ethanol.
Pam and Vincent Magallanes are the owners of Family Sports, a new sporting goods store in Marion.
Computer-programming pioneer Alan Kay once said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
Although Pam and Vincent Magallanes are not inventors per se, they have good reason to believe a day is coming when sports equipment of every imaginable type will be available for purchase in Marion.
The Magallaneses own Family Sports, a sporting goods consignment and retail shop that opened for business June 3—despite a significant snag.
“We’re not an authorized dealer yet, but we have applications in with Nike, Adidas, Reebok (and others),” Pam said. “It’s very difficult to become an authorized dealer.
The building on East D that was once home for McDonald’s is tranforming visually into a Wendy’s restaurant following some exterior renovation last week. Sunset Equities, the McPherson-based franchisee, will focus its full attention on the Hillsboro store once its new store in Clay Center is open.
Wendy’s is coming to Hillsboro, but don’t start drooling for its trademark old fashion hamburgers just yet.
Todd Eland, marketing person for Sunset Equities of McPherson, the franchisee of the store slated for Hillsboro, said the date of the opening won’t be known until Aug. 1.
“We’re excited about coming to Hillsboro,” Eland said, “but we’ve got a couple of other stores that are going to open in line in front of Hillsboro. We’re opening one in Clay Center at the end of the month. Once that one’s complete, we can turn the full attention of our team to Hillsboro.”
Business/Farm 
