Annual and Daily Solar Production from a Residential Array – Making $ense of Energy
Biomass Rules has been collecting solar production data every 5 minutes for the last 30 months (40,000 sunlight datapoints per year). The most surprising discovery is the variability. Solar output on any single day is highly variable. Most days, it … Continue reading →
Self-Reliance and Compost Therapy on Independence Day – Biomass Rules!
While a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal, 40 years ago, I could tell the time on a cloudless night by the rotation of the stars around the North Star. That was a pretty cool revelation. Biomass Rules posts a lot … Continue reading →
Food Waste is Best Defined as a Feedstock – Food Price Fun
June 24, 2026 was National Upcycling Day, in the month of June that was Food Upcycle Month. On social media that day, I saw a comment by a food waste group that “food waste is a feedstock.” In food waste … Continue reading →
Regulating Carbon Emissions into Water and Air – Old School Style
Manure is not created equally. Livestock feces and urine is composed of unused carbohydrates, nutrients, and water, and it is not homogeneous. Corn, soybeans, and forages go into livestock and poultry feed, but what comes out depends on environmental conditions, … Continue reading →
The World, the Economy, and Food Waste Management, are not Flat
We do not live in a straight-line world. Although food markets are much easier to navigate in 2 dimensions. A linear, food industry supply chain makes intuitive sense when thinking about inputs > farming > processing > retail (Model #1 … Continue reading →
Catfish Farmers also Face Tight Margins in the Farm Economy
The American Farm Bureau Federation, Market Intel, and Danny Munch, just released a market outlook article on US Catfish Farmers: America’s Top Farm-Raised Fish Faces Growing Pressures. The current US Catfish farmer story is an account of grit and determination. … Continue reading →
Solutions to Economic Externalities Require Both Problem Definition and Vision
In the throes of providing leadership on contract poultry grower challenges in the late 1990s, a brilliant mentor, Larry Cole, PhD., challenged me on whether I wanted to be 1) part of the defining the problem or 2) part of … Continue reading →
Farm-based Rural Leadership Account of Philip Bradshaw – A Worthy Read
One of the quiet benefits of membership in the St. Louis Agribusiness Club, is getting to know Club members like Philip Bradshaw, a retired farmer from Pike County, Illinois. At the April 2026 meeting, Philip reintroduced his 2019 book, Your … Continue reading →
Greenville University Agribusiness, a Decade of Program Success
In 2016, I was invited to build a 4-year agribusiness program at Greenville University (GU) in Greenville, Illinois. We did it. Success is sometimes difficult to measure, but in this case, success is a measure of achieving our goals and … Continue reading →
Which Sector Leads Agricultural Workforce Development?
Is it the 4-year, higher education, secondary education, or the rapidly changing agricultural industries? In a perfect world all these groups would complement each other. They do work together, actually, but under the surface there is competition for that leadership … Continue reading →