BY MOLLY MATTHEWS
Contributing Writer, DBJ
Even though commodity prices are expected to be weak and drought conditions are expected to continue, land prices are holding steady and agricultural economists and researchers are working on new production-savings techniques for farmers.

BY DAVID VINCENT
Contributing Writer, Delta Business Journal
SHELBY - In many ways, Allendale Planting Company is on the cutting-edge of Delta agriculture, and perhaps even agriculture everywhere. In an extremely tight farm economy, and at a time when farming is under siege to improve its environmental record, this Shelby-based enterprise is doing some interesting things worth watching.

BY REBEKAH RAY
MSU Ag Communications
U.S. Highway 82, the internet and telephone wires connect a Mississippi State University father-and-son research team who work on opposite sides of Mississippi.
Both Dr. Roy Creech and his son, Dr. John Creech, are looking for ways to improve Mississippi's leading row crop, cotton. One has a lab at MSU in Starkville and the other conducts research at the Delta Research and Extension Center in Stoneville.

  Tough economic conditions make tough farmers. Surviving today's markets require it. Knowing which inputs to cut and which ones to keep is a critical factor affecting profitability at current lint prices. Timing becomes paramount as well. Even small glitches in the successful completion of a task can add up to big problems when you're fighting the calendar, as well as the bank.

BY ROBERT MCFARLAND, JR.
Delta Business Journal
There was never any question that Drew native Robbie Riddick would not end up in the farming business.
"I was around farming and everything involved with farming since almost the day the I was born," laughed Riddick. "It was really never any question of "if" I would be involved in agriculture, "but where."

BY JULIE SPEED
Contributing Writer, Delta Business Journal
Agriculture, the state's top industry - at $4.7 billion, it has a $20 billion impact - employs approximately one third of Mississippi's labor force either directly or indirectly on the state's 42,000 farms on 11.7 million acres.
"About 33,600 people are employed directly in agricultural jobs in the state," said Kathy Jones of the Mississippi Employment Security Commission.

  Results of a study on nitrogen (N) sources showed that ammonium nitrate produced higher yields than either urea or UAN solutions on winter wheat. The study, which began in 1997, was conducted by Dr. Donald H. Howard at the University of Tennessee and is sponsored by Mississippi Chemical Corporation. The Potash and Phosphate Institute recently published the study results.

  Union Planters Bank has been named a Preferred Lender under the Farm Lending Program of the U.S.D.A. Farm Service Agency (FSA) the highest status a lender can hold in the guaranteed lending program.  The designation includes all Union Planters Bank locations in eight states, including Tennessee, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi and Missouri.