The soybean oil is separated from the soybean by mechanical pressing or extraction with a solvent. It takes approximately 60 kg of soybeans to make 10 kg of soybean oil. I bye no means endorse one over the other simply because as a candle maker I think it is beneficial to work with each type of wax that is at our disposal. This series of articles on wax will continue to explain the various waxes used in candle making without preference for one over another. In order to make the soybean oil...

Generally, the market expects the crops to see at least average, and likely above average yields for corn, with soybeans still far from known because of the erratic weather and sudden outbreaks of disease. Demand for Chicago's soft red winter wheat, grown in the Midwest, has been far greater than expected as world buyers aggressively come to the United States for rapidly declining supplies. Strong beef demand is expected for the Labor Day holiday and declining supplies of fed cattle are...

That is how the modern farmer gains access to a patchwork of different properties on which he plants his crops, county agriculture extension agents say. Yet the agriculture industry is being tantalized by new crops that could prevent some farmers from being uprooted from their land. So farmers lease acreage from big landowners, who have other jobs and are holding the land as an investment and need an agriculture exemption for a tax break. Farmers say that what they can earn selling crops...

Spreading out from behind my home are acres and acres of farmland. As the year rolls around, it sometimes sways with deep green wheat, sometimes rustles with the leaves of soybean plants. I can just sit there on my back porch with a frosty glass in my hand, gazing at the amber waves of grain, and say, "'Bout time we brought in that wheat. I never got all this stuff about farming being a hard way to make a living. It's very pretty and obviously very productive, and it has been very easy to...

I learned that the easy part of becoming an organic grower is to stop using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to grow their crops. The very difficult task is to learn how to compensate for that change by building up the quality of the soil so that they can begin to compete with conventional farmers, in terms of revenue and profits. The soil in the organic field on the other hand has been improved so much that it not only produces superior crops, it is now almost impervious to the impact...