Statement from Mark McHargue, President, Regarding Reopening of Rail Crossings at Southern Border

Dec 29, 2023

“Today’s announced reopening of the rail border crossings at El Paso and Eagle Pass, Texas is certainly welcomed news. At the same time, the loss of millions of dollars in economic activity due to the crisis at our southern border should serve as a wake-up call to those currently in negotiations to address this longstanding problem. Our nation’s border security, immigration, and labor policies are in desperate need of reform, and it is high time for leaders in both parties to address these critical issues. In the future, we call upon the Biden administration to allocate the resources necessary to secure our nation’s southern border before costing our nation’s agricultural and overall economy millions of dollars. We want to thank Nebraska’s Congressional Delegation for their tireless work in reopening these vital crossings.”

The Nebraska Farm Bureau is a grassroots, state-wide organization dedicated to supporting farm and ranch families and working for the benefit of all Nebraskans through a wide variety of educational, service, and advocacy efforts.

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.