AGCO Corporation has kicked off the 2025 Massey Ferguson Sowing Good Deeds contest. Now in its ninth year, the contest is intended to recognize charitable services, civic involvement, and educational activities of local Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association (PRCA) rodeo committees to their schools, towns, and their local ag communities.

Nominations for 2025 are now open and will run through October 3. Finalists will be announced October 24, with the grand prize winner named at the PRCA Awards Banquet in Las Vegas on December 3.

The winning rodeo committee will receive a new Massey Ferguson tractor with loader, valued at over $60,000, as part of the prize package.

Sowing Good Deeds is open to all PRCA-sanctioned rodeo committees within the contiguous 48 states and District of Columbia, regardless of size. Participants are evaluated on their commitment to community involvement, entrepreneurial spirit and ability to adapt to challenges and overcome adversity. Entries consist of a series of essays describing the rodeo committee’s local impact through volunteer efforts, community initiatives and projects, efforts to initiate change within their community, and how they overcome challenges to build a stronger, more sustainable organization.

Nomination forms, as well as full official rules, can be found on this page.

“Rodeos play a crucial role in the cultural and economic landscape of America, yet they often go underappreciated,” said Matt LeCroy, a sales director with for Massey Ferguson North America. “These groups dedicate themselves to uplifting their communities — not only by boosting local economies but also by supporting agricultural youth programs like FFA and 4-H, which are essential to the future of our industry.”

Previous winners of this contest were:

• 2024: California Rodeo Salinas, Salinas, California Read the Release
• 2023: Gunnison Cattlemen’s Days Rodeo, Gunnison, Colorado
• 2022: Reno Rodeo, Reno, Nevada
• 2021: Burke Stampede, Burke, South Dakota
• 2020: Caldwell Nights Rodeo, Caldwell, Idaho
• 2019: Santa Maria Elks Rodeo, Santa Maria, California
• 2018: Sikeston Rodeo, Sikeston, Missouri
• 2017: Clovis Rodeo, Clovis, California

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins raised a few eyebrows with some of her comments Wednesday before the House Committee on Agriculture.

At one point during her testimony, she underscored the importance of crop protection tools — specifically glyphosate — to American agriculture, putting her directly at odds with fellow Cabinet member Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose Make America Healthy Again Commission recently released a 68-page report pointing to glyphosate and atrazine as key pesticides that are contributing to chronic health issues among America’s children.

“I have worked and have been unequivocal on the record how important these crop protection programs are — pesticides, specifically, glyphosate and others more specifically — and the president has as well. So, we will continue that,” Rollins told congressional members in defense of those products.

Interestingly, Rollins was one of the 14 commission members involved in drafting the MAHA report, which received massive pushback from agricultural groups as well as from the scientific community, especially as details emerged that many of the report’s citations were phony.

At this point, it’s unclear whether the majority of her support rests with her Wednesday testimony or with the MAHA Commission recommendations.

There’s also been some backlash over her statement that no one has been fired from the USDA since she took over, and her adding that 15,000 employees have taken Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) offers or some other retirement offer.

However there’s nuance here that she’s glossing over. Roughly 6,000 workers were fired in February from the agency — these workers were still in their probationary period and worked on a range of issues that keep America’s food system secure, from battling invasive crop diseases to funding the construction of sewer systems in rural areas. However, the month after they were told they were being let go, the courts called those firings unlawful and has ordered the USDA to reinstate them. So those weren’t technically permanent firings thanks to the courts.

The agency also reinstated multiple fired employees who are key to the nation’s bird-flu response, saying they were “mistakenly” dismissed in February.

And prior to Rollins taking office, USDA Inspector General Phyllis Fong was part of a wave of firings of inspectors general across Cabinet-level agencies. Her dismissal was notable because she was a Republican appointee who had been in her role for 23 years.

Rollins seemed selective in her word choice about the firings, mostly toeing the line between what’s the truth and what’s a lie. 

Elsewhere throughout the hearing, Rollins spoke about work the U.S. Department of Agriculture has done to address egg prices, the threat of the New World Screwworm, and opening access to new markets. She also discussed Proposition 12 and the need to pass a farm bill.

Researchers out of North Carolina State University have developed a new model that can suggest the optimal conditions for farmers to plant cover crops to help ensure long-term cash-crop success. The findings could help improve farm budgets and serve as aids to farmers making decisions about their land.

The model, based on an examination of 35 years of available data on an experimental cotton farm in west Tennessee, accounts for local conditions — including current prices of cash crops and fertilizer as well as the health and fertility of the soil — and then suggests whether an investment in cover crops would be economically beneficial for farmers. The paper was published in the journal European Review of Agricultural Economics.

The research team said that the model generally favors planting cover crops on fields with relatively healthy soil and on land that has not been tilled. The cost of planting and maintaining cover crops appears to reduce the need for fertilizer treatments, so high fertilizer costs would be one key factor in favor of planting cover crops, the researchers add.

Cover crops have been shown in the academic literature to improve soil conditions by controlling excess water and fixing nitrogen, among other benefits. But only a small percentage of farmers — about 4 percent nationally — utilize cover crops. One reason is that many farmers looking for short-term benefits may consider the costs of planting cover crops overly excessive.

“There is a lot of academic literature looking at short-term effects of cover crops, but our contribution here is in thinking about cover crops as a long-term investment,” said Rod Rejesus, professor and department extension leader of agricultural and resource economics at NC State and a co-author of a paper describing the research. “Agronomists seem to mostly agree that cover crops are a worthwhile investment; many economists say they are not. We find some truth to both sides of the argument in this paper: In certain conditions it might be worth it to plant cover crops; in other conditions it might not be worth it.”

Poor soil quality and low prices for nitrogen fertilizer products are two factors that tend to make cover-crop adoption sub-optimal, according to the model.

“If you’re starting from a place where the soil is degraded, it takes so long to build up better soil conditions that, from an economic perspective, it’s not worth it to plant cover crops,” said Zachary Brown, associate professor of agricultural and resource economics at NC State and a co-author of the paper. “Like other investments, farmers are interested to know how fast the returns are for cover-crops investments.”

The research also shows that, over time, cover crops can serve as “substitutes” for nitrogen fertilizer, as two of the studied cover crops, crimson clover and hairy vetch, both “fix” nitrogen in the soil.

“The more you use cover crops, the fewer fertilizer inputs are needed,” Brown said. “That effect also increased over time. So, the longer you used cover crops, the more they were able to offset nitrogen fertilizer.”