Farmers for the Future

Dan Looker has written about agriculture for over two decades, beginning during the agricultural boom of the 1970s. At the Lincoln Journal Star, he wrote about the failure of investment schemes to grow irrigated corn in Nebraska's fragile Sandhills. At the Des Moines Register, Looker covered the farm depression of the 1980s, the loss of young farmers during that period, and the struggles between small family-run hog farms and large hog-producing agribusiness companies. Currently the business editor for Successful Farming magazine, Looker, who lives in Des Moines, has received several national writing awards for his work. During 1994-95 he served as president of the National Association of Agricultural Journalists.