It is Monday morning. We are in the 20th day of the federal government shutdown. One of the things that most strikes me is the complete lack of information from politicians and officials on both sides of the aisle about how much money is at stake, and what the impacts of stopping those flows of money might […]
It’s October 3, 2025, and the federal government shut down two days ago for lack of budget legislation. It was not a surprise. Republicans holding power in the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House have made it a point not to negotiate a resolution, either among themselves (they had the power to resolve this […]
We do a bit of business planning work here at Regional Strategic, Ltd. Our president, Mark Imerman, cut his teeth on business planning as a market development economist at the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. It that role, he assisted farm operators and investors develop marketing facilities for alternative crops. It was a strategy pursued […]
It is detasselling season in Iowa. Detasselling is a critical process in hybrid seed production. Hybrid seed is critical to Midwest corn production. Detasselling in Iowa is heavily dependent upon immigrant labor. During detasseling season, Iowa utilizes 8,000 to 10,000 hours per day of immigrant labor on H-2A visas in crop production The exact numbers for any […]
People talk about the “1%” as if it was something of the outer world. It is assumed to be a small cadre of individuals with seemingly infinite wealth who live in the economic stratosphere. This is not actually the case. In 2024, there were only 813 billionaires in the United States. These people are the ones we […]
