By MATT MCKINNEY, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune

It's now to the point that Lynn Schurman posts in her bakery the latest price for wheat, just so her customers understand. "We're not doing this because we want to," she said of the price hikes on breads and rolls at her Cold Spring Bakery in Cold Spring, Minn. "We're doing it to survive."

Editorial pages and blogs crackled this month with the unfamiliar term "downer cows" -- meaning animals that arrive at a slaughterhouse too sick or weak to stand -- following the release of a gruesome video that showed such cows being prodded to their feet for slaughter.

The nation's microwave ovens need to be fed. Leave it to Hormel. The Austin, Minn., meatpacker said it's selling so many microwaveable meals that it plans to build a fourth plant to produce more. "We literally can't make them fast enough," company spokeswoman Julie Craven said.

The ever-worsening story of foreclosures in America now counts among its victims the family dog, the pet cat and even the farmer's horse.Animal rescue volunteers say they are seeing more animals abandoned or dropped off at shelters as families are forced to move from homes that they can no longer afford.

Corn rose above $5 a bushel in trading on the Chicago Board of Trade on Monday as agricultural commodity markets surged for a second day after a government report Friday that said global reserves o