Hog prices this year reached a seasonal peak at the beginning of July. As expected this peak came well ahead of the early August high of 1957. The reason was a shift to earlier farrowing for the 1958 spring pig crop which shortened the summer period of low hog supply.

Some of the older and poorly constructed pole framed buildings have been targets of criticism. New developments and techniques, however, have resulted in improvements which increase the advantages of pole construction.

We've been looking in previous articles in this series some of the factors that cause weather to behave as it does. Now let's see how a weather forecast is made. We'll "look in" briefly on the operations of the United States Weather Bureau - the government's official weather agency.

The nation's commercial corn area has grown by 64 percent since it was originally set out. But analysis of actual data for corn acreage and production indicates that both are becoming more centralized in the Corn Belt.

This monthly feature presents brief reports on the progress results and applications of farm and home research currently being conducted by your agricultural and home economics experiment station at Iowa State College.