Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
About Alan
Alan Guebert is an award-winning agricultural journalist and expert who was raised on an 720-acre, 100-cow southern Illinois dairy farm. After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1980, he worked as a writer and senior editor at Professional Farmers of America and Successful Farming magazine. In 1984, Guebert returned to Illinois to establish his freelance writing business and to serve as a contributing editor to Farm Journal magazine.
He began the syndicated agriculture column “The Farm and Food File” in 1993 and it now appears weekly in more than 60 newspapers throughout the United States and Canada.
Guebert previously wrote ”Letter from America,” a monthly perspective on U.S. farm and food policy for European and Asian publications. “Letter from America” ran from 1995 through 2007.
Throughout his career, Guebert has won numerous awards and accolades for his magazine and newspaper work. In 1997, the American Agricultural Editors’ Association honored him with its highest awards, Writer of the Year and Master Writer.
Alan resides with his wife, Catherine, a social worker, in rural central Illinois. Their son Paul, an attorney and lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves, lives in the Chicago area with his wife, Anamaria, and their two children. Alan’s daughter/editor Mary Grace and her husband Andrew Foxwell co-direct the social media advisory firm Foxwell Digital in Madison, Wisconsin, where they advise companies and non-profits on digital marketing strategy.
Alan and Mary Grace collaborated and co-wrote The Land of Milk and Uncle Honey: Memories from the Farm of My Youth. Published in May 2015 by the University of Illinois Press, it is available for purchase online and at bookstores nationwide. Alan and Mary Grace held over 75 book events with farmers, foodies, and friends across the country.
Latest from Alan
The End is Nowhere in Sight
Posted on March 26, 2020
In just one, unwelcome week in America, the coronavirus drained $3.6 trillion from the stock market, clipped Apple shareholders for $220 billion, and sent millions of Americans to stores to buy every facemask, surgical glove, and gallon of bleach they could get their now-sanitized hands on.
It’s what we do; we panic first and ask […]
The Long and Short of It
Posted on March 26, 2020
If you’re a farmer or rancher, you might be in for a bad day when you open your Monday morning email and five of the six headlines sent by an ag news service read:
–“USDA declares Brazilian beef safe, lifts [U.S. import] ban;”
–“GAO launches investigation into Trump aid to farmers;”
–“China could purchase much […]
The Changing Geography of U.S. Farming and Food
Posted on March 13, 2020
Geography isn’t static. Rivers change course, mountains erode, and islands disappear under rising seas.
The geography of farming and food changes, too. For example, 180 years ago my home county was the castor bean and castor oil capital of the U.S. Both titles, however, slipped into irrelevance as a new resource, crude oil, rose […]
How Rural America Can Avoid “Another Century of Degraded Water”
Posted on March 4, 2020
Despite the presidential caucus debacle Iowa hosted Monday, Feb. 3, the too old, too-white, and too-rural (at least to pundits who drop by every Leap Year) Hawkeye State still finished its awful week with an act of political courage rarely seen in U.S. agriculture today.
On Feb. 7, the Des Moines Register published a clear, sharp […]
Going Green is About Getting Green
Posted on February 27, 2020
One thing Big Ag has gotten very good at over the last two decades is fighting what it sees as the “green” invasion of do-good outsiders into American farming and ranching.
You know who I’m talking about; these tie-dyed, righteous interlopers of Eastern Elites and Left Coast Libs riding impossibly white unicorns into battle in […]
Follow Alan on Twitter
Rural hospitals are dying before our eyes & once gone, they’re gone forever. Congress: can you spare $100B for America’s rural healthcare system before giving foreign-flagged cruise lines one US taxpayer nickel? Please read this well reported story. https://t.co/3R2WDqJis1
Work from facts. Here’s a good starting point for week of March 23. https://t.co/jDdCCFF1dL
I wonder how many want some or all of it back now that US ag is firmly back in the low-tech, low-prices early 1980s. https://t.co/jdTZKUfKE7
If I deleted this, it was because I spent most my youth driving Oliver tractors, not operating anything more complex than a transistor radio. My apologies. Below is what I thought I sent. https://t.co/rc4o8pAxH4