Latest from Alan

Ag’s New Normal Includes Trade Deficits, Not Surpluses

Nearly drowned out in all the farm group cheering that U.S. ag exports hit a record high $196 billion last year was the inarguable fact that U.S. ag imports also hit a record-high, $199 billion, or $3 billion more than ag exports.

That’s right, sports fans: during its biggest ag export year ever–when the value of […]

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‘Right to Repair’ Fight Between Farmers and Machinery Giants is Just Getting Started

Before a January “memorandum of understanding,” or MOU, on a farmer’s “right to repair” his farm machinery, U.S. equipment makers and their farm and ranch customers were locked in a legal and legislative fight over who could fix today’s complex ag machinery–the customer who owned or leased it, or the maker that designed, built, and […]

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It Will Take Guts to Fix Our Abusive, Cheap Food and Illegal Labor System

Less than a month after the revelation that a Wisconsin-based contractor, Packers Sanitation Services, Inc. (or PSSI), had illegally hired at least 102 teenagers between ages 13 and 17 to clean some of the nation’s most profitable industrial meatpacking plants, one middle school child at the center of the story has, according to a March […]

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Paying the Price for Being Sick, Old, or Poor in Rural America

Rural America is just like the rest of America except it’s older, poorer, and often sicker.

Even worse, if you’re all three in rural America–elderly, poor, and ill–the odds that you will receive proper care from either a government agency or a private provider are dwindling with each passing year.

For proof, here’s how the non-profit National […]

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Paltry Fine Proves What, Not Who, We Truly Value

A much-quoted by preachers and politicians alike rightly notes that “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”

Curiously, a famous American politician, former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and an even more famous attorney-turned-preacher, Mahatma Gandhi, are both credited as its originator.

It’s doubtful, however, that many in […]

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