Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Life on the Farm
Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Chains
Posted on June 10, 2020
For over a month now, nearly anyone who can lift a fork has asked what the “new normal” in American agriculture will be after Covid-19 loosens its terrible grip.
Six weeks later, we now have a pretty good idea that ag’s new normal will look like ag’s old normal even if it takes a […]
Hey, Didn’t Rural America Invent ‘Social Distancing’?
Posted on April 30, 2020
There’s a brittle beauty to this year’s spring. Amid the swaying daffodils, cotton clouds, and already roaring tractors and dust-shaking planters hides a deadly virus with a special fondness for those of us in rural America.
In fact, rural America is perfectly primed for Covid-19, according to any epidemiologist worth their student loans. The virus […]
“Behold the Fowls of the Air”
Posted on April 8, 2020
My father wasn’t stoic. Instead, his temperament was one of acceptance. He simply accepted the fact that he wasn’t in complete control of most things on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth.
Sure, he was boss over everything in sight: hundreds of acres, 100 dairy cows, five farmhand sons, three hired men, and his unpredictable, […]
Home Sick? Try Mom or Grandma’s Cure-All
Posted on February 27, 2020
The onset of a deep chest cold recently pushed me to wander the aisles of rural America’s drug store, Dollar General, for any cure that might halt the hacking. Three days and three placebos later, my hack weakened to a wheeze. Time, and the lovely Catherine’s chicken soup, did the trick.
Had I been […]
Howard’s Priceless Gift of Simple Giving
Posted on January 8, 2020
The Christmas tree was a scrub cedar hacked from the edge of the woods that bordered the farm. Big-bulbed lights, strung in barber pole fashion, generated almost as much heat as the nearby wood stove. Yellowed Christmas cards, saved over the years and perched like doves in the untrimmed branches, served as ornaments.
“I believe this […]
Milk Shake-Up Just Beginning with Dean’s Downfall
Posted on December 18, 2019
While many in the U.S. dairy sector focus on why the nation’s largest milk bottler, Dean Foods, filed for bankruptcy Nov. 12, the smart money—if there is any smart money left after four years of crushingly low milk prices—is focused on what’s next.
What’s next is what’s always next when your business is built on […]
Walking in the Shadow of Hope
Posted on November 15, 2019
The first obvious sign of the season-long flood is a perfectly level, three-foot high ring of dried mud on the machine shed’s siding. Nature put it there and, in time, will likely wash it away.
Across the road, 100 feet behind a noticeably tilting mailbox, stands the empty, sagging farmhouse of my youth. It […]
Drainers versus Sustainers
Posted on November 7, 2019
Not two miles from my central Illinois home, a farmer’s next crop—a dozen rolls of eight-inch, black plastic drainage pipe—wait to be planted several feet deep in this year’s browning corn stubble.
It’s tiling season in much of the Midwest, that post-harvest period when earth-chewing machines fight weather, mud, and daylight to bury thousands […]
Ag’s Coming Heart Transplant
Posted on October 29, 2019
If government and private estimates are accurate, hundreds of millions of American farm acres will have new owners in the next 15 years.
For example, the National Agricultural Statistics Service, the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) survey takers and record keepers, predicts that 100 million acres of today’s farmland will be sold by its current owners by 2023.
[…]
It Takes a Carpenter
Posted on October 16, 2019
In the early morning fog the other day, I heard a claw hammer’s tap, tap, bam, bam, bam, boom drive a nail into its place for who knows how many years. A moment later, another six, clear, sharp notes cut through the fog and another nail was set for, maybe, a century or more.
[…]
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I have one named Roundup. It’s been off patent since around 400 B.C., maybe earlier. https://t.co/EWk1mG4if7
We can fix this, @NFUDC; let’s stop buying beef, pork & poultry from secretive giants. No one should buy an over-juiced, over-priced piece of assembly line protein from a corporate butcher with the motto ‘Shut up and eat.’ https://t.co/QAHKNYtgG4
Only read this thread if you live in the real world because it’s loaded with real world facts that make perfectly good sense. https://t.co/LIwoWOwsfs
If you’ve done it, then it isn’t a brag. It’s a fact. https://t.co/0Z1gF2wb1O
Solid read. Food aid shouldn’t be built on public shaming. SNAP is more effective, more empowering & less costly than Perdue’s food box program. But the food box program is not about cost or empowerment; it’s about shame-USDA’s. https://t.co/bWpL07mF7e