Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Life on the Farm
Sometimes the Hardest Thing to Do is Nothing; Let’s Do it
Posted on July 29, 2020
Mid-July was always summer’s sweet spot on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth.
With June’s rush of sweaty work—wheat harvest, straw baling, laying corn by, cultivating soybeans, and weed spraying—finally complete and before another cutting of alfalfa was ready, mid-July slipped in with treats like fresh peaches, sweet corn, and juicy garden tomatoes.
Mid-July also […]
Red, White, Blue, and Black
Posted on July 6, 2020
The first African American I really interacted with was not an American but was, in fact, an African. He was a Nigerian graduate student who served as a teaching assistant to the “discussion session” of a political science class I took at the Big U in 1973.
That I was nearly 20 years old […]
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 […]
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Here’s a freebie reply for @JoeBiden: For years, Americans have been led to believe that Donald Trump got ahead because of a rich father. Turns out it was more like a rich uncle-Uncle Sam! https://t.co/IwLtMIYOxe
In the six yrs that Ernst has been on Senate Ag Committee, US taxpayers have sent farmers $109B in *direct farm program payments* ($60B in 2019 & 2020 alone). All the ethanol in the world, let alone Iowa, can’t fix that problem. https://t.co/B5P3nKd87Q
No surprise; the Cotton Gang historically has been the biggest winner in farm bailouts. Also no surprise, Corn & SB Gang whining they didn’t get as much. But biggest non-surprise? No one asking what’s wrong w/ ag policy that requires bailout after bailout. https://t.co/WdlK54MN5J
Equally disturbing is the fact that our farm and political leaders, food companies and eaters don’t care enough about its workers to reform a system fueled natural resource destruction and too much human suffering. https://t.co/pudgHxsUyJ
When you rob Peter to pay Paul you can usually count on Paul’s vote. https://t.co/7GFgFzcguX