Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Special Interests
“Feeding You Like Family” Often Requires a Family
Posted on June 10, 2020
While Tyson Foods says it’s “feeding you like family,” we recently learned that it and the rest of America’s Big Meat members sometimes need a war-like White House declaration just to cut a fat hog.
More striking than the order itself was its effect: it didn’t work.
A week after President Donald J. Trump ordered […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Welcome to the Fight; Now Get in Line
Posted on January 2, 2020
After 38 years in journalism, some events still cause shock. Many center on public officials holding private meetings where a “just-us-insiders” intimacy affords all a “better understanding”—read total control—of their policy initiatives.
Sorry (not sorry), but public policy doesn’t work that way. There’s no room for secrecy when public officials spend public money to […]
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 […]
“It’s Going to be a Long Winter”
Posted on December 13, 2019
Mother Nature turned a colorful, late fall into a bitterly cold, early winter as if to prove—after a planting, growing, and harvest season marked by floods, drought, and mud—that she’s still in charge and still not happy.
Not happy about what? No one can say but almost every American from Montana’s Western Slope to Maryland’s […]
Partisanship, Piffle, and Prattle
Posted on October 16, 2019
Some years ago, I wrote a column on how farm groups sternly preached the value of what they reverently called “sound science” but, in fact, usually endorsed only “science that sounds good” to the groups.
Not coincidentally, I noted, most of that good-sounding science was “science” tied to research bought-and-paid-for by the groups themselves.
Examples of this […]
Summer Fun with August Numbers
Posted on September 5, 2019
Ag Twitter had a big sandbox to play in after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) clobbered the agricultural futures markets Aug. 12 with its number-filled Crop Report and World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, or WASDE.
The updated numbers—planted acreage, estimated production, and projected usage—hit the market like a hailstorm. Corn futures snapped […]
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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