Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
From the Column
This Time, The Scoreboard Tells the Whole Story
Posted on August 4, 2021
In farming, the late Farm Journal economist John Marten liked to say, we keep score with acres.
Right or wrong, acres–and the wealth they represent–have always been a measure of personal and professional success. The converse is true, too; the lack or loss of acres usually implies failure of sorts.
That critical measure is at the center […]
Worker Wages are Not the Cause of Higher Food Prices
Posted on July 7, 2021
After my first year at the Big U, I returned to the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth for a summer of work. The first task, however, was to ask my father to double my hourly pay from 50-cents an hour, the amount I’d been paid through high school, to $1 per hour.
“Well,” Dad […]
Truth in Labeling is the Opposite of Branding
Posted on July 7, 2021
If up is up and down is down, it makes sense then that organic food—especially food that carries the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s treasured “USDA Organic” label—is organic, right?
Not all the time, maintains Francis Thicke, an Iowa organic dairy farmer introduced here last month. In fact, Thicke and hundreds of other long-time organic farmers maintain […]
Adventures in Ag Journalism: A Million Words Later, We’re Still Here
Posted on June 11, 2021
This week marks the 28th anniversary of this editorial effort. In round numbers that’s more than 1,430 columns, a million words, and who knows how many cold beverages.
Its start came about like many efforts in journalism: I got fired. It’s a long story, so you might want to get comfortable—and even grab a cold beverage.
[…]
Beware of Philosopher Kings and ‘Synthetic Alternatives’
Posted on June 11, 2021
Shortly after America’s largest private farmland owners, Microsoft billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates, acknowledged their pending divorce, some wag on Twitter wondered what might be the appropriate time to wait before he approached the soon-to-be-former missus to ask about renting some of her farmland.
While he was joking, it’s no joke that the about-to-split pair […]
Ag Groups Make a United, Hollow Call on Meatpackers to Play Nice
Posted on June 11, 2021
On May 17, six farm groups joined voices to call on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Congress, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to ensure a “more financially sustainable situation for cattle feeders and cow-calf producers.”
That’s make-nice farm talk for “Meatpackers are skinning U.S. cattlemen so badly now that we six, not-usually-friendly groups ask the federal government—swamp […]
China’s Buying Binge Continues… Until It Doesn’t
Posted on June 11, 2021
China is even hungrier, richer, and—to the delight of almost every American farmer—more impatient in today’s global food market than anyone thought possible even a decade ago.
In fact, according to the data crunchers at Agricultural Economic Insights (aei), China now imports “about 100 million acres worth of crop production, or roughly 25% of total […]
Organic Farm Rules Need to be Quickly Reviewed, Not Slowly Rewritten
Posted on June 11, 2021
Nearly everything about Francis and Susan Thicke’s southeastern Iowa, organic dairy farm whispers bucolic: a herd of Jersey cows and calves graze on rolling acres of green pastures amid fenced farm fields and acres and acres of tree-thick woods.
Even the farm’s name, Radiance Dairy, relays an easy calm.
But there’s nothing calm about the food fight the Thickes (pronounced […]
More Greenhouse Gas Comes from Rural Leaders Than Rural America
Posted on May 19, 2021
While everyone uses water, Americans use it up, noted Wallace Stegner, the preeminent writer of the West, in his 1992 book of essays Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs.
That shrewd observation is even more accurate today.
In fact, even though we’ve dammed every river west of—and including—the Missouri, pumped most underground aquifers to […]
Managing Climate Risk is Good for Business and Good for the Future
Posted on May 13, 2021
With the wave of a wand, you’re the boss of the Farm Credit System (FCS). You manage a portfolio of 592,000 ag-related customers holding 946,119 loans totaling $315 billion—$113 billion in real estate debt alone—according to Dec. 2020 FCS data.
Those numbers keep most people up at night but you sleep like a baby because your staff […]