Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
From the Column
Stand Up or Step Aside
Posted on May 30, 2019
Sanford Bishop and Sonny Perdue go way back.
So far back that Bishop, now a 14-term, Democratic congressman from south Georgia, remembers when Perdue, now the Secretary of Agriculture under President Donald J. Trump, was a Democrat.
Their friendship, however, was tested April 9 when Perdue appeared before the House Appropriations ag subcommittee to […]
Paying Taxes Like a General, or, Better Yet, Amazon
Posted on May 30, 2019
Decades ago, when discussing the complexity of U.S. tax code, an ag lobbyist friend noted that all he wanted in any tax reform “was to pay the same taxes the generals paid: General Mills, General Motors, General Dynamics…”
He’d still take that deal. In 2018, General Dynamics had an effective tax rate of 17.8 […]
Ethanol’s Tightening Tough Spot
Posted on May 8, 2019
If you want to anger almost any American farmer, write something less than flattering about the declining use of biofuels—especially ethanol—in the U.S. today.
If you want to really anger almost any American farmer, write something unflattering about biofuels—especially ethanol—that includes the sentence, “U.S. farmers, particularly cornbelt farmers, have gotten a really bad deal from the […]
Forecast for Trump Trade Talks: More Snow, Maybe Ice
Posted on May 2, 2019
If what we’re seeing now is the Trump trade “strategy”—cram trade talks between the U.S. and China, the U.S. and Japan, and the U.S. and European Union (E.U.) into an ever-tightening window—export-dependent American farmers and ranchers are in serious trouble for several reasons.
The first reason is the relentless calendar. Trade talks require years […]
“No problem, I’ll just stop eating pork.”
Posted on April 24, 2019
One tried-and-true tool politicians use to deflect public criticism is as old as politics itself: beat up the press.
Someone in Secretary Sonny Perdue’s U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) thought it was time to do just that April 8 as the “FSIS Office of Congressional and Public Affairs”—USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service—issued a blistering […]
Time’s Reluctant Elders
Posted on April 17, 2019
On an April Sunday afternoon a year ago, the last ancestral connection to the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth was severed when my mother died quietly and peacefully.
Her passing, quickly followed by her sister’s death, means that this Easter will be the first Easter in the last 64 that I will not be […]
Unlocking the Rural Economy Requires Different Keys
Posted on April 10, 2019
Of all the places you’d expect to see a fight between the cold, hard face of ag economics and the warm, tender heart of rural America, that place would not be the corner of West 41st St. and Eighth Avenue in New York City, the home of the New York Times.
And yet there it was in […]
Corporations Have Rights; Why Not a Lake?
Posted on April 10, 2019
If the ballot box is the ultimate source of power in the United States, then voters in Toledo, Ohio, used that power Feb. 26 to create what’s now being called a “Bill of Rights” for their wide, blue neighbor, Lake Erie.
That vote, if it withstands court challenges (one was filed immediately after the referendum […]
It’s Not Easy Making An Egg Out of An Omelet
Posted on March 28, 2019
According to the Roman calendar, the Ides of March was the ancient empire’s traditional day to settle debts. In 44 B.C., Brutus and Cassius, two of Rome’s elite senators, settled a political debt with Julius Caesar, their leader, by stabbing him to death in the Senate on the Ides, or March 15.
Little blood is […]
If You Want to See the Future, You Need to Look Ahead
Posted on March 22, 2019
To most farmers and ranchers, “sustainable” is a word that, like exercise or vacation, has a dictionary definition and a personal definition. The difference between the two, however, often is the difference between the county fair and the World’s Fair.
These folks aren’t alone. Almost everyone and everything from commodity groups to coal companies make […]