Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
About Alan
Alan Guebert is an award-winning agricultural journalist and expert who was raised on an 720-acre, 100-cow southern Illinois dairy farm. After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1980, he worked as a writer and senior editor at Professional Farmers of America and Successful Farming magazine. In 1984, Guebert returned to Illinois to establish his freelance writing business and to serve as a contributing editor to Farm Journal magazine.
He began the syndicated agriculture column “The Farm and Food File” in 1993 and it now appears weekly in more than 60 newspapers throughout the United States and Canada.
Guebert previously wrote ”Letter from America,” a monthly perspective on U.S. farm and food policy for European and Asian publications. “Letter from America” ran from 1995 through 2007.
Throughout his career, Guebert has won numerous awards and accolades for his magazine and newspaper work. In 1997, the American Agricultural Editors’ Association honored him with its highest awards, Writer of the Year and Master Writer.
Alan resides with his wife, Catherine, a social worker, in rural central Illinois. Their son Paul, an attorney and lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves, lives in the Chicago area with his wife, Anamaria, and their two children. Alan’s daughter/editor Mary Grace and her husband Andrew Foxwell co-direct the social media advisory firm Foxwell Digital in Madison, Wisconsin, where they advise companies and non-profits on digital marketing strategy.
Alan and Mary Grace collaborated and co-wrote The Land of Milk and Uncle Honey: Memories from the Farm of My Youth. Published in May 2015 by the University of Illinois Press, it is available for purchase online and at bookstores nationwide. Alan and Mary Grace held over 75 book events with farmers, foodies, and friends across the country.
Latest from Alan
China Plays the Long Game; U.S. Keeps Getting Played
Posted on December 4, 2019
Several years ago, when Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Tom Friedman was asked to choose which rising Asian nation, China or India, he’d bet the farm on, Friedman didn’t hesitate to pick India.
The reason, he explained, was that while both nations were on an expressway to the future, India, the world’s largest democracy, had an open road in […]
End of Trade War Looks Like Beginning of Cold War
Posted on November 26, 2019
If China agreed to purchase “$40 to $50 billion” of U.S. farm goods in “the next two years,” as President Donald J. Trump announced Oct. 11, the futures market—where market reality is quickly sorted from political talk—literally wasn’t buying it.
In fact, November soybean futures, the nearby contract, opened Monday, Oct. 14 at $9.405 per bu. and […]
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.
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Follow Alan on Twitter
If USDA overpaid farmers $14B in tariff money, will it ask for it back to fund 3M people it’s trying to kick off SNAP because they are *able-bodied*? By its own definition, USDA should @ least be asking for $ back from every *able-bodied* farmer. https://t.co/1PcaApMrVU
Why is this something to brag about when 40%+ of all 2019 farm income comes from gov’t, when most US meat, poultry & dairy comes from giant CAFOs & when rural water is unsafe? Brag when farmers, taxpayers & consumers are all getting better deals. https://t.co/Trw5dKXAof
So farm groups will soon need another bloody shirt to wave once USMCA clears the House. Nominees? Likely won’t be tariffs or Trump. https://t.co/W9sSYW5Us1
Obama USDA boss, Tom Vilsack, endorsed Biden last week implying Obama era farm policies (crop insurance, little defense of conservation) might be maintained in Biden WH. https://t.co/6IcciBASkK
Cash rent is per-acre cost to use non-farming owner’s land for one growing season. (In central IL it’s now averages $275/A.) All gov’t payments like tariff mitigation money (~$80/A this year in IL) usually go to tenant, not landowner. https://t.co/Xs1J6uokAJ