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
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.
[…]
There’s Always Kansas City
Posted on October 29, 2019
The internal memo only confirmed what unofficial Washington had been saying for more than a year and what official Washington had been downplaying for even longer: The White House plan to move two U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) agencies to Kansas City will severely cripple USDA data collection, handcuff policymakers who depend on the […]
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 […]
Follow Alan on Twitter
As long as most subsidies are linked to land & have no hard caps, farmers w/ most acres(inc. cash renters) will always be biggest recipients. (Also why program $ goes to NY, Chi, LA: landowners live there.) Real reform must unlink the two & have hard caps. https://t.co/WeQBHdoI9m
2nd year, @hiramhadley, Ag Econ 220 Farm Management for me. True story, 1st lesson 1st day: *Boys,* (we grabbed our pencils) *most important lesson in farming is that you can marry more money on 10 minutes than you can make in 10 years.* We wrote it down. https://t.co/MtQDw9vcX6
How do you know US farm policy is run by Big Ag for the benefit of Big Ag? You spend *$120 million in state and federal incentives* to make ethanol out of corn cobs just as electric cars start to drive away w/ auto market. https://t.co/ssUiANvOBT
The truth is in the story. CFTC boss: *(W)e have made it very clear... all current risk-management practices are treated as bona fide hedges so if anyone really does have a commercial risk... they are not subject to the position limits...* Game, set & match. https://t.co/S5hI8Q0JhB
Exactly & here’s what DFA will tell members to convince em: We’ll pay less upfront for your milk but you’ll make tons on the backside as bottlers. Members will go along because so many use AI now, few know BS when they see or smell it. https://t.co/YmCcTCNDQX