Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Big Ag
Your local USDA office may soon be your local federal courthouse
Posted on August 3, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, July 14, 2024
The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 28 ruling to overturn the Chevron deference was a business-favoring decision to upend 40 years of legal precedent and redirect federal power from agencies like the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to the courts and Congress.
Big Ag loved the news. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association […]
Farm Bill politics 2024 lean toward Project 2025
Posted on August 3, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, July 7, 2024
This year, like last year, is a Farm Bill year and this year, like last year, probably won’t deliver any Farm Bill.
The reason is the oldest one in Washington, D.C.: politics. Most Congressional Republicans aren’t interested in passing any bipartisan farm and food assistance bill when they believe a delay might deliver a GOP-controlled House, […]
Hocus pocus and–poof–taxpayers pay for more crop insurance
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, June 16, 2024
A longstanding complaint here is the utter incomprehensibility of federal milk pricing policy. For years we’ve joked (mostly through tears) that only four people in the world understand its complexity and, worse, not one of them is a dairy farmer.
As if to prove our point, […]
Words matter… until they don’t
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, June 2, 2024
We in agriculture have a long tradition of marketing our bounty by more pleasant, if not less-than-truthful, names in hopes that less-informed eaters buy the sizzle rather than the fact.
For example, the beef checkoff has spent millions urging people to purchase something called flat-iron steak that isn’t steak […]
Let’s clear up this confusing trade talk once and for all
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, May 26, 2024
The Biden Administration’s trade agenda–mostly forgotten after three years of Covid, inflation, war in Ukraine, brutality in the Middle East, and a cantankerous Congress–recently surfaced and, wow, is it a mess.
For example, both presumptive presidential candidates, Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump, recently argued over how high […]
How to win the SAF game: Part 2
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, April 28, 2024
Federal policymakers and their Big Ag friends have a problem: Their hope to make corn and soybeans the feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) hit a wall when the aviation industry ruled that biofuel from either crop did not meet its “sustainable” guidelines. As such, there would be […]
USDA still runs the most expensive manure-making program in the world
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, April 14, 2024
If the third time is a charm, Michael Happ might finally make an impression on federal lawmakers and administrators with his fact-filled, 24-page report on the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) continued financing of Big Ag’s big manure habit.
This is Happ’s third detailed look at EQIP, USDA’s nearly 30-year […]
Ag’s New Normal Includes Trade Deficits, Not Surpluses
Posted on April 10, 2023
Nearly drowned out in all the farm group cheering that U.S. ag exports hit a record high $196 billion last year was the inarguable fact that U.S. ag imports also hit a record-high, $199 billion, or $3 billion more than ag exports.
That’s right, sports fans: during its biggest ag export year ever–when the value of […]
It Will Take Guts to Fix Our Abusive, Cheap Food and Illegal Labor System
Posted on April 10, 2023
Less than a month after the revelation that a Wisconsin-based contractor, Packers Sanitation Services, Inc. (or PSSI), had illegally hired at least 102 teenagers between ages 13 and 17 to clean some of the nation’s most profitable industrial meatpacking plants, one middle school child at the center of the story has, according to a March […]
Paltry Fine Proves What, Not Who, We Truly Value
Posted on April 10, 2023
A much-quoted by preachers and politicians alike rightly notes that “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”
Curiously, a famous American politician, former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and an even more famous attorney-turned-preacher, Mahatma Gandhi, are both credited as its originator.
It’s doubtful, however, that many in […]