Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Big Ag
Let’s Dance
Posted on June 15, 2016
Since late last summer, Big Seed’s big players have looked more like anxious high school kids hoping to pair off for the senior prom than international businesses investing in new products and markets.
The first to go courting was St. Louis-based Monsanto. Last August it offered nearly $46 billion for its Swiss classmate, Syngenta, only to […]
Trade Deals Going Nowhere
Posted on June 8, 2016
As the politics of this election year heat up, the chances of Congress debating—let alone passing—either of the White House’s marque trade deals continue to melt away.
Oh, there’s plenty of talk about the westward-looking Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Euro-centered Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TPP and TTIP, respectively. Most of the yakking, however, flows […]
We Should Talk
Posted on June 1, 2016
With little fanfare and barely a nod of public acknowledgement, the world of food turned upside down April 13 when the U.S. Department of Agriculture informed a Penn State University plant pathologist that the “white button mushroom” he developed by removing some of its genetic material is not a genetically modified organism (GMO).
As such, USDA […]
Checkoffs Go Dark
Posted on May 25, 2016
Big Ag’s control of the non-refundable, federally-chartered Research & Promotion programs—more commonly known as commodity checkoffs—reached new heights April 19 when the House Appropriations Committee approved the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s $21.3 billion 2017 budget.
Tucked 34 pages into the pending bill’s 217 pages of bureaucratic thatch was this thorn: Since “commodity Research and Promotion boards”—USDA-appointed […]
They Never Stopped Making It
Posted on May 11, 2016
Forty-five years ago, anyone hoping to be someone in American agriculture was offered the same, free advice: “Buy land; they’re not making it anymore.”
But “they” were making it. In fact, lots and lots of it.
According to data reported by the United Nations, the world’s farmable land base grew by about 240 million acres between 1971 […]
Change Ain’t Grilled Cheese
Posted on May 4, 2016
According to the website Nationalcalendarday.com, April 12 was National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day, National Licorice Day, National Equal Pay Day, National Library Workers Day, and National Big Wind Day.
None of these “national” days are national. They are made up, mostly by groups or causes seeking free publicity. That’s true even for that wonderfully Washington, D.C.-sounding […]
The Ethanol Trap
Posted on May 1, 2016
March did not go out like either a lion or a lamb. In fact, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its Prospective Plantings Report midday March 31, the month—as well as the 2016 corn market—highballed it into history faster than a runaway train.
The coal was USDA’s forecast that farmers intend to plant 93.6 million […]
Free Markets Work, When We Let ‘Em
Posted on April 20, 2016
There is a certain poetry in Sen. Pat Roberts’, R-KS, failure to convince the U.S. Senate to squash state and local food labeling laws. His proposed fix, fail though it did, may have done more to boost consumer faith in the market than anything Congress has or hasn’t done in years.
Roberts’ winning loss began with […]
Cuban Junket Summer
Posted on April 13, 2016
America’s counter-culture had its Summer of Love in 1969 and baseball its Home Run Summer in 1998. U.S. farm and checkoff groups will have their Cuban Junket Summer in 2016.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack guaranteed it when, on March 21, he gave the green light to “22 industry-funded Research and Promotion Programs”—federally-chartered commodity checkoffs—and […]
Whole Lot of Shaking Going On
Posted on April 6, 2016
What most American voters don’t know about plate tectonics would kill a bull. Still, something deep in the North American continent and the American consciousness has shifted to alter our adopted land and its political landscape.
For example, the Ides of March brought both the 2,060th anniversary of Caesar’s assassination in the Roman Forum and swaying-in-the-wind, […]