Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Big Ag
The Sounds of Science
Posted on November 23, 2015
Increasingly, farmers and ranchers agree that “sound science” is science that sounds good to them rather than science that is scientifically sound. Bad science, on the other hand, is science that sounds bad to them even if the majority of scientists agree on it.
For example, a Nov. 2014 poll by Purdue University and Iowa State […]
Hi, My Name is America and I’m a Reductionist
Posted on November 18, 2015
Most Americans like things simple because, well, life is just simpler that way. We like our choices even more simple—up or down, baked or fried, boxers or briefs—because we believe simple choices shorten the odds of mistaken choices.
Our friends in ivory towers disagree. Reductionism—their big word for making problems small—actually increases the odds of making […]
Tweet, Tweet
Posted on November 4, 2015
The tweeting heard by U.S. farmers and ranchers this fall isn’t that loquacious social media birdie Twitter. Instead, it’s canaries—coal mine canaries, to be exact—and their song is neither short nor sweet.
In fact, it’s downright dour. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, this year’s 36 percent fall in net farm income is the biggest […]
Free Trade’s Cheap Talk
Posted on November 4, 2015
Most U.S. farm and commodity groups aren’t clear on the exact elements of the just agreed-upon Trans-Pacific Partnership. That lack of understanding, though, hasn’t stopped any from praising this “new, high-standard trade agreement that levels the playing field for American workers and American businesses.”
For example, our good friends at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association say […]
Mind the Gap
Posted on October 14, 2015
A lashing, late afternoon thunderstorm roared through Chicago Friday, Sept. 18 to power wash Northerly Island, a tongue of land jutting into Lake Michigan just east of the city’s Loop and site of the 2015 Farm Aid concert. By noon Saturday, however, a bright sun danced with puffy clouds and the Windy City’s sweeping skyline […]
Diversity and Resilience versus Corn and Soybeans
Posted on October 14, 2015
By car, Quebec City, Quebec, is 1,840 miles from Bismarck, ND. I know because in the last two months I have seen every mile of highway between North Dakota’s state capital on the Missouri to Quebec’s provincial capital on the St. Lawrence.
Interestingly, as you drive west to east across arguably some of the New World’s […]
No Immigrants, No Food
Posted on September 24, 2015
To hear most of the 2016 Republican presidential candidates tell it, the nation’s biggest problem is illegal immigration.
That’s right; it’s not the incendiary Middle East, the ever-on-edge global financial markets, ballooning overpopulation, rapid climate change, or terrorism either here or abroad. It’s illegal immigration.
It’s so bad, shouts poll-climbing billionaire Donald Trump, that the only solution […]
Hey, Mistakes Happen
Posted on September 9, 2015
Rare is the day any newspaper is printed without a mistake. All strive for perfection; few ever achieve it.
Newspapers, of course, don’t make mistakes; newspaper reporters and editors make mistakes. Last week, one of those reporters was me.
In a column outlining the newly reinstated lawsuit challenging how the National Pork Board paid the National Pork […]
Let There Be Light
Posted on September 9, 2015
On Aug. 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia gave members of the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC or Council) and the farmer-directors of the checkoff-collecting National Pork Board (NPB or Board) one more reason to loathe the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).
In a terse, 11-page order, Circuit Judge […]
Idaho’s “Ag Gag” Bagged
Posted on September 2, 2015
In a relatively short, toughly-worded decision issued Aug. 3, a federal judge in Idaho struck down that state’s year-old “ag gag” law that sought to “criminalize” undercover, or whistleblower, investigations of livestock facilities suspected of animal abuse.
The action by B. Lynn Winmill, chief judge of Idaho’s U.S. District Court, is the first time any “ag […]