Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
From the Column
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 […]
It Takes a Carpenter
Posted on October 16, 2019
In the early morning fog the other day, I heard a claw hammer’s tap, tap, bam, bam, bam, boom drive a nail into its place for who knows how many years. A moment later, another six, clear, sharp notes cut through the fog and another nail was set for, maybe, a century or more.
[…]
The Plan is No Plan
Posted on October 16, 2019
You know you’re deep in the rabbit hole when bad news—say, a government report that shows steep cuts in anticipated 2019 crop yields—is good news because it will hopefully boost prices. Conversely, when good news arrives, like an unexpected week of perfect September weather, it’s actually bad news because it just drags already low […]
Whipping the Soy-Boys is No Way to Win Customers
Posted on October 2, 2019
P.T. Barnum, the quintessential American showman, might have found today’s food carnival more interesting and far more profitable than his namesake circus of yore.
For example, slow food is taking note of the fast rise of meatless, or plant-based, burgers this year. Veggie burgers, their previous incarnation, are not new; the lovely Catherine has been […]
The Enemy of My Enemy Remains an Enemy
Posted on September 26, 2019
Most rural Americans are old enough to remember when their president noted that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.”
That was, after all, several tariff hikes, dozens of trade meetings, and more than 15,000 presidential tweets ago. It may seem like a lifetime but it was just 19 months ago, on March 2, […]
Before Silage Season, The Hand-Me-Down Season
Posted on September 12, 2019
Sometime in mid-August, well after fair season and just before corn silage season, my brothers and I endured the hand-me-down season on the southern Illinois dairy farm of our youth.
It was just as you suspect. One morning some weeks before school began, my mother watched as we tried on our next older brother’s clothes to […]
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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