Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
From the Column
Out of Many “Theys,” We
Posted on November 11, 2020
Ten or so years ago a friend asked if I would help him move a gun safe from his garage to his basement. I agreed not knowing what I was in for.
I had heard of gun safes; I just hadn’t ever seen one. My father’s “safe” was a corner living room closet where […]
Big Ag is Counting on a Purple Blue Dog
Posted on November 11, 2020
If there is such a thing as a 76-year-old poster child, Collin Peterson, the chairman of the House Ag Committee, could be the weatherworn face of today’s red-and-blue political divide in rural America. His qualifications for the job are, well, colorful.
For example, he’s a 15-term, incumbent Democrat in a rural Minnesota congressional district […]
Now Would Be a Good Time for Honest Dishonesty
Posted on October 28, 2020
Somewhere in southern Illinois there’s a high school yearbook that contains a photo of me and another student leaning against a classroom wall on either side of a 1972 campaign poster of a smiling Richard Nixon. The caption writer, another student, notes that my buddy and I are “standing” with our man, the then-incumbent president.
[…]
Perilous Bounty is a Journey Well Worth Taking
Posted on October 28, 2020
Some books are worth more in your hand and on your shelf than they are as electrons in your e-reader. These books, and their authors, are valued friends and you return to them often for information, advice, and comfort.
Two downsizing moves in the last 15 years have pared my library to a few shelves […]
Election Year Crazy, Sure, But This Is Way Beyond Crazy
Posted on October 28, 2020
Just when you think 2020 can’t possibly get any crazier, autumn arrives with a carload of crazy in tow.
For example, does any farmer or rancher really know what the White House’s recently announced additional $14 billion in ag bailout money is intended to address that the previous $37.2 billion didn’t address?
That’s an honest question because we […]
The Big Meat Gang is Getting Awfully Smelly
Posted on October 14, 2020
In a year of too many dark days, Monday, Sept. 14 was a particularly dark day for every American for two reasons.
First, on Sept. 14, ProPublica, the non-profit, investigatory news group, published a 3,100-word expose’ on how global meatpackers used their clout this spring to get a White House order to keep workers on […]
We’re Not Very Good Students Even When We’re Given the Answers
Posted on October 7, 2020
If experience is the best teacher, then surely we have learned a few important, unforgettable lessons in this otherwise forgettable year.
If it isn’t a good teacher or we are uncaring students, then we’ve squandered most of the year, over $4 trillion, and almost 200,000 lives on lessons still needing to be learned.
That’s not […]
Sixty Days Until the Farm and Food World Shakes
Posted on October 7, 2020
In March 1919, John Reed, an American journalist, published Ten Days that Shook the World, his eyewitness book on one of the new century’s most defining events, the Russian Revolution.
Eighty years later, Reed’s groundbreaking work was still shaking the world. New York University ranked it seventh on its list of the 20th century’s 100 most consequential works. […]
‘How Much Evidence Do You Need to Vaporize a Zombie?’
Posted on September 30, 2020
While “zombie ideas” isn’t a phrase you often see in farm publications, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has popularized it to describe a uniquely American political condition.
Zombie ideas, the 2008 Nobel winner in economics explained in a 2018 column, are “ideas that should have died long ago, yet still keep shambling along, eating politicians’ brains.”
That […]
Ahead of Her–And Our–Times a Century Ago
Posted on September 30, 2020
My grandmother was both a woman of her times and a woman far ahead of even our times. For example, today’s electric cars would be a yawn for her; she rode in them “before the war.”
World War I, that is. Grandma (her given name was Ruth) was born in 1902 and lived 86 active […]