Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
From the Column
Readers Can Write, Too
Posted on July 19, 2018
There’s an art and elegance to letter writing that electronic communication—email, texting, direct messaging, Twitter, and other ethereal forms—simply can’t capture. The biggest difference is also its most ironic: paperless communication encourages brevity and emphasizes urgency.
Why, I wonder, is there a weight restriction on email? NNTR. (No need to reply.)
Still, most reader letters do, in […]
When Trump Starts Tweeting, Sonny Starts Packing
Posted on July 11, 2018
Prince Edward Island, caressed in eastern Canada’s provincial arms of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, is a lovely place to visit in June. Its sparkling red sand beaches, miles of white-blossomed potato fields, and rolling carpets of lush pasture form a color-soaked postcard for tourists and locals alike.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue caught a […]
On the Road: Ireland’s Farms, Food, and Future
Posted on July 11, 2018
Dublin, even in June sunshine, can’t entirely shake its smoky, troubled past. Bullet holes the size of grapes still pockmark the pillars and walls of the General Post Office, the epicenter of the 1916 Easter Rebellion and its cobblestone side streets look more 18th century than 21st.
Still, it’s sunny and warm and Dublin’s streets are packed […]
Twenty-Five Years
Posted on June 20, 2018
June has always been a big month for me. I was born in June, graduated from high school in June, was readmitted to the Big U in June (it’s a long story) and, starting in June 1993, this weekly effort began quietly in the Galesburg (IL) Register-Mail.
Over the past 25 years, newspapering and the column, […]
Tanning Cowboys’ Hides
Posted on June 14, 2018
Forty years ago Waylon and Willie asked the nation’s mamas not to “let your babies grow up to be cowboys” because “… they’ll never stay home and they’re always alone, even with someone they love.”
That sage advice is even more true after a spring cattle market that’s been too wild to forget and too brutal […]
All Mud, No Zen
Posted on June 14, 2018
Success in sports, business, and politics requires skilled leaders who know their jobs and know how to fold disparate talents and personalities into something greater than the logical sum of its parts.
Take Phil Jackson, a North Dakota high school basketball star, who coached two different teams to 11 National Basketball Association championships between 1991 and […]
Make ZTE Great Again
Posted on May 30, 2018
If you think writing a farm bill makes for strange bedfellows, just look at who’s allied against President Donald J. Trump’s up-and-down trade talks with China: the deeply conservative Wall Street Journal and the decidedly undecided Financial Times, or FT.
On May 8, FT’s Martin Wolf described America’s “draft framework” guiding U.S-China trade talks earlier that […]
The Winning Losers
Posted on May 30, 2018
There’s something fundamentally wrong with a legislative process that delivers a Farm Bill so deeply flawed that groups as politically diverse as the ruby red Heritage Foundation and the ocean blue Environmental Working Group (EWG) join forces to publicly condemn it.
And yet on May 8, EWG’s Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Scott Faber moderated […]
What’s The Matter with Kansas?
Posted on May 24, 2018
For over 100 years, some Kansans have either built or added to their journalism reputation by asking this simple question: What’s the matter with Kansas? The answer, however, is far from simple.
The first to ask was William Allen White, the publisher and editor of the Emporia Gazette. White, a mainstream Republican, posed the question as the […]
Rest in Peace
Posted on May 16, 2018
By default, obituary writers get the last official word on everyone. They tell the deceased person’s story through births, marriages, and deaths; add to it with names of parents, siblings, and children; and round it out with an anecdote or two about hobbies and professional achievements.
Maybe that’s why my father had a hand in writing […]