Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
From the Column
OK, but how many people?
Posted on September 8, 2013
Our good friends at Progressive Farmer magazine fill 15 pages of their September issue with a well-researched, very well-written “special report” on “Feeding the World.”( http://www.dtnpf-digital.com/#&pageSet=26)
The four-color, four-story package hits all the humane highlights U.S. farmers and ranchers expect in these stories of manifest destiny and when “the world will look to the U.S. to help […]
Shut up, butt out, get lost
Posted on September 1, 2013
On Aug. 27, the late summer heat of Washington, D.C. was spit-roasting locals and tourists alike up and down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Inside the U.S. District Courthouse, a half-block off the main thoroughfare and just three blocks from the U.S. Capitol, however, all anyone from Mexico to Canada could talk about was COOL, the American law that […]
The Other Red Meat
Posted on August 25, 2013
A lean hog is not a fat chicken but the marketing geniuses hired by the National Pork Board sure sold a lotta’ hams, bacons and butts when, in 1987, they began to promote pork as “The Other White Meat.”
Now, 25 years after that brilliant slight of hand, the pork crowd wants to be known as […]
The last supper
Posted on August 18, 2013
The weekly newspaper from my hometown bring news that the small, rural Catholic church near the big southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth will close its doors next year, a casualty, according to its distant bosses, of too few priests and too many parishes.
It’s a judgment day that many of the old timers mostly […]
From Russia with Love
Posted on August 11, 2013
The July 30 news that Uralkali, the huge Russian potash producer, was pulling out of the global fertilizer cartel might be that nation’s richest gift to American farmers since the Great Grain Robbery in 1972.
Unlike the grain-buying deal that carried grain prices to 125-year highs 41 Julys ago, this July’s move will drain potash prices […]
Time to Make Hay
Posted on July 28, 2013
As this July forever fades into this August and the sweaty, hardworking part of high summer slides into the sleepier, dog days of late summer, our hired hands in Washington, D.C. have less than 20 legislative days to put up a year’s worth of hay before Congressional winter begins September 30.
They won’t make it. The […]
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Honest question: What does keeping the seat Dem do for Iowa agriculture, its farmers, and environment? Honest answer: Same thing the Dem Sec. of Ag from Iowa has done last two years-more ethanol, more dirty water, & more Big Ag. https://t.co/rwouHWCQiq
@daswenson @RiverRaccoon, can carbon be sequestered in corn-soy commodity system in drained/tiled fields? If not, doesn’t this one fact alone take most of Iowa and IL crop farmers out of the carbon game (yes, game) before it begins?
Cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits would have far greater impact on rural America than cuts to farm program payments. https://t.co/lc6SN65Jbn