Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Congress
Any new Farm Bill must navigate the unruly 2023 House GOP–again
Posted on February 22, 2023
As expected, the 2023 Farm Bill express is not running on time. In fact, it didn’t even leave the station when its chief engineer, Pennsylvania Republican and incoming House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson, said it would.
That’s no surprise; it’s Congress, after all.
Indeed, it would have been a big surprise had it started on the […]
Unfinished Business: Immigration Reform
Posted on January 6, 2023
Like the weather, everyone talks about immigration reform but few do much about it.
In fact, do-nothingness is the dominant trait of immigration lawmaking. A Google search of the phrase “ag immigration stalemate” delivers “about 621,000 results in 0.61 seconds” dating back to at least the mid-1990s.
There was, however, a moment of movement last summer when […]
House’s New Ag Boss Doesn’t Offer Much That’s New
Posted on January 6, 2023
While his Republican House colleagues were fighting for votes–and party majority–a week after the Nov. 8 midterm election, Pennsylvania incumbent Glenn Thompson, the ranking GOP member of the House Ag Committee, was basking in the glow of another blowout re-election.
His hammering, 40-point win wasn’t his biggest. That came in 2020 when he won his sixth […]
CFTC’s Role in ‘Crypto’ is More Lapdog Than Watchdog
Posted on December 13, 2022
If you don’t understand the allure, gyrating value, and many crack-ups of cryptocurrency, a few words from New York University’s Nouriel Roubini, the economist who predicted the 2007/08 housing collapse, might help.
Speaking at the Abu Dhabi Finance conference in mid-November, Roubini, reported CNBC, “… described crypto and some of its major players as an ‘ecosystem […]
Don’t Bet Against the Latest Supermarket Super Merger
Posted on December 13, 2022
Late on Friday, May 7, the day before the running of the 2022 Kentucky Derby, a chestnut-colored colt named Rich Strike made the race’s lineup after, literally, another horse withdrew from the competition at the last minute.
The next day, May 8, Rich Strike struck it rich: The ridiculously long, 80-1 longshot won the Derby, the […]
When Free Markets Hit the Frying Pan, Consumers Often Get Burned
Posted on October 28, 2022
On Nov. 6, 2018, 12 million Californians voted, by a 63-to-37-percent majority, to establish minimum welfare standards for livestock and poultry products–chiefly eggs, pork, and veal–sold in the nation’s most populous state.
The initiative, called Proposition 12 (Prop 12), was an emphatic endorsement of two previous actions (one by voters in 2008; the other by […]
A No-Ethanol Future Doesn’t Mean a No-Profit Future
Posted on September 28, 2022
It’s rare to find one Midwestern academic publicly questioning the economic and environmental impacts of ethanol.
It’s even rarer to find four academics–one from a corn state land grant university, three from a leading university in the leading corn-producing state–raising objections to the biofuel and its byproducts that will use one out of every three bushels […]
From Catalonia to California, It’s Been One Long, Hot Summer
Posted on September 9, 2022
Long ago when traveling through Europe, a friend developed what he called the “Alan Rule” since I never remembered the Celsius-to-Fahrenheit conversion math: 10 degrees Celsius, wear a coat; 20 degrees, a light jacket; 30 degrees, shirtsleeves.
There was no suggestion for 40 degrees because 40 degrees Celsius is a baking 104 degrees Fahrenheit (F), an […]
Forty Billion Reasons to Go Green
Posted on September 9, 2022
If American farmers and ranchers really want to live the oft-repeated boast that they are “the first environmentalists,” then, by golly, Joe Manchin and his Democratic Senate colleagues have the legislative vehicle to prove it.
Manchin, the chief monkeywrencher of Dem dreams for the last two years, shocked everyone when he and Senate Majority Leader Chuck […]
Our Money, Their Mouth, Your Choice
Posted on August 17, 2022
If the political polls are to be believed, November’s midterm election will sweep Democrats out of power in the U.S. House of Representatives and put Republicans back in charge.
If accurate, House Republicans will have a splendid opportunity to put your tax money where their collective mouth is by implementing their highly detailed, little-publicized “Blueprint to […]
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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