Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Congress
What Your Friends Are Saying About You
Posted on April 3, 2015
“Nine GOP White House contenders did their best to sound more compelling and better-versed on farm-related matter than their competitors Saturday [March 7] as they were quizzed during and unusual showcase of agriculture policy on the presidential campaign trail.” (Des Moines Register, March 8.)
(Links to all stories are posted at http://live-farm-and-food-file.pantheonsite.io/in-the-news/.)
“The mood in the crowd […]
Please, Just Bruce, Not Kingmaker
Posted on March 23, 2015
We will not be attending the “Iowa Agricultural Summit,” March 7 in Des Moines because, oh dear, this is embarrassing, we were not invited.
Yes, many non-farming, political types were invited and will be there. Rick Perry, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, and Jim Gilmore […]
Food Guidelines and Average Old You and Me
Posted on March 23, 2015
No one in farming or ranching buys a bag of seed corn or a couple of young bulls hoping for an average corn crop or an average calf crop. Both buy what each believes will best fit their farm and ranch’s unique circumstances to achieve the best results because average is, well, average.
Moreover, since the […]
Who Wrote This Mess?
Posted on March 10, 2015
The low whimpering and muffled whining heard in farm country this month are not the gripes and grunts of corn and soybean growers trudging through 2015’s purgatory of under-$4 corn and less-than-$10 beans.
Instead, it’s the rising complaints of cranky farmers as they trudge out of dull meetings where Land Grant experts and Farm Service Agency […]
The COOL Facts
Posted on February 18, 2015
Country of origin labeling, or COOL, for meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts sold in the U.S. has been kicked around by the courts, politicians, international trade panels and special interest farm groups since it became law in 2008.
The only people who haven’t kicked it are American consumers. Polls consistently report that at least 85 percent […]
Dirt’s Big Year
Posted on January 19, 2015
Last year may have been a lot of things to a lot of people but one thing it surely wasn’t was predictable.
I mean who foresaw last year’s record-setting high in the U.S. stock market, the plunge in global crude oil prices, Russia’s naked grab of Ukraine’s sovereign territory or the Obama Administration’s reaching out to […]
Insuring Elephants
Posted on December 23, 2014
Federally subsidized crop insurance is the elephant in the Farm Bill pantry and anyone who had any role in pushing the law through the zoo called Congress knows it. What most didn’t know, however, was when Big Ag would finally acknowledge its huge appetite and suffocating presence.
Enter Mary Kay Thatcher, a long-time, well-respected Washington, D.C. […]
Groundhog Day, Again and Again
Posted on December 22, 2014
Thanksgiving is in the rearview mirror, Christmas in the windshield, and given the glacial pace of key policy decisions awaiting resolution in Washington, D.C., it’s just another Groundhog Day out here in rural America.
Those decisions, after two years of heavy duty do-nothingness, are coming slower than the deadlines faced by this Congress and the new […]
All Right Already, Fix It
Posted on December 22, 2014
If you ran your farm or ranch like the White House and Congress run the federal government, your corn would never get planted and your cows would be long gone.
Of course, if you ran your farm or ranch anywhere near the level of—what?— the scornful divisiveness and almost pure reactionary politics that now guide Congress […]
Quantitative Spinning
Posted on December 10, 2014
Against all odds, economics, the dismal science, has become even more dismal. Since the Great Recession of 2008, what once was equal parts science and art is now equal parts politics and disdain.
What I mean is that nearly every economic report and analysis now comes freighted with political spin and partisan derision. Economic numbers—jobs, exports, […]