Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Congress
It’s Hard to Tell: Is it 2018 or 2012 or Worse?
Posted on August 3, 2018
Every July, Congress begins to pack its collective bag to escape the scorching heat and suffocating humidity of Capitol Hill. And that’s just inside the Senate and House; outside it’s even worse.
Trapped in this year’s pressure cooker is the 2018 Farm Bill. While the Senate and House each passed their versions earlier this summer, neither […]
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 […]
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 […]
Plowshares Into Swords
Posted on May 3, 2018
Texan Mike Conaway, the Republican chairman the House Ag Committee, went full cowboy on committee Democrats after he learned all 20 of them would vote no on his 2018 Farm Bill if he presented it with what they said were 20 percent cuts in SNAP, the nation’s $68-billion-a-year Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Conaway’s reaction was like […]
The Terrible What Ifs
Posted on April 12, 2018
Spring arrived slowly this year. Then, late last week, its welcome warmth and longer light slipped in and winter’s bony fingers loosened their grip.
In farm and ranch country, however, spring brings tough questions and even tougher choices. Both could have been softened if our farm and political leaders sought compromise, not confrontation. Alas, they didn’t […]
Slouching Toward 2014
Posted on March 28, 2018
In this space on Feb. 2, 2014, I offered a blunt assessment of the just-passed (and still current) Farm Bill and its key handler, Frank Lucas, an Oklahoma Republican who was chairman of the House Ag Committee.
In particular, I criticized Lucas’s description of the legislation that he and his Senate counterpart, Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow, […]
Productive Purpose
Posted on March 1, 2018
It was an inarguable fact on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth that there was no earthly reason my grandfather, one of the farm’s principal owners, would ever borrow money from any bank, person or company.
It wasn’t because he feared debt; he didn’t. As a St. Louis-based bond broker for almost 40 years, […]
America Alone
Posted on February 22, 2018
This morning’s softly falling snow and below freezing temperature make it evident that winter’s early end, suggested by two muddy, 50-degree days last week, was just a rumor. The season’s hard evidence—frozen ground, frozen lake, frozen me—is back and will remain so, predicts the National Weather Service, well into February.
Frozen, also, are federal budget fights, […]
This is Crazy, Right?
Posted on February 14, 2018
You’re pretty sharp; tell me if this makes sense.
Right now, the cotton and dairy lobbies are pushing Congress to pass an additional $1 billion of federal farm spending by attaching not-yet agreed upon language to a must-pass $81 billion disaster relief bill that promises aid to long-suffering Americans overwhelmed by rain, wind, fire, and mud.
And, […]
Mojo Working
Posted on January 31, 2018
The knuckle-cracking cold that accompanied most of the country out of 2017 also followed most of us into 2018. Worse, it didn’t come alone. Much of last year’s bad mojo—the crazy weather, its bitter politics, policy gridlock—also crossed December’s ice bridge into the new year.
For example, President Donald Trump’s closed-fisted trade negotiating style reappeared Jan. […]