Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Farm Bill
America’s Farming Soul
Posted on August 3, 2018
Sometimes it’s even hard for me to believe what I read in the newspaper. The latest “someone-really-said-that?” moment arrived courtesy of The Milkweed, the sharp-penned, monthly dairy newspaper owned and edited by Peter Hardin in Brooklyn, WI.
In its July 2018 edition, Milkweed writer Jan Shepel highlighted the controversy fueled by Marin Bozic, a dairy foods […]
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 […]
Might Over Right
Posted on May 16, 2018
One of the clearest memories I have as a second grade student is looking north from my classroom windows nearly everyday to see fellow second graders, Ricky W. and his sister, Regina, running to school, late as usual, with their arms, feet, and homework flying.
I also remember the two were usually met at the classroom […]
Wisdom Should Come with Age
Posted on May 10, 2018
In May 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus, a Pole living in Prussia, published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, a book that used mathematics and astronomy to postulate how the earth and the then-known planets rotated on their own axes as they orbited a stationary sun. Within days of its printing, however, Copernicus died.
His theory of […]
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 […]
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, […]
A Plan or An Obit
Posted on November 30, 2017
Five hundred years ago this week, a German theologian nailed a sheet of 95 statements, or theses, to a church door in Saxony in hopes of starting a debate to reform the church he loved. But Martin Luther’s hammer didn’t spur debate; it sparked a wildfire that changed the world.
That’s the thing about reformers; once […]
Predictably Irrational
Posted on November 2, 2017
When it comes to the artful science of economics, most American farmers and ranchers are classic Ricardians, or followers of David Ricardo, an 18th century English stock trader whose influential book, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, explained what he saw as the market’s guiding lights.
Any ag econ student from the last 150 […]
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If correct, @ChrisClaytonDTN, did Ernst say why tariffs remain? Their pointing at each as problem allows all to escape reality that tariffs have done nothing to improve trade and have cost billions in lost sales, bailouts & higher prices. Bad ideas breed bad policy. https://t.co/rqgwOKhzoD
American ag is commodity-centered because American ag policy is commodity-centered. If we want more farms growing more food, we need a more food-centered farm policy.
Exactly right @mikeadsit. If Big Ag runs ag policy at every level, no surprise it believes its way is only way. Here’s a different way: cap farm program payments so 75% go to ‘medium’ & ‘small’ farmers, not big boys. https://t.co/3alIxpyTA0
More Trump trade doubletalk: So where are US farmers to turn if Prez’s plan leave WTO out of any China trade deal-& long term, leave WTO altogether-actually happen? https://t.co/9Xjwzgspfz
When was SecSonny crowned KingSonny? It must have happened because *Perdue told reporters after Tuesday’s hearing he wasn’t sure if the agency needed an appropriation to move ahead with the USDA relocation...* https://t.co/fafaScYsUM
Another brick in the increasingly fact-free wall that separates political grandstanding from essential legislating. Thanks @ChrisClaytonDTN https://t.co/Yn484NMxxs