Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Farm Bill
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 […]
Regular Order
Posted on October 19, 2017
For Congressional Republicans, a late winter and early spring of small hiccups turned into a summer of bigger roadblocks. Now, just days into fall, spectacular failure looms.
At the center of all this stumbling is the impossible-to-undo Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Senate and House Republicans have tried mightily to deliver on their ACA […]
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If 20% of all US ag production goes into export mkt, any threat to exports is a threat to all farmers. That’s the problem with an export-centered ag policy instead of a food-centered farm policy; pinheads everywhere you turn. https://t.co/IqubU1AL3X
No surprise; the best want the best & Foxwell Digital is exactly that. https://t.co/iYMakYToSL
Hey, it gives checkoffs another *issue* to spend $ on while farmers prepare to plant abt 5 million more acres of beans than we need, China tariffs remain, farm income cont to fall, & another USDA shutdown is 10 days away. #focus https://t.co/RYeEjKWp6i
Has any farm group big @FarmBureau, @BeefUSA, @NPPC, etc.) or small donated cash or food to help govt workers who haven’t been paid in a month? Seems even more like the thing to do now that USDA employees are working unpaid so farmers get paid. https://t.co/axmjhVaX7h
So many farmers have set rotations-w/ seed, fert., fuel locked in already-that lack of reports will not do much too farmers’ plans. Continued lack will raise mkt. volatility in March & April tho and only traders like that. https://t.co/L6PqDOUMbs