Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Farm Bill
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 […]
Roberts Reboots and Other Coincidences
Posted on December 10, 2014
While Republicans, Democrats and Independents voted nationwide Nov. 4, coincidence, irony and “Huh?” were the big winners Nov. 5.
For example, nationally, according to early numbers compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, candidates spent $3.7 billion on 2014 elections, the most in U.S. history, to get Americans to vote for them. (Links to source material […]
2014 Farm Bill: “Immense Bundle of Subsidies”
Posted on November 14, 2014
In a series of toughly-worded articles published in Choices, the quarterly journal of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA), nearly every major element of the 2014 Farm Bill—from its expanded crop insurance program to its impact on global trade negotiations—comes under fire as either “perverse,” “false,” “vacuous,” “absurd,” “failing,” or “wasteful.”
The seven articles, overseen […]
Confused? We’re Not!
Posted on October 31, 2014
All right, listen up! We’ve got a lot to sort out here and little time to do it.
First off, sure, you’re confused. Hey, your neighbor is confused. Your uncle’s confused. Your dog’s confused. Fact is, everyone’s confused. But we’ve been confused worse than this before and we all managed to somehow find our way to […]
Want Reform? First, Audit.
Posted on October 22, 2014
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack stunned the cowboy crowd Tues., Sept. 30, when, in a one-sided meeting in his office, he told seven members of the nearly three-years-old beef checkoff reform effort that if they didn’t find common ground soon he might impose a second beef checkoff that would double the annual, non-refundable collections of […]
The Price of Access? $1.2 Billion
Posted on October 20, 2014
What did individuals and political action committees believe they were buying when, according to Sept. 30 totals compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), they contributed $755.1 million this election cycle to Republican and Democratic candidates for the U.S. House and $415.2 million to Republican and Democratic candidates to the U.S. Senate?
The answer offered […]
OMG GMOs
Posted on September 10, 2014
The cool summer heated up mid-month when a longstanding war of words re-ignited with three little matches labeled “GMO.”
That this fire still burns hot 20 years after the introduction of GM crops is testament to both the public’s continuing unease about putting something known as “genetically modified organisms” in their mouths and the immense political […]
You Can’t Make This Stuff Up
Posted on August 27, 2014
Herman Melville was a pretty good fiction writer but his 1851 whale of a tale—something about a big fish and a peg-legged man named Ahab—was, in fact, based on the true story of the American whaling ship Essex that, in 1820, was attacked and sunk by a huge whale in the south Pacific.
I’m sorry, you […]
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And how about thanking the taxpayers; it is, after all, their money, Senator. https://t.co/lOOARAYs7V
Good explanation of why national ag policies rarely change: cheap food-not thriving rural communities-is the goal. https://t.co/dpZktcBxHB
Sighting, yes. Bark? Rarely. Bite? No one can remember. Like a lotta old dogs, this group doesn’t leave the porch anymore, @ChrisClaytonDTN. https://t.co/SidSepBRuC
Big Ag & AFBF fought ChesBay cleanup law for 20 yrs thru dozens federal lawsuits. Goal was to delay as long as possible bc fight had nat’l implications for Great Lakes, Mississippi... (ie WOTUS) until a ‘better’ Prez came along. Wildest dream came true in 2016. https://t.co/dop21twJKr
Good read on the depth of the ag swamp in WDC and how incumbent Repubs are using farm program payments to challenge other Repubs. Remarkable. https://t.co/9kKNJLGyfT