Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Farm Bill
Welcome Back, Foodie
Posted on January 26, 2015
We didn’t know it back then but everyone on the big southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth was a foodie.
Of course there was no one named Bittman or Pollan or Waters to tell us we were foodies but there were people named Mom and Grandma and Aunt Nina whose food knocked your socks off […]
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 […]
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 […]
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Such a load of regenerative bull that’s doomed to cost govt billions and waste another decade on another meaningless sequestration strategy. Best plan: don’t make it. Simple. Effective. Cheap. https://t.co/SsBg4O9xTN
Farms vs. frac sand isn’t just a fight over food; it’s a fight over the future. https://t.co/C9Qo9XbZIl
A *carbon neutral* pig that lives in a building made with 100+ cubic yards of concrete, an acre of steel roofing and walls & uses electricity and water like, well, a pig? Hogwash. (Or is it *hogwashing*?) https://t.co/Rs4JxPQ0eH