Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Farm Policy
Your local USDA office may soon be your local federal courthouse
Posted on August 3, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, July 14, 2024
The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 28 ruling to overturn the Chevron deference was a business-favoring decision to upend 40 years of legal precedent and redirect federal power from agencies like the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to the courts and Congress.
Big Ag loved the news. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association […]
Farm Bill politics 2024 lean toward Project 2025
Posted on August 3, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, July 7, 2024
This year, like last year, is a Farm Bill year and this year, like last year, probably won’t deliver any Farm Bill.
The reason is the oldest one in Washington, D.C.: politics. Most Congressional Republicans aren’t interested in passing any bipartisan farm and food assistance bill when they believe a delay might deliver a GOP-controlled House, […]
Mexico’s election delivers new leader to tackle old problems
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, June 23, 2024
While Americans still face a long season of political campaigning, more than 80 other nations have completed their federal elections this year or are about to go to the polls.
For example, France’s general elections will be held June 30, the United Kingdom’s on July […]
Hocus pocus and–poof–taxpayers pay for more crop insurance
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, June 16, 2024
A longstanding complaint here is the utter incomprehensibility of federal milk pricing policy. For years we’ve joked (mostly through tears) that only four people in the world understand its complexity and, worse, not one of them is a dairy farmer.
As if to prove our point, […]
Words matter… until they don’t
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, June 2, 2024
We in agriculture have a long tradition of marketing our bounty by more pleasant, if not less-than-truthful, names in hopes that less-informed eaters buy the sizzle rather than the fact.
For example, the beef checkoff has spent millions urging people to purchase something called flat-iron steak that isn’t steak […]
Let’s clear up this confusing trade talk once and for all
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, May 26, 2024
The Biden Administration’s trade agenda–mostly forgotten after three years of Covid, inflation, war in Ukraine, brutality in the Middle East, and a cantankerous Congress–recently surfaced and, wow, is it a mess.
For example, both presumptive presidential candidates, Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump, recently argued over how high […]
Here comes the 2024 Farm Bill, there goes any 2024 reforms
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, May 19, 2024
The slowest dance on Capitol Hill, the writing of a new Farm Bill, gained tempo May 1 when both the House and Senate Ag committees released versions of their bills.
The House bill was a broadly worded, five-page “outline;” the Senate’s, a detailed 94-page report. Noting the differences in both heft […]
The failure to learn history’s simple lessons
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, May 5, 2024
Long before it became a cliché, there were many heroes who never wore capes.
I met one: the rail-thin, then-86 year old Theodore W. Schultz, in his sun-filled, University of Chicago office on a cold, January day in 1989, a decade after he had been awarded a Nobel Memorial […]
How to win the SAF game: Part 2
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, April 28, 2024
Federal policymakers and their Big Ag friends have a problem: Their hope to make corn and soybeans the feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) hit a wall when the aviation industry ruled that biofuel from either crop did not meet its “sustainable” guidelines. As such, there would be […]
How to win the SAF game: Part 1
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, April 21, 2024
The easiest way to win any game is to rig the rules.
That’s what Big Ag and its loyal boosters at the Department of Agriculture (USDA) appear to be doing to make sure their new project, Sustainable Aviation Fuel, or SAF, a hoped-for 3-billion-gallons-a-year jet biofuel market by 2030 […]