Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Farm Policy
If You Want to See the Future, You Need to Look Ahead
Posted on March 22, 2019
To most farmers and ranchers, “sustainable” is a word that, like exercise or vacation, has a dictionary definition and a personal definition. The difference between the two, however, often is the difference between the county fair and the World’s Fair.
These folks aren’t alone. Almost everyone and everything from commodity groups to coal companies make […]
In the Long Run It’s, Well, a Long Run
Posted on March 14, 2019
One of the oldest theoretical constructions in economics declares that in a perfect market, short term profits and losses eventually even out so that, in the long term, all profits are zero.
Famed 20th century English economist John Maynard Keynes gets credit for restating this jargon-rich theory into clear, concise language when, in 1923, he wrote, […]
The State of The Nation’s Farm and Food Union
Posted on February 27, 2019
The President of the United States should not be the only federal official required to offer the nation’s citizens an annual report on the “State of the Union.”
Every senior department executive—from Cabinet secretaries and the Pentagon chiefs to the Senate’s majority leader and the House speaker—should be required to examine their integral part of […]
Knives, Forks, and Farmers Favor Immigration Reform
Posted on February 21, 2019
When Internal Revenue Service (IRS) workers returned to their jobs Jan. 28 after the recent, 35-day government shutdown, an estimated five million pieces of unopened mail awaited.
Equally daunting, the shutdown coincided with the IRS’s hiring of its annual army of temporary workers to process the impending tax season’s mail. The delay now leaves the […]
Shutdown? Not on the dairy farm of my youth.
Posted on February 15, 2019
There was no “shutdown”—not in the U.S. government sense, anyway—on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth.
Come to think of it, there was never a showdown, hoedown, lockdown, or shakedown either. There were, however, machinery breakdowns, endless sundowns and, every now and then, a letdown.
But shutdowns? Not one, not even a “partial” one.
In fact, if anyone […]
Let Us Pray
Posted on January 17, 2019
Man, that ended badly.
December limped to an ugly conclusion as nearly everyone from Wall Street to Main Street took a year-end pounding not seen in three generations. Pick an investment sector (stocks, bonds, commodities); a nation state (the U.S., China, or the European Union); or a political system (a democratic republic, parliamentary, or single-party rule), […]
No More Wild Swings, Eh?
Posted on January 3, 2019
If the calendar was a baseball game, mid-December would be the bottom of the ninth.
As such, and given 2018’s crazy weather, banner crops, sloppy harvest, muddled export future, and skinny-to-no profit, mid-December finds farmers and ranchers now at bat with two outs and the opposing team’s smoke-throwing relief pitcher on the mound.
Yeah, it’s been a […]
GIPSA is on the move, the “GIPSA rule” is not
Posted on December 19, 2018
GIPSA, the badly named, hard-working mule inside the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), is on the move again over objections that the Trump Administration’s ongoing USDA reorganization will bury it—and other, less obscure parts of the department like the Economic Research Service—in new layers of bureaucracy so deep that none will ever be seen again.
[…]
Reading the Facts In-Hand… Or in Your Palm
Posted on December 12, 2018
Years ago, an enterprising neighbor operated a palm reading business from her home with just a secretary, fax machine, and telephone. Her business model was simple: After clients faxed their photocopied handprint and sent some form of payment (rumor had it was $20), our neighbor telephoned them with the results of the “reading.”
While no one […]
Another War That Won’t End Any Wars
Posted on December 5, 2018
November 11 marked 100 years since the end of World War I, which U.S. President Woodrow Wilson called “the war to end all wars.”
Wilson saw himself as a historic peacemaker; instead he became an ironic phrasemaker. The Great War never brought an end to war, or even an end to that war. The then-raging Russian […]