Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Farm Policy
USDA still runs the most expensive manure-making program in the world
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, April 14, 2024
If the third time is a charm, Michael Happ might finally make an impression on federal lawmakers and administrators with his fact-filled, 24-page report on the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) continued financing of Big Ag’s big manure habit.
This is Happ’s third detailed look at EQIP, USDA’s nearly 30-year […]
Another $1 billion to refinance status quo won’t stop avian pandemics
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, April 7, 2024
When word came out of Texas on April 1 that avian flu had made another unwelcome hop–this one from a dairy cow to a human–the news seemed like an April Fool’s joke.
It wasn’t. In fact, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI or bird flu), the quick-killing […]
GOP House hardliners again threaten Farm Bill
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, March 31, 2024
Even when Speaker of the House Mike Johnson finds enough baling wire to lash together the votes needed to pass the split, almost six-months late 2023 federal budget, it’s little more than a signal to some of his GOP colleagues to heat up the […]
Ag’s New Normal Includes Trade Deficits, Not Surpluses
Posted on April 10, 2023
Nearly drowned out in all the farm group cheering that U.S. ag exports hit a record high $196 billion last year was the inarguable fact that U.S. ag imports also hit a record-high, $199 billion, or $3 billion more than ag exports.
That’s right, sports fans: during its biggest ag export year ever–when the value of […]
Paying the Price for Being Sick, Old, or Poor in Rural America
Posted on April 10, 2023
Rural America is just like the rest of America except it’s older, poorer, and often sicker.
Even worse, if you’re all three in rural America–elderly, poor, and ill–the odds that you will receive proper care from either a government agency or a private provider are dwindling with each passing year.
For proof, here’s how the non-profit National […]
Paltry Fine Proves What, Not Who, We Truly Value
Posted on April 10, 2023
A much-quoted by preachers and politicians alike rightly notes that “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”
Curiously, a famous American politician, former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and an even more famous attorney-turned-preacher, Mahatma Gandhi, are both credited as its originator.
It’s doubtful, however, that many in […]
Biggest Foreign Owner of ‘Ag Land’ Isn’t Who You Think
Posted on April 10, 2023
If an editor used standard punctuation to relate the emotion expressed by Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst in a recent Capitol Hill discussion of foreign ownership of U.S. land, it would look something like this:
“… foreign persons hold an interest in approximately 40! Million! Acres! Of U.S. ag! Land! That’s more total acres than make up […]
U.S. may have muscle in a trade fight, Mexico may have the law
Posted on February 22, 2023
If your best international customer–someone who accounts for 27 percent of your overseas sales–gave you three years to change the recipe of what it buys from you, it’s a safe bet you’d work together to meet their needs and deadline.
Not Big Agbiz, however, which is pushing, pressing, and prodding the Biden Administration to squeeze Mexico, […]
Any new Farm Bill must navigate the unruly 2023 House GOP–again
Posted on February 22, 2023
As expected, the 2023 Farm Bill express is not running on time. In fact, it didn’t even leave the station when its chief engineer, Pennsylvania Republican and incoming House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson, said it would.
That’s no surprise; it’s Congress, after all.
Indeed, it would have been a big surprise had it started on the […]
Unfinished Business: Immigration Reform
Posted on January 6, 2023
Like the weather, everyone talks about immigration reform but few do much about it.
In fact, do-nothingness is the dominant trait of immigration lawmaking. A Google search of the phrase “ag immigration stalemate” delivers “about 621,000 results in 0.61 seconds” dating back to at least the mid-1990s.
There was, however, a moment of movement last summer when […]