Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Farm Policy
From Catalonia to California, It’s Been One Long, Hot Summer
Posted on September 9, 2022
Long ago when traveling through Europe, a friend developed what he called the “Alan Rule” since I never remembered the Celsius-to-Fahrenheit conversion math: 10 degrees Celsius, wear a coat; 20 degrees, a light jacket; 30 degrees, shirtsleeves.
There was no suggestion for 40 degrees because 40 degrees Celsius is a baking 104 degrees Fahrenheit (F), an […]
Forty Billion Reasons to Go Green
Posted on September 9, 2022
If American farmers and ranchers really want to live the oft-repeated boast that they are “the first environmentalists,” then, by golly, Joe Manchin and his Democratic Senate colleagues have the legislative vehicle to prove it.
Manchin, the chief monkeywrencher of Dem dreams for the last two years, shocked everyone when he and Senate Majority Leader Chuck […]
Our Money, Their Mouth, Your Choice
Posted on August 17, 2022
If the political polls are to be believed, November’s midterm election will sweep Democrats out of power in the U.S. House of Representatives and put Republicans back in charge.
If accurate, House Republicans will have a splendid opportunity to put your tax money where their collective mouth is by implementing their highly detailed, little-publicized “Blueprint to […]
Market Forecast for Summer: Cloudy with a Chance of Hardheadedness
Posted on August 17, 2022
A veteran commodity trader once urged me to remember that “People who say the market is wrong are usually on the wrong side of the market.”
That insight, he added, had been learned the hard way, “…as in hardheaded.”
His advice came to mind as the futures market carried its June swoon into the U.S. Department of […]
The Simple Answer to the Simple Question
Posted on July 15, 2022
Oftentimes the simple answer to a simple question is the simple truth.
Some people, however, don’t want the simple truth, so they bend facts or shave figures so their square pegs replace roundly accepted reality. It’s commonplace in ag.
For example, on April 12, President Joe Biden traveled to Iowa to announce an expansion of the ethanol […]
Don’t Be a Chicken–Literally
Posted on July 15, 2022
Caution: This is a chicken-and-egg story.
Late this winter, as our Covid pandemic was waning, many bird species–and especially chickens–were suffering their own terrible pandemic, the spread of “highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI),” noted, FERN, the Food & Environmental Reporting Network May 31.
How terrible? Since January, 38 million chickens have died in the U.S. either because […]
Harvested Cattle, Slaughtered Markets
Posted on June 15, 2022
You don’t need to be a vegan to know that livestock and poultry aren’t “harvested,” the squeaky clean verb that’s become fashionable among farm and ranch groups to minimize the end–as in The End–of most animals their members grow.
Soybeans are harvested; pigs are slaughtered. Wheat is harvested; cattle are slaughtered.
It’s not a minor point, insists […]
First steps in ag climate fight are honesty and courage, not offsets and credits
Posted on May 13, 2022
Last May, the Canadian farm group National Farmers Union (NFU), submitted a detailed response to the Canadian government’s earlier “Draft Greenhouse Gas Offset Credit System Regulations.” The response, like the government request, went relatively unnoticed in U.S. ag circles.
It shouldn’t have because the 23-page reply by the 200,000-member NFU was as shocking in its brevity […]
‘I used to say FDA stood for foot-dragging artists”
Posted on May 13, 2022
FDA is, of course, government shorthand for the Food and Drug Administration or, as Helena Bottemiller Evich makes crystal clear in a deeply-sourced, richly detailed April 8 exposé, the Food and Drug Administration.
The emphasis is required, explains Bottemiller Evich, a senior editor and ag reporter at Politico, because “a monthslong… investigation” found “that regulating food […]
If futures markets don’t work, your markets won’t work
Posted on May 6, 2022
Contrary to the woeful baying by Big Agbiz, the United States–and any nation with enough money–will not run out of food this year. This can be said without reservation for two reasons.
First, war or no war, there is no global shortage of wheat, the crop today’s Chicken Littles are cluck-cluck clucking about. In the last […]