Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Farm Policy
Ethanol’s Future is Running Out of Gas
Posted on September 23, 2021
The key ingredients for a looming crack-up in ethanol–the fast rise of electric vehicles, lukewarm politics, and more evidence of catastrophic climate change–are in place and few in U.S. ag policy circles are prepared to face that reality.
In fact, none of those woes are new; they’ve been building for years.
For example, the Trump Administration’s almost carte […]
China Remains Our Biggest Export Market and Biggest Troublemaker
Posted on September 9, 2021
Talk about mixed messaging.
Two homemade campaign signs from last fall’s presidential election remain on the edge of a sprawling, well-kept dairy farm I recently passed. One, large and white against a green backdrop of tasseled corn, touts Donald Trump; the other, smaller and more wordy, declares that if Biden wins, all Americans soon will be “working for […]
Threading Needles with Camels
Posted on August 27, 2021
Twenty-five years ago, when almost every American farm and ranch organization was denying the existence of climate change, William E. Rees and a colleague developed a method to measure how much “nature” was required to support a people or an economy. They called that measurement an “ecological footprint.”
That science–ecological economics, Rees’s career specialty at the […]
The Actual Costs of the ‘Industrial Mind’
Posted on August 13, 2021
In an essay in his new book, Hogs Are Up, Wes Jackson, founder of the Land Institute near Salina, KS, revisits a speech he gave in Coon Rapids, IA, in August 2009 to mark the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev’s famous visit to the Roswell Garst farm.
During that cornfield summit, suggests Jackson, Garst and Khrushchev chatted about […]
Bigger Means Bitter, Not Better
Posted on August 13, 2021
In a sweeping, 72-point executive order on competition, the Biden Administration announced it was taking dead aim at the heavily concentrated “multinational companies (that) increasingly dominate markets for crops, chemicals, seeds, and meat,” reported Bloomberg.
The competition order–that “reach(es) from the FDA to the Pentagon”–includes “directives… such as rules that would help chicken farmers and ranchers… […]
The Ag Politics of Being Agriculturally Apolitical
Posted on August 4, 2021
It’s a widely held belief that if you want to get ahead in farm group politics, you can’t be political. Well, not overtly political, anyway. Quietly, sure; loud and you’re outta’ here.
For example, according to OpenSecrets.org, the best tracker of campaign cash in American politics, the nation’s largest, richest farm group, the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), contributed a stunningly puny […]
This Time, The Scoreboard Tells the Whole Story
Posted on August 4, 2021
In farming, the late Farm Journal economist John Marten liked to say, we keep score with acres.
Right or wrong, acres–and the wealth they represent–have always been a measure of personal and professional success. The converse is true, too; the lack or loss of acres usually implies failure of sorts.
That critical measure is at the center […]
Worker Wages are Not the Cause of Higher Food Prices
Posted on July 7, 2021
After my first year at the Big U, I returned to the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth for a summer of work. The first task, however, was to ask my father to double my hourly pay from 50-cents an hour, the amount I’d been paid through high school, to $1 per hour.
“Well,” Dad […]
Truth in Labeling is the Opposite of Branding
Posted on July 7, 2021
If up is up and down is down, it makes sense then that organic food—especially food that carries the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s treasured “USDA Organic” label—is organic, right?
Not all the time, maintains Francis Thicke, an Iowa organic dairy farmer introduced here last month. In fact, Thicke and hundreds of other long-time organic farmers maintain […]
Ag Groups Make a United, Hollow Call on Meatpackers to Play Nice
Posted on June 11, 2021
On May 17, six farm groups joined voices to call on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Congress, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to ensure a “more financially sustainable situation for cattle feeders and cow-calf producers.”
That’s make-nice farm talk for “Meatpackers are skinning U.S. cattlemen so badly now that we six, not-usually-friendly groups ask the federal government—swamp […]