Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Finance
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 […]
Outside the Fence One Time Too Many
Posted on August 17, 2022
Contrary to folklore, three times is rarely a charm. The number three, in fact, often carries woe: “Three strikes and you’re out,” for example or “Bad news usually comes in threes.”
U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors rediscovered these portentous axioms July 7 when, for the third time in less than a year, a jury in […]
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 […]
Nowhere to Hide at Low Tide
Posted on August 17, 2022
Mega-billionaire Warren Buffett has a well-deserved reputation as a genius “value investor” and pithy commentator. His annual reports to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders are highly anticipated for their market insight and expressive language, and often make news because of both.
For example, one of Buffett’s most quoted sayings colorfully explains that “You only find out who’s swimming […]
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 […]
New Signs of Apocalypse: War, Famine, and Davos Man
Posted on June 15, 2022
On the very week the United States marked its one millionth Covid death and anxious American parents awaited a military airlift for baby formula, Davos Man, he of the pinstriped master-of-the-universe class, emerged from his bulletproof, bombproof office to report all was well in the world of intergalactic finance and handmade shoes.
Well, kinda’ sorta’ well.
There […]
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 […]
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 […]
Coming war for U.S. crop acres renews food-versus-fuel fight
Posted on May 6, 2022
American farmers are long familiar with acre wars. This regional, late winter scrum is a showdown over how many acres of corn, soybeans, cotton, and wheat acres farmers will plant mainly in the Midwest, Great Plains, and South.
Most years these fights are decided by a variable–and oftentimes volatile–combination of three elements: what market prices are […]
Global Food Chains Face More Uncertainty, More Instability
Posted on March 31, 2022
For the second time in two years, a history-making calamity has shown just how fragile the world’s efficiency-driven, deeply interdependent food system is.
Two years ago, a rampaging pandemic threatened America’s pantries. Today, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens supplies of key ag inputs like fuel and fertilizer while causing deep disruptions to global wheat, corn, and […]