Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Food Labeling
“No problem, I’ll just stop eating pork.”
Posted on April 24, 2019
One tried-and-true tool politicians use to deflect public criticism is as old as politics itself: beat up the press.
Someone in Secretary Sonny Perdue’s U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) thought it was time to do just that April 8 as the “FSIS Office of Congressional and Public Affairs”—USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service—issued a blistering […]
Meat and Money Always Cook Up Corruption
Posted on June 21, 2017
Political scandals in Brazil, like much in the fast-growing, global food giant, are so bold and so far out of bounds that calling them “outrageous” slanders their perpetrators.
Moreover, the scandals occur so frequently that it seems Brazil requires political chicanery and bribery to even function.
The latest evidence involves JBS SA, the Brazilian meatpacker that dominates […]
“You’re Wrong” Is the Wrong Message
Posted on November 30, 2016
When most of us hear the words “Have I got a great deal for you!” we grab our wallets because experience suggests any forthcoming deal won’t be great.
Similarly, when someone says, “Here’s the straight talk,” our baloney meters redline because we know the coming talk will be about as straight as a hound’s hind leg.
We […]
Livestock’s Bleak, Industrial Future
Posted on November 16, 2016
The more the American meat and milk sectors industrialize—via integrated contract production, fewer bigger players, machine-centered scale—the more these key parts of American agriculture resemble industry itself: commoditized products, razor-thin margins, and extended periods of steep losses.
This shift from what we once quaintly called animal husbandry has also shifted economic and political power to a […]
We Should Talk
Posted on June 1, 2016
With little fanfare and barely a nod of public acknowledgement, the world of food turned upside down April 13 when the U.S. Department of Agriculture informed a Penn State University plant pathologist that the “white button mushroom” he developed by removing some of its genetic material is not a genetically modified organism (GMO).
As such, USDA […]
Free Markets Work, When We Let ‘Em
Posted on April 20, 2016
There is a certain poetry in Sen. Pat Roberts’, R-KS, failure to convince the U.S. Senate to squash state and local food labeling laws. His proposed fix, fail though it did, may have done more to boost consumer faith in the market than anything Congress has or hasn’t done in years.
Roberts’ winning loss began with […]
Sure, That’ll Work
Posted on February 10, 2016
There was a mirrored symmetry to the news last week that reflects badly—but not unfairly—on American agriculture.
On Jan. 18, Farm Futures Magazine released its updated presidential surveys among farmers for both the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus and the overall United States. The clear leaders among farmers who said they’d vote GOP in either Republican contest were […]
CRISPR’s Children
Posted on December 30, 2015
About the only one ever happy to see a mosquito is a hungry purple martin, the acrobatic swallow that dines on the bothersome insects morning, noon, and night. You and me, however, would be perfectly happy never to see another mosquito for the rest of our lives.
Science can now make that happen.
A powerful new gene-editing […]
Never Heard of CRISPR? You will.
Posted on December 30, 2015
Few sectors of the global economy are more hooked on gene modification technology than agriculture. Food powerhouses like the U.S., Brazil, and Argentina now grow genetically modified (GM) crops on 40, 23, and 13 percent, respectively, of their arable land and one in five farmable acres around the world grows GM crops.
Adoption of GM seeds […]
The Sounds of Science
Posted on November 23, 2015
Increasingly, farmers and ranchers agree that “sound science” is science that sounds good to them rather than science that is scientifically sound. Bad science, on the other hand, is science that sounds bad to them even if the majority of scientists agree on it.
For example, a Nov. 2014 poll by Purdue University and Iowa State […]