Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Food Labeling
Safe, Not Sorry
Posted on March 30, 2014
Almost everyone in American agriculture, from farmers to ranchers to the top executives of the biggest transnational grain trading and meatpacking firms, loves to say the United States is home to the cheapest, safest food supply in the world.
Of course, the global commodity slingers love cheap. It’s the yeast that makes their dough rise because, […]
How’d you like a buggy whip?
Posted on November 10, 2013
Henry Ford heard the jeers for years before his horseless carriage remade culture forever. Orville and Wilbur Wright were called bird brains before their dreams carried them over a North Carolina sand dune and mankind to distant galaxies.
They had thousands of predecessors. Archimedes was thought to have a screw loose. The Vatican saw Galileo as […]
High mileage chicken
Posted on September 15, 2013
Just before the Labor Day weekend began Friday, Aug. 30, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced that China was welcome “to export processed, cooked chicken to the United States.”
If USDA hoped this little nugget might get overlooked during summer’s last, languid holiday, that thought was deep-fried by noon when Politico, the fast-rising […]
Shut up, butt out, get lost
Posted on September 1, 2013
On Aug. 27, the late summer heat of Washington, D.C. was spit-roasting locals and tourists alike up and down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Inside the U.S. District Courthouse, a half-block off the main thoroughfare and just three blocks from the U.S. Capitol, however, all anyone from Mexico to Canada could talk about was COOL, the American law that […]
The Other Red Meat
Posted on August 25, 2013
A lean hog is not a fat chicken but the marketing geniuses hired by the National Pork Board sure sold a lotta’ hams, bacons and butts when, in 1987, they began to promote pork as “The Other White Meat.”
Now, 25 years after that brilliant slight of hand, the pork crowd wants to be known as […]
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Great, but one Goliath, Tyson Foods, sold $116 million of meat protein every day in 2020. Easy guess is you’re gonna need a bigger rock, a better slingshot or both. https://t.co/kpXtTDoquP
Great read: Law schools teach ‘market efficiency’ as a core legal tenet when there’s nothing legal about its resulting poverty, hunger & inequality. Markets are political (the ‘political economy’) and today’s lawmaking ensures it. Let’s fix this. https://t.co/Iuut52JMip
Bigger ‘supply chains’ often mean just bigger pockets to pick. Want to make it really easy? Run 40% of all US grain biz thru same software. Wow. https://t.co/QAzBnkLQs2
The only thing more connected than the Iowa pipeline are the Iowans backing it it: political kingmaker Bruce Rastetter, former guv Terry Branstad… and all for ethanol’s ever-shrinking future. Bad idea for a disappearing alternative fuel. https://t.co/0Enw6lyhMR
Gee, Nebraska combines state Depts. of Env. & Energy and this is its result… Who could have ever guessed? https://t.co/azHmfvA35u