Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Life on the Farm
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 […]
Riding the Metal Wave Left by My Iron-Bending Uncle Honey
Posted on August 4, 2021
One job on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth was to walk just-cultivated corn or soybean fields to find the cultivator parts–disk blades, sweeps, even whole shanks–left broken and unseen by my quiet, iron-bending great Uncle Honey earlier in the day.
Honey was a skilled cultivator killer. The problem wasn’t the design of our Case cultivator. […]
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 […]
More Greenhouse Gas Comes from Rural Leaders Than Rural America
Posted on May 19, 2021
While everyone uses water, Americans use it up, noted Wallace Stegner, the preeminent writer of the West, in his 1992 book of essays Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs.
That shrewd observation is even more accurate today.
In fact, even though we’ve dammed every river west of—and including—the Missouri, pumped most underground aquifers to […]
The Boys of My Summer Arrive Every April
Posted on May 5, 2021
I was very young—I had just turned eight—to begin a torrid love affair but the St. Louis Cardinals made it easy. It was 1963, Stan Musial’s last year in baseball, and the young team began the season hot and stayed hot through July.
So hot, in fact, that the starting infield for the National League’s […]
AltEn: The Mess Gets Even Messier
Posted on April 21, 2021
On March 1, Nebraska’s attorney general threw the book at AltEn, alleging the 24-million-gallon-per year ethanol maker near Mead spent most of the last five years making an environmental mess of its biofuels plant and the surrounding rural community.
In a 97-page civil complaint, the state detailed 18 “causes of action” against AltEn ranging from […]
Happy Slow, Quiet, Dull New Year
Posted on January 22, 2021
The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day was wonderfully different than every other week of the year on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth.
Overall, it was the slowest, quietest, and—especially for my hardworking parents—dullest week of the year.
Most post-Christmas weeks, Mom and Dad napped longer than usual, actually had time to enjoy […]
‘Why are you giving extreme voices so much attention?’
Posted on January 22, 2021
The last column of the year usually features comments from readers whose views differ from those found here the previous 50 or so weeks. Most point out, often in vivid language, the shortcomings of my ideas, opinions, and—increasingly—the “fake news” I peddle through both.
At least that’s how it has been for at least 25 […]
Howard’s Priceless Gift of Simple Giving
Posted on January 22, 2021
The Christmas tree was a scrub cedar hacked from the edge of the woods that bordered the farm. Big-bulbed lights, strung in barber pole fashion, generated almost as much heat as the nearby wood stove. Yellowed Christmas cards, saved over the years and perched like doves in the untrimmed branches, served as ornaments.
“I believe this […]
A Challenging Year but an Unforgettable Thanksgiving
Posted on December 9, 2020
Rural people often reminisce by years. The general rule for any talk about “good” or “bad” years is that good years rarely merit as much mention as great years and great years usually play second fiddle to bad years.
The reason that challenging or tough years like 2019 and 2020 leave an impression is not […]
Follow Alan on Twitter
Such a load of regenerative bull that’s doomed to cost govt billions and waste another decade on another meaningless sequestration strategy. Best plan: don’t make it. Simple. Effective. Cheap. https://t.co/SsBg4O9xTN
Farms vs. frac sand isn’t just a fight over food; it’s a fight over the future. https://t.co/C9Qo9XbZIl
A *carbon neutral* pig that lives in a building made with 100+ cubic yards of concrete, an acre of steel roofing and walls & uses electricity and water like, well, a pig? Hogwash. (Or is it *hogwashing*?) https://t.co/Rs4JxPQ0eH