Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Life on the Farm
“Your Arrogance is Unbelievable”
Posted on August 3, 2016
Recently, my pastor, a former U.S. Army chaplain, noted that the only thing with a higher rank than a chaplain on any Army helicopter is the mail. “I could bump a general off a flight—not that I ever did—but the mail flies before either of us,” he related.
That makes perfect sense; no amount of striped, […]
Like a Good Neighbor
Posted on July 20, 2016
It’s hard to think of summer without thinking of the many neighbors we shared the southern Illinois heat, humidity, and mosquitoes with on the dairy farm of my youth.
Back then, in the mid-1960s, we’d often see neighbors across the table-flat Mississippi River Bottoms as they cultivated corn or soybeans and we baled straw or raked […]
A Good Life at “Home”
Posted on June 29, 2016
Night has day, up has down, and Hugh Grant has Gene Logsdon.
Monsanto’s Hugh Grant, as almost everyone in Big Ag knows, is chairman and CEO of the world’s premier agricultural seed company now hotly pursued by German chemical giant Bayer AG.
Writer and journalist Gene Logsdon, as almost no one in Big Ag knows, was the […]
A Spring With Little Bounce
Posted on May 18, 2016
Hints of spring arrived early this year but the season itself seemed to be in the slow lane because rare was the week when back-to-back sunny days warmed the tired winter soul.
The daffodils and jonquils did arrive in mid-March and then waved away for almost a month before a quick burst of late April heat […]
They Never Stopped Making It
Posted on May 11, 2016
Forty-five years ago, anyone hoping to be someone in American agriculture was offered the same, free advice: “Buy land; they’re not making it anymore.”
But “they” were making it. In fact, lots and lots of it.
According to data reported by the United Nations, the world’s farmable land base grew by about 240 million acres between 1971 […]
My Best Friend
Posted on March 30, 2016
On a sparkling blue Friday afternoon in October 1965, I stepped off a noisy school bus with my best friend, Marvin, to walk the long lane to his family’s farm. It was my first, non-family trip anywhere and I was so excited to go to Marvin’s house for the weekend that I doubt my feet […]
The Quiet Month
Posted on January 27, 2016
January was a quiet month on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth. Maybe it was quiet because we were quiet, drained after December’s month-long buildup to Christmas and New Year’s. Maybe it was quiet because most of our farm machines, like all of our fields, were quiet.
Whatever the reason, January still brought 100 […]
On the Road: New York City
Posted on December 30, 2015
Chelsea Market, a block-long, block-wide brick building in New York’s lower west side, was built 120 years ago on the edge of the city’s then-bustling meatpacking district to house a rising food powerhouse, the National Biscuit Company.
It was no accident that the-state-of-the-art food factory was located near the city’s slaughterhouses; the neighborhood was knee-deep in […]
Thanksgiving Choices
Posted on December 9, 2015
The gray dullness of November finally made it to Illinois a couple of weeks late.
The morning of its arrival began like almost every morning since Labor Day, warm and with a breeze. By noon, however, a sharp wind was blowing from the east and the low groan of thunder promised both a rain and a […]
Tweet, Tweet
Posted on November 4, 2015
The tweeting heard by U.S. farmers and ranchers this fall isn’t that loquacious social media birdie Twitter. Instead, it’s canaries—coal mine canaries, to be exact—and their song is neither short nor sweet.
In fact, it’s downright dour. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, this year’s 36 percent fall in net farm income is the biggest […]