Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Rural America
The Silence of the Lambs
Posted on September 17, 2020
There are many reasons to dislike JBS USA, the world’s—and America’s—largest meatpacker.
In 2017, for example, JBS heirs and bosses, Joesely and Wesley Batista, cut a plea deal to escape prosecution in a bribery scandal that involved an incredible 1,829 politicians in their native Brazil. Both, however, later served six months in jail on […]
The Third Time Might Not Be the Charm
Posted on September 3, 2020
It turns out that the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times,” is neither Chinese nor a curse.
According to multiple sources, the adage’s roots reach back to a late-19th century member of Parliament commenting on how Great Britain’s expanding empire had made for “interesting times.”
True enough for the empire’s builders; not so […]
Sometimes the Hardest Thing to Do is Nothing; Let’s Do it
Posted on July 29, 2020
Mid-July was always summer’s sweet spot on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth.
With June’s rush of sweaty work—wheat harvest, straw baling, laying corn by, cultivating soybeans, and weed spraying—finally complete and before another cutting of alfalfa was ready, mid-July slipped in with treats like fresh peaches, sweet corn, and juicy garden tomatoes.
Mid-July also […]
Public Investment Needs to Return Public Good
Posted on July 23, 2020
If the ill-tempered and deadly first half of 2020 had been a first-calf heifer on the dairy farm of my youth, my father would have ticketed it for the freezer a month ago.
His yardstick of heifer potential was short: If she lived up to her breeding, she was a “keeper;” if she “put more on […]
No One Ever Loves the Umpire
Posted on July 20, 2020
While the coronavirus pandemic was hammering global trade earlier this year, the various U.S. bureaucracies devoted to trade barely skipped a beat before returning to their usual grind.
For example, the U.S. and the United Kingdom (U.K.) just began talks on a bilateral trade pact prior to the U.K.’s Oct. 31 “Brexit” from the […]
Red, White, Blue, and Black
Posted on July 6, 2020
The first African American I really interacted with was not an American but was, in fact, an African. He was a Nigerian graduate student who served as a teaching assistant to the “discussion session” of a political science class I took at the Big U in 1973.
That I was nearly 20 years old […]
This Bloody Business
Posted on July 6, 2020
If you’ve ever butchered anything from a rabbit to a hog—and butchered is the right word, not the bleached “harvested”—you know there will be blood. Butchering, after all, is a bloody business.
While 95 percent of Americans are carnivores, it’s a safe bet that nearly 99.9 percent of them haven’t thought much about where […]
“Feeding You Like Family” Often Requires a Family
Posted on June 10, 2020
While Tyson Foods says it’s “feeding you like family,” we recently learned that it and the rest of America’s Big Meat members sometimes need a war-like White House declaration just to cut a fat hog.
More striking than the order itself was its effect: it didn’t work.
A week after President Donald J. Trump ordered […]
We Have to Start Somewhere
Posted on May 27, 2020
Before we take the next unsteady step into a very different future, let’s make sure it’s a step up the ladder and not a step off the plank.
How? We can start with disciplined decision making: Use proven facts, lean on practical experience, and focus like a laser on what is safe and smart.
[…]
Hey, Didn’t Rural America Invent ‘Social Distancing’?
Posted on April 30, 2020
There’s a brittle beauty to this year’s spring. Amid the swaying daffodils, cotton clouds, and already roaring tractors and dust-shaking planters hides a deadly virus with a special fondness for those of us in rural America.
In fact, rural America is perfectly primed for Covid-19, according to any epidemiologist worth their student loans. The virus […]
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In the six yrs that Ernst has been on Senate Ag Committee, US taxpayers have sent farmers $109B in *direct farm program payments* ($60B in 2019 & 2020 alone). All the ethanol in the world, let alone Iowa, can’t fix that problem. https://t.co/B5P3nKd87Q
No surprise; the Cotton Gang historically has been the biggest winner in farm bailouts. Also no surprise, Corn & SB Gang whining they didn’t get as much. But biggest non-surprise? No one asking what’s wrong w/ ag policy that requires bailout after bailout. https://t.co/WdlK54MN5J
Equally disturbing is the fact that our farm and political leaders, food companies and eaters don’t care enough about its workers to reform a system fueled natural resource destruction and too much human suffering. https://t.co/pudgHxsUyJ
When you rob Peter to pay Paul you can usually count on Paul’s vote. https://t.co/7GFgFzcguX
Fine, but if any politician or farmer wants taxpayer money to bail out future weather-caused damage to US ag, each must sign a form that acknowledges climate change is real to least get these anti-guv socialists on the record... https://t.co/WUZTNFfuh9