Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Rural America
Knives, Forks, and Farmers Favor Immigration Reform
Posted on February 21, 2019
When Internal Revenue Service (IRS) workers returned to their jobs Jan. 28 after the recent, 35-day government shutdown, an estimated five million pieces of unopened mail awaited.
Equally daunting, the shutdown coincided with the IRS’s hiring of its annual army of temporary workers to process the impending tax season’s mail. The delay now leaves the […]
“Fair and Balanced” Reader Mail Round-Up
Posted on January 17, 2019
Tweeter-in-Chief, President Donald J. Trump, has been quite clear in his opinion of CNN, the cable television news network. Indeed, Trump’s despise of the network—he thinks its initials stand for Certainly Not News—encourages supporters to use “CNN” as a slander.
For example, when a reader of this weekly effort sends an email that includes the sentence […]
Howard’s Priceless Gift of Simple Giving
Posted on January 3, 2019
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 […]
Brother, Can You Spare a Cup of Water?
Posted on November 14, 2018
Humanity depends on three critical threes: Without oxygen, most humans will die within three minutes; without water, life expectancy is three days; without food, we’ve got three weeks.
Few Americans give three seconds of thought to any of these life-ensuring elements because, here, food is safe and plentiful, air quality laws are in place and enforced, […]
The Road to Perdition Always Leads South
Posted on November 7, 2018
If war is hell, then trade wars must be a purgatorial stop along the way. For proof, just look where Election Day 2018 finds American farmers.
Faced with ample production, stale commodity prices, and the lowest forecasted national farm income since 2002, U.S. farmers are now waiting for a winter of government “tariff mitigation” payments while […]
A Cautionary Note from Sand County
Posted on October 31, 2018
“February” is one of the finest essays in Sand County Almanac, the 1949 book of superlative essays on nature and mankind’s role in it, by forester and conservationist Aldo Leopold. In it, Leopold, the father of wildlife ecology, tells the history of his Wisconsin “sand farm” and its natural “community” as he and a friend […]
Our Garden’s Last Stand
Posted on October 25, 2018
In the unseasonable heat of mid-September, the yard’s many black walnut trees began shedding their heavy fruit. Now, a month on, the stately trees are bare of nuts and most of their leaves weeks earlier than any year I can remember. Does that suggest an early winter? A long one?
Time will tell. All I […]
The People’s Department–For the Time Being
Posted on September 14, 2018
An early hallmark of the Trump Administration’s management of American farm policy is its uncanny ability to pick fights that are as costly to win as they are to lose.
For example, even if the President’s import tariff plans succeed, how many ag exports will American farmers lose before the White House declares victory and moves […]
America’s Farming Soul
Posted on August 3, 2018
Sometimes it’s even hard for me to believe what I read in the newspaper. The latest “someone-really-said-that?” moment arrived courtesy of The Milkweed, the sharp-penned, monthly dairy newspaper owned and edited by Peter Hardin in Brooklyn, WI.
In its July 2018 edition, Milkweed writer Jan Shepel highlighted the controversy fueled by Marin Bozic, a dairy foods […]
It’s Hard to Tell: Is it 2018 or 2012 or Worse?
Posted on August 3, 2018
Every July, Congress begins to pack its collective bag to escape the scorching heat and suffocating humidity of Capitol Hill. And that’s just inside the Senate and House; outside it’s even worse.
Trapped in this year’s pressure cooker is the 2018 Farm Bill. While the Senate and House each passed their versions earlier this summer, neither […]
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If 20% of all US ag production goes into export mkt, any threat to exports is a threat to all farmers. That’s the problem with an export-centered ag policy instead of a food-centered farm policy; pinheads everywhere you turn. https://t.co/IqubU1AL3X
No surprise; the best want the best & Foxwell Digital is exactly that. https://t.co/iYMakYToSL
Hey, it gives checkoffs another *issue* to spend $ on while farmers prepare to plant abt 5 million more acres of beans than we need, China tariffs remain, farm income cont to fall, & another USDA shutdown is 10 days away. #focus https://t.co/RYeEjKWp6i
Has any farm group big @FarmBureau, @BeefUSA, @NPPC, etc.) or small donated cash or food to help govt workers who haven’t been paid in a month? Seems even more like the thing to do now that USDA employees are working unpaid so farmers get paid. https://t.co/axmjhVaX7h
So many farmers have set rotations-w/ seed, fert., fuel locked in already-that lack of reports will not do much too farmers’ plans. Continued lack will raise mkt. volatility in March & April tho and only traders like that. https://t.co/L6PqDOUMbs