Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Rural America
It’s a Big Country and It Floats on Less and Less Water
Posted on July 15, 2022
From 35,000 feet, the white ring that marks the high level of Lake Powell looks just like the ring of an emptying bathtub. The only difference is the chalky top mark on this big tub, once the second largest freshwater reservoir in the U.S., is an unscrubble 1,900 miles around.
And Lake Powell, the upper reservoir […]
Don’t Be a Chicken–Literally
Posted on July 15, 2022
Caution: This is a chicken-and-egg story.
Late this winter, as our Covid pandemic was waning, many bird species–and especially chickens–were suffering their own terrible pandemic, the spread of “highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI),” noted, FERN, the Food & Environmental Reporting Network May 31.
How terrible? Since January, 38 million chickens have died in the U.S. either because […]
Harvested Cattle, Slaughtered Markets
Posted on June 15, 2022
You don’t need to be a vegan to know that livestock and poultry aren’t “harvested,” the squeaky clean verb that’s become fashionable among farm and ranch groups to minimize the end–as in The End–of most animals their members grow.
Soybeans are harvested; pigs are slaughtered. Wheat is harvested; cattle are slaughtered.
It’s not a minor point, insists […]
Cattle Never Judged Me, So I Never Judged Cattle
Posted on June 15, 2022
Despite spending every day of my southern Illinois youth on what at the time was a very large dairy farm, I never really had a clue of what made one Holstein cow or calf better or worse than the next Holstein cow or calf.
Most of that inability lay in my complete disinterest to show any […]
First steps in ag climate fight are honesty and courage, not offsets and credits
Posted on May 13, 2022
Last May, the Canadian farm group National Farmers Union (NFU), submitted a detailed response to the Canadian government’s earlier “Draft Greenhouse Gas Offset Credit System Regulations.” The response, like the government request, went relatively unnoticed in U.S. ag circles.
It shouldn’t have because the 23-page reply by the 200,000-member NFU was as shocking in its brevity […]
Twenty-five hundred gallons of water per bushel of irrigated corn is ‘too much’
Posted on May 6, 2022
In a recent telephone conversation, a southwest Kansas farmer casually noted that he had stopped growing irrigated corn some years back because “it cost too much.” Curious, I asked what it cost to irrigate an acre of corn in his arid, cattle-feeding-and-corn-hungry corner of the state.
“It wasn’t the money,” he quickly explained, “it was the […]
Coming war for U.S. crop acres renews food-versus-fuel fight
Posted on May 6, 2022
American farmers are long familiar with acre wars. This regional, late winter scrum is a showdown over how many acres of corn, soybeans, cotton, and wheat acres farmers will plant mainly in the Midwest, Great Plains, and South.
Most years these fights are decided by a variable–and oftentimes volatile–combination of three elements: what market prices are […]
“Broken Systems Raise Costs Far Faster Than Resilient Ones”
Posted on March 18, 2022
One of the most beautiful–and inexplicable–aspects of economics is how its practitioners never seem to be wrong.
Indeed, almost every school of economic thought, from John Maynard Keynes’ demand-driven economics on the left to Arthur Laffer’s supply-side economics on the right, is crowded with disciples defending their leader’s theories and just often, if subtly, attacking their […]
Land Values Face Trouble in Coming Decade
Posted on March 18, 2022
It’s the choices we make in the good times, the grandson of a Kansas homesteader once told me, that determine our farming successes, not the choices we make in the bad times.
Why? Because, he explained, in the good times we have the money to make big mistakes and in the bad times we’re too poor […]
Big Ethanol Sees Electric Cars as a Market Maker, Not Market Taker
Posted on March 4, 2022
One of modern agriculture’s most beloved offspring, ethanol, received a sharp reprimand Feb. 13 from Iowa’s largest newspaper, The Des Moines Register.
In an editorial titled “Ethanol has been a boon for Iowa’s economy. But it’s time to pivot and figure out what’s next,” The Register chided Iowa Republicans and Democrats alike for supporting ethanol-pushing programs […]
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Honest question: What does keeping the seat Dem do for Iowa agriculture, its farmers, and environment? Honest answer: Same thing the Dem Sec. of Ag from Iowa has done last two years-more ethanol, more dirty water, & more Big Ag. https://t.co/rwouHWCQiq
@daswenson @RiverRaccoon, can carbon be sequestered in corn-soy commodity system in drained/tiled fields? If not, doesn’t this one fact alone take most of Iowa and IL crop farmers out of the carbon game (yes, game) before it begins?
Cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits would have far greater impact on rural America than cuts to farm program payments. https://t.co/lc6SN65Jbn