Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Special Interests
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 […]
“You Better Believe It”
Posted on January 30, 2019
Epistemology is what we on the farm called “a $10 word.”
At $10, though, it’s underpriced because epistemology—the study of what we believe, what is true, and the evidence we have to justify that truth and belief—covers a lot of ground.
In short, epistemology is the study of knowledge.
That topic sounds drier than last summer’s […]
No More Wild Swings, Eh?
Posted on January 3, 2019
If the calendar was a baseball game, mid-December would be the bottom of the ninth.
As such, and given 2018’s crazy weather, banner crops, sloppy harvest, muddled export future, and skinny-to-no profit, mid-December finds farmers and ranchers now at bat with two outs and the opposing team’s smoke-throwing relief pitcher on the mound.
Yeah, it’s been a […]
GIPSA is on the move, the “GIPSA rule” is not
Posted on December 19, 2018
GIPSA, the badly named, hard-working mule inside the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), is on the move again over objections that the Trump Administration’s ongoing USDA reorganization will bury it—and other, less obscure parts of the department like the Economic Research Service—in new layers of bureaucracy so deep that none will ever be seen again.
[…]
Another War That Won’t End Any Wars
Posted on December 5, 2018
November 11 marked 100 years since the end of World War I, which U.S. President Woodrow Wilson called “the war to end all wars.”
Wilson saw himself as a historic peacemaker; instead he became an ironic phrasemaker. The Great War never brought an end to war, or even an end to that war. The then-raging Russian […]
Sonny Warned ‘Em–Twice, In Fact
Posted on November 29, 2018
It’s Thanksgiving week, so let’s be generous: The White House trade policy, marked by its heavy use of import tariffs and presidential tweets, continues to confound economists and trading partners alike.
A more accurate, less generous view of President Donald J. Trump’s trade policy would declare it an unhinged mess that has led to a dark, […]
House GOP Could Claim Farm Bill Victory in Midst of Defeat
Posted on November 20, 2018
A week before American voters decided whether the mid-term elections would deliver a red wave or a blue wave, OpenSecrets.org, the non-partisan group that tracks money in politics, made a spot-on prediction: the biggest wave on Nov. 6 would be green.
Greenbacks, that is, because this year’s political candidates, OpenSecrets estimated, would spend $5.2 billion on […]
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 […]
High Stakes and Bad Bets
Posted on October 17, 2018
On Oct. 1, U.S. farmers and ranchers joined President Donald J. Trump to praise one of his Administration’s biggest international achievements, a reworked trade deal between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.
Ironically, however, Oct. 1 also brought a massive domestic failure: the expiration of the 2014 Farm Bill. The president and his revelers, however, never mentioned […]
Sometimes You Get What You Vote For
Posted on October 17, 2018
Farmers and ranchers spent most of last month hoping the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) recent crop estimates would be proven wrong and President Donald J. Trump’s “plan” to fix “the world’s worst trade deals ever” would be proven right.
September, however, disappointed them on both counts.
On Sept. 12, USDA reported that the already big 2018 […]
Follow Alan on Twitter
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