Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Special Interests
If futures markets don’t work, your markets won’t work
Posted on May 6, 2022
Contrary to the woeful baying by Big Agbiz, the United States–and any nation with enough money–will not run out of food this year. This can be said without reservation for two reasons.
First, war or no war, there is no global shortage of wheat, the crop today’s Chicken Littles are cluck-cluck clucking about. In the last […]
“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 […]
Smarm, Snarl, and Snark Can’t Replace Facts, Honesty, and Ideas
Posted on March 4, 2022
As deep winter reasserted itself over most of the nation’s farms and ranches, the New York Times brought some real heat to the Big-Ag-Fights-Climate-Change debate.
In a 14-minute, fast-paced video titled “Meet the People Getting Paid to Kill Our Planet,” the film’s subtitle not only names the killers, it convicts them, too: “American agriculture is ravaging the air, […]
Making Pork Chops Flow Uphill
Posted on February 18, 2022
For more than 40 years my father farmed within a mile of where the Kaskaskia River met the Mississippi deep in southern Illinois. That meant he had two, lifetime partners: the river and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, landlords of the levees that guarded our wedge of the Great American Bottoms.
Dad never argued with […]
The New Ag Alchemy: Gold from Gas
Posted on February 11, 2022
The biggest gold rush in U.S. history is about to hit rural America and it won’t involve corn or cattle or even gold. Instead, the big money will be in pipelines.
That’s right, pipelines; pressurized carbon dioxide (CO2) pipelines designed to carry CO2 from Midwestern ethanol plants to “sequestration” sites in either North Dakota or Illinois.
Itchy […]
Keep Moving, Nothing to See Here
Posted on January 26, 2022
No one was shocked recently when the General Accountability Office (GAO) announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had overpaid farmers billions of dollars during the slapdash tariff-mitigation scheme ordered by the Trump White House in 2018 and 2019.
A couple of billion bucks in government waste is, evidently, chump change when–as in the case of […]
You Can Only Postpone Reality for So Long
Posted on January 21, 2022
Despite an honest-to-goodness flood of evidence to the contrary, more than 100 million American adults continue to deny the existence of climate change. That’s roughly one third of the country.
Congress is little better. Currently, 109 House members and 30 senators, or about 26 percent of all members, have cast “doubt on the clear, established scientific […]
Ethanol’s Future is Running Out of Gas
Posted on September 23, 2021
The key ingredients for a looming crack-up in ethanol–the fast rise of electric vehicles, lukewarm politics, and more evidence of catastrophic climate change–are in place and few in U.S. ag policy circles are prepared to face that reality.
In fact, none of those woes are new; they’ve been building for years.
For example, the Trump Administration’s almost carte […]
Bigger Means Bitter, Not Better
Posted on August 13, 2021
In a sweeping, 72-point executive order on competition, the Biden Administration announced it was taking dead aim at the heavily concentrated “multinational companies (that) increasingly dominate markets for crops, chemicals, seeds, and meat,” reported Bloomberg.
The competition order–that “reach(es) from the FDA to the Pentagon”–includes “directives… such as rules that would help chicken farmers and ranchers… […]
Everything–Corn, Soybeans, the Truth–Needs Sunshine
Posted on August 4, 2021
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A local grain company does well year-in, year-out buying, storing, and processing a few million bushels of soybeans. Nearby farmers love it; a strong local processor means strong local prices.
As the years pass, the plant ages and–too soon for local farmers–closes. A statewide farm group, knowing the plant’s importance […]
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So much amorality going on in this total capture of fed & state gov’t by Big Meat during Pandemic Spring 2020 that it’s hard to keep up each sides’ immorality. https://t.co/pC9mVaU9oF
This: The Pork Checkoff cut mandatory rates by 12.5% in hope the savings would voluntarily flow into CAFO-supporting lawsuits by Big Pig for Big Pig. Does Big Ag ever think about what the public-its customers-want? Terrible plan, great reporting. https://t.co/3UOTixbqrf
Exactly @donpcarr: Not one idea old or new in this trope-filled sermon of meaninglessness. The real message here is that Big Ag will fight for Big Ag in climate change debates & everyone else needs to butt out. https://t.co/MhmHdEdpAX
There’s little that’s cheap in America’s ‘cheap,’ food system. Someone or something-like gov’t or our natural world-always pays yet rarely is acknowledged. That’s especially so in the highly industrialized meat & poultry sectors. https://t.co/8nWLlCSR9p
What he didn’t say is Tyson’s profits are 140% higher this quarter than yr ago. Over same period, meat demand isn’t up 140%, farm prices aren’t up 140% and inflation isn’t up 140%. Only Tyson profits-and its corporate BS-are up 140%. https://t.co/s7frvmdeky