Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Special Interests
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 […]
The Forgotten Lessons of the “Carter Embargo”
Posted on July 27, 2018
Once, when walking across the Charles Bridge in Prague, a friend asked if I knew the story behind the stunning, 14th century marvel under our feet. No, I replied, mostly because my education did not require much European history.
“Then,” my friend replied, “you are not educated.”
It wasn’t snobbery; it was a fact. Most Americans not […]
When Trump Starts Tweeting, Sonny Starts Packing
Posted on July 11, 2018
Prince Edward Island, caressed in eastern Canada’s provincial arms of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, is a lovely place to visit in June. Its sparkling red sand beaches, miles of white-blossomed potato fields, and rolling carpets of lush pasture form a color-soaked postcard for tourists and locals alike.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue caught a […]
Tanning Cowboys’ Hides
Posted on June 14, 2018
Forty years ago Waylon and Willie asked the nation’s mamas not to “let your babies grow up to be cowboys” because “… they’ll never stay home and they’re always alone, even with someone they love.”
That sage advice is even more true after a spring cattle market that’s been too wild to forget and too brutal […]
Make ZTE Great Again
Posted on May 30, 2018
If you think writing a farm bill makes for strange bedfellows, just look at who’s allied against President Donald J. Trump’s up-and-down trade talks with China: the deeply conservative Wall Street Journal and the decidedly undecided Financial Times, or FT.
On May 8, FT’s Martin Wolf described America’s “draft framework” guiding U.S-China trade talks earlier that […]
The Winning Losers
Posted on May 30, 2018
There’s something fundamentally wrong with a legislative process that delivers a Farm Bill so deeply flawed that groups as politically diverse as the ruby red Heritage Foundation and the ocean blue Environmental Working Group (EWG) join forces to publicly condemn it.
And yet on May 8, EWG’s Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Scott Faber moderated […]
What’s The Matter with Kansas?
Posted on May 24, 2018
For over 100 years, some Kansans have either built or added to their journalism reputation by asking this simple question: What’s the matter with Kansas? The answer, however, is far from simple.
The first to ask was William Allen White, the publisher and editor of the Emporia Gazette. White, a mainstream Republican, posed the question as the […]
Might Over Right
Posted on May 16, 2018
One of the clearest memories I have as a second grade student is looking north from my classroom windows nearly everyday to see fellow second graders, Ricky W. and his sister, Regina, running to school, late as usual, with their arms, feet, and homework flying.
I also remember the two were usually met at the classroom […]
Wisdom Should Come with Age
Posted on May 10, 2018
In May 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus, a Pole living in Prussia, published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, a book that used mathematics and astronomy to postulate how the earth and the then-known planets rotated on their own axes as they orbited a stationary sun. Within days of its printing, however, Copernicus died.
His theory of […]
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If correct, @ChrisClaytonDTN, did Ernst say why tariffs remain? Their pointing at each as problem allows all to escape reality that tariffs have done nothing to improve trade and have cost billions in lost sales, bailouts & higher prices. Bad ideas breed bad policy. https://t.co/rqgwOKhzoD
American ag is commodity-centered because American ag policy is commodity-centered. If we want more farms growing more food, we need a more food-centered farm policy.
Exactly right @mikeadsit. If Big Ag runs ag policy at every level, no surprise it believes its way is only way. Here’s a different way: cap farm program payments so 75% go to ‘medium’ & ‘small’ farmers, not big boys. https://t.co/3alIxpyTA0
More Trump trade doubletalk: So where are US farmers to turn if Prez’s plan leave WTO out of any China trade deal-& long term, leave WTO altogether-actually happen? https://t.co/9Xjwzgspfz
When was SecSonny crowned KingSonny? It must have happened because *Perdue told reporters after Tuesday’s hearing he wasn’t sure if the agency needed an appropriation to move ahead with the USDA relocation...* https://t.co/fafaScYsUM
Another brick in the increasingly fact-free wall that separates political grandstanding from essential legislating. Thanks @ChrisClaytonDTN https://t.co/Yn484NMxxs