Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Technology
How to win the SAF game: Part 2
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, April 28, 2024
Federal policymakers and their Big Ag friends have a problem: Their hope to make corn and soybeans the feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) hit a wall when the aviation industry ruled that biofuel from either crop did not meet its “sustainable” guidelines. As such, there would be […]
How to win the SAF game: Part 1
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, April 21, 2024
The easiest way to win any game is to rig the rules.
That’s what Big Ag and its loyal boosters at the Department of Agriculture (USDA) appear to be doing to make sure their new project, Sustainable Aviation Fuel, or SAF, a hoped-for 3-billion-gallons-a-year jet biofuel market by 2030 […]
Another $1 billion to refinance status quo won’t stop avian pandemics
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, April 7, 2024
When word came out of Texas on April 1 that avian flu had made another unwelcome hop–this one from a dairy cow to a human–the news seemed like an April Fool’s joke.
It wasn’t. In fact, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI or bird flu), the quick-killing […]
‘Right to Repair’ Fight Between Farmers and Machinery Giants is Just Getting Started
Posted on April 10, 2023
Before a January “memorandum of understanding,” or MOU, on a farmer’s “right to repair” his farm machinery, U.S. equipment makers and their farm and ranch customers were locked in a legal and legislative fight over who could fix today’s complex ag machinery–the customer who owned or leased it, or the maker that designed, built, and […]
The Great Carbon Boondoggle – Part 2
Posted on February 22, 2023
Bruce Rastetter, Iowa’s longtime agricultural and political power center, has a sixth sense when it comes to making money.
In 1984, according to the Des Moines Register, Rastetter “started feeding hogs on contract… and within two years, 500 head grew to 100,000.” A decade later, his Heartland Pork was the 12th largest hog farm in the […]
The Great Carbon Boondoggle – Part 1
Posted on February 22, 2023
Many policy choices are made on politics alone while other key decision-making elements like cost, science, and even common sense play a lesser, or no, role.
In the old days, this political math resulted in–literally and figuratively–“bridges to nowhere” that cost millions and did little other than raise the local politician’s reelection odds.
Today, these exercises of […]
Commodity markets see winter thaw, securities markets remain in deep ice
Posted on February 22, 2023
As 2023 searches for a toehold, both the commodities and securities markets continue on the paths plowed for them by last year’s larger-than-expected inflation, Russia’s brutal war, a likely surge in the global pandemic, and a growing power vacuum in American politics.
Securities markets hated 2022’s bad news and most market indices hit yearly highs in […]
CFTC’s Role in ‘Crypto’ is More Lapdog Than Watchdog
Posted on December 13, 2022
If you don’t understand the allure, gyrating value, and many crack-ups of cryptocurrency, a few words from New York University’s Nouriel Roubini, the economist who predicted the 2007/08 housing collapse, might help.
Speaking at the Abu Dhabi Finance conference in mid-November, Roubini, reported CNBC, “… described crypto and some of its major players as an ‘ecosystem […]
USDA’s ‘Deeply Flawed’ $3 Billion ‘Climate Smart Commodities’ Program
Posted on November 11, 2022
Even at first glance, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) recently announced $3-billion-dollar “Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities” sounds like doublespeak, an Orwellian invention that reverses the meaning of words.
Or, more plainly, how can today’s commodity-centered, industrialized agriculture be remotely “climate-smart” when everyone in the food business readily acknowledges it’s an oil-gulping, climate-changing juggernaut?
The short, truthful […]
Mother Nature Has A Population Plan Too
Posted on November 11, 2022
A scientist friend recently noted that at today’s rate of consumption, the world is environmentally and economically sustainable for roughly 1 billion people. “That means with the world’s population of 8 billion,” he half-joked, “you’re a goner.”
Right, just not right now; let nature take its course, eh?
Recent population trends, however, show that nature might already […]