Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
U.S. History
Gun closets across America
Posted on August 3, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, July 21, 2024
Like most southern Illinois farms of my youth, my family had a closet filled with guns.
It was just inside the living room and it held my father’s 12-gauge Marlin shotgun, his .22 caliber Remington pump rifle, brother Richard’s single-shot 20-gauge shotgun, brother David’s single-shot 410-shotgun, and my single-shot .22 […]
Your local USDA office may soon be your local federal courthouse
Posted on August 3, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, July 14, 2024
The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 28 ruling to overturn the Chevron deference was a business-favoring decision to upend 40 years of legal precedent and redirect federal power from agencies like the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to the courts and Congress.
Big Ag loved the news. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association […]
The Fourth of July that saved the nation
Posted on August 3, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, June 30, 2024
As an end-of-the-road farm boy growing up deep in southern Illinois, the Fourth of July was more of a shadetree holiday from the alfalfa field than a noisy celebration of national independence. Besides, we were more partial to a local hero, Abraham Lincoln, than any frilly “Founding Father.”
That leaning […]
Mexico’s election delivers new leader to tackle old problems
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, June 23, 2024
While Americans still face a long season of political campaigning, more than 80 other nations have completed their federal elections this year or are about to go to the polls.
For example, France’s general elections will be held June 30, the United Kingdom’s on July […]
Let’s clear up this confusing trade talk once and for all
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, May 26, 2024
The Biden Administration’s trade agenda–mostly forgotten after three years of Covid, inflation, war in Ukraine, brutality in the Middle East, and a cantankerous Congress–recently surfaced and, wow, is it a mess.
For example, both presumptive presidential candidates, Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump, recently argued over how high […]
The outrage over White Rural Rage
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, May 12, 2024
Early in my first year at the Big U, a new friend from Chicago’s south side asked me what he thought was an innocent question. “You’re from southern Illinois,” began Vince, “so why don’t you talk like a hillbilly?”
Like a what? I asked.
“You know,” he explained, “why don’t […]
The failure to learn history’s simple lessons
Posted on August 2, 2024
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, May 5, 2024
Long before it became a cliché, there were many heroes who never wore capes.
I met one: the rail-thin, then-86 year old Theodore W. Schultz, in his sun-filled, University of Chicago office on a cold, January day in 1989, a decade after he had been awarded a Nobel Memorial […]
Ag’s New Normal Includes Trade Deficits, Not Surpluses
Posted on April 10, 2023
Nearly drowned out in all the farm group cheering that U.S. ag exports hit a record high $196 billion last year was the inarguable fact that U.S. ag imports also hit a record-high, $199 billion, or $3 billion more than ag exports.
That’s right, sports fans: during its biggest ag export year ever–when the value of […]
U.S. may have muscle in a trade fight, Mexico may have the law
Posted on February 22, 2023
If your best international customer–someone who accounts for 27 percent of your overseas sales–gave you three years to change the recipe of what it buys from you, it’s a safe bet you’d work together to meet their needs and deadline.
Not Big Agbiz, however, which is pushing, pressing, and prodding the Biden Administration to squeeze Mexico, […]
Any new Farm Bill must navigate the unruly 2023 House GOP–again
Posted on February 22, 2023
As expected, the 2023 Farm Bill express is not running on time. In fact, it didn’t even leave the station when its chief engineer, Pennsylvania Republican and incoming House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson, said it would.
That’s no surprise; it’s Congress, after all.
Indeed, it would have been a big surprise had it started on the […]