Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
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The “Chinese Century” Looks Like the “Chinese Decade”
Posted on August 6, 2020
While most county and state fairs are Covid casualties this year, a giant, buzzing Ferris wheel—America’s relationship with China—continues to spin at such a dizzying pace that, sooner or later, it will break to harm riders and bystanders alike.
While that idea may fly in the face of current beliefs, it doesn’t fly in […]
Now is Not the Time to Make Old Friends Into New Enemies
Posted on June 10, 2020
As if 20 percent unemployment, wretchedly weak commodity markets, shuttered ethanol and meatpacking plants, and a coronavirus pandemic aren’t bad enough, the White House chose mid-May to, literally, go viral with China, one of American agriculture’s best cash-and-carry customers.
This fight, however, isn’t over steel, aluminum or soybeans. It’s about spilled milk: How much responsibility […]
February’s Paradox, March’s Struggles
Posted on April 2, 2020
February is a paradox. Leap Year or not, it’s the shortest month of the year yet it always feels like the longest month of winter. Endless gray skies bleed into endless gray days into an almost endless gray month.
Then March appears with its light, color, and hope and February’s dreariness is soon forgotten.
Light, […]
The End is Nowhere in Sight
Posted on March 26, 2020
In just one, unwelcome week in America, the coronavirus drained $3.6 trillion from the stock market, clipped Apple shareholders for $220 billion, and sent millions of Americans to stores to buy every facemask, surgical glove, and gallon of bleach they could get their now-sanitized hands on.
It’s what we do; we panic first and ask […]
The Long and Short of It
Posted on March 26, 2020
If you’re a farmer or rancher, you might be in for a bad day when you open your Monday morning email and five of the six headlines sent by an ag news service read:
–“USDA declares Brazilian beef safe, lifts [U.S. import] ban;”
–“GAO launches investigation into Trump aid to farmers;”
–“China could purchase much […]
The Changing Geography of U.S. Farming and Food
Posted on March 13, 2020
Geography isn’t static. Rivers change course, mountains erode, and islands disappear under rising seas.
The geography of farming and food changes, too. For example, 180 years ago my home county was the castor bean and castor oil capital of the U.S. Both titles, however, slipped into irrelevance as a new resource, crude oil, rose […]
When It Comes to Trade, Lucky It’s an Election Year
Posted on February 27, 2020
After the White House announced its twin trade triumphs, passage of NAFTA 2.0 and phase one of a multi-phase deal with China, readers emailed to suggest I should write a column on—to quote two—the “absolutely amazing trade deals” “only President Trump” could have done.
Before I pass judgment on so humble a request, it […]
More Fallout from “Mt. Tariff”
Posted on January 2, 2020
No major American daily newspaper features sharper, more poisonous pens than the market-focused writers at the Wall Street Journal. When these opinion peddlers go after you in print, they hit hard, fast, and—most of the time—with inarguable fact.
Witness the Journal’s lead editorial Dec. 3, titled “Mount Tariff Erupts Again,” a full-frontal assault on President Donald J. […]
China Plays the Long Game; U.S. Keeps Getting Played
Posted on December 4, 2019
Several years ago, when Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Tom Friedman was asked to choose which rising Asian nation, China or India, he’d bet the farm on, Friedman didn’t hesitate to pick India.
The reason, he explained, was that while both nations were on an expressway to the future, India, the world’s largest democracy, had an open road in […]
End of Trade War Looks Like Beginning of Cold War
Posted on November 26, 2019
If China agreed to purchase “$40 to $50 billion” of U.S. farm goods in “the next two years,” as President Donald J. Trump announced Oct. 11, the futures market—where market reality is quickly sorted from political talk—literally wasn’t buying it.
In fact, November soybean futures, the nearby contract, opened Monday, Oct. 14 at $9.405 per bu. and […]
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In the six yrs that Ernst has been on Senate Ag Committee, US taxpayers have sent farmers $109B in *direct farm program payments* ($60B in 2019 & 2020 alone). All the ethanol in the world, let alone Iowa, can’t fix that problem. https://t.co/B5P3nKd87Q
No surprise; the Cotton Gang historically has been the biggest winner in farm bailouts. Also no surprise, Corn & SB Gang whining they didn’t get as much. But biggest non-surprise? No one asking what’s wrong w/ ag policy that requires bailout after bailout. https://t.co/WdlK54MN5J
Equally disturbing is the fact that our farm and political leaders, food companies and eaters don’t care enough about its workers to reform a system fueled natural resource destruction and too much human suffering. https://t.co/pudgHxsUyJ
When you rob Peter to pay Paul you can usually count on Paul’s vote. https://t.co/7GFgFzcguX
Fine, but if any politician or farmer wants taxpayer money to bail out future weather-caused damage to US ag, each must sign a form that acknowledges climate change is real to least get these anti-guv socialists on the record... https://t.co/WUZTNFfuh9