Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Archives
Paltry Fine Proves What, Not Who, We Truly Value
Posted on April 10, 2023
A much-quoted by preachers and politicians alike rightly notes that “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”
Curiously, a famous American politician, former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and an even more famous attorney-turned-preacher, Mahatma Gandhi, are both credited as its originator.
It’s doubtful, however, that many in […]
‘I have said we have to see some results!’
Posted on June 15, 2022
It’s no surprise that the nation’s five largest meatpackers, according to a May 12 government report, “engaged in a concerted effort with Trump Administration political officials to insulate themselves from coronavirus-related oversight.”
After all, the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis (the Committee), the body charged with oversight of government’s response to the pandemic, released […]
Tyson Foods: Meatpacking Isn’t For Chickens
Posted on January 3, 2022
People have strange hobbies.
For example, a Great Plains friend of mine once trained a chicken to play dead. Remarkably, on command, his chicken would take a whole-body flop that could have taught Steve Martin a thing or two about physical comedy.
Another friend, a retired professor, is (unsurprisingly, really) even more iconoclastic: he reads Securities and Exchange Commission […]
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… […]
The Best Way to Start is to Start
Posted on February 24, 2021
Forty years ago, two editors at Successful Farming magazine, Gene Johnston and Dean Houghton, won most major ag journalism awards with a story titled “Who will kill the hogs?”
The piece (not available online) tracked a new, potent shift just beginning to hit the 600,000 hog farmers in the U.S.: Local meatpackers were being squeezed for hogs […]
This Bloody Business
Posted on July 6, 2020
If you’ve ever butchered anything from a rabbit to a hog—and butchered is the right word, not the bleached “harvested”—you know there will be blood. Butchering, after all, is a bloody business.
While 95 percent of Americans are carnivores, it’s a safe bet that nearly 99.9 percent of them haven’t thought much about where […]
Fifth Avenue Cowboys
Posted on February 14, 2018
Maybe it’s a sign of our fast-changing times, but paradox and irony seem as common today as lunch and supper. For example, the world’s largest taxi company, Uber, owns no taxis and the world’s second largest air force is the U.S. Navy.
The same is true of the American beef sector. As of mid-January, the owner […]