Farm and Food File

‘All these numbers’ tell a story now

In modern political campaigns it’s a given that opponents will attack each others’ ideas, misrepresent each others’ record and, metaphorically, make every attempt to rip each others’ ugly face off. Since this vitriol is expected, little of it finds traction. It’s “politics as usual” and, as usual, it rarely changes minds, votes or outcomes. A [...]

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Take it from Uncle Honey, take a nap once and a while

One part of every day on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth was inviolate: the noon nap; nearly everyone took one. We didn’t rest very long, just 30 minutes or so, because the farm work never rested long. The naps, however, were as integral a part of our farm routine as the big [...]

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What will kick Congress into gear?

Alan Guebert takes Washington to task on the 2012 Farm Bill.

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Be wary of the banksters in Washington

On July 17, the U.S. Senate pulled off a Half Ginsburg by convening three Capitol Hill hearings on why the crooks and crackpots in charge of global finance find it ridiculously easy to make suckers out of you and me and Swiss cheese out of American laws. William Ginsburg, you may recall, represented Monica Lewinsky [...]

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Can’t duck crop insurance disaster

Many on Capitol Hill are quick to point out that “If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s a duck.” What they never add is that this little blinding glimpse of the obvious has never stopped legislative quackery in the past and it’s not stopping it now. Drought impact For example, [...]

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Readers know how to write, too

On an early morning bicycle ride I roll past a massive red combine slumbering at the end of a freshly barbered wheat field.<

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‘Free markets’ really aren’t free

If there’s no such thing as a free lunch — and there isn’t: even the United States Department of Agriculture’s “free” National School Lunch Program cost $10.8 billion in fiscal year 2010 — then it stands to reason that the free market might not be entirely free either. Financial markets For example, to ensure that [...]

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A golden goose for chicken feed

Every week for 19 years this 170 square-foot, two-dog, one-person office has declared its complete devotion to numbers. For example, just last week we found it completely fascinating that in just three days this month 100 U.S. senators offered 302 amendments to an ag committee-approved 2012 farm bill that already ran more than 1,000 pages. [...]

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Bigger programs, bigger boondoggles

In mid-June, the best guessers on Capitol Hill handicapped a probable 2012 Farm bill this way: either the Senate passes its version by the Fourth of July to push the House to act by late summer or no farm law will pass until after the November general election. That either-or view takes in a lot [...]

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Some hot numbers in cold times

As the world stumbles toward a summer of financial winter, one part of the American economy continues its merry, five-year waltz: U.S. ag exports are forecast to reach $134.5 billion in Fiscal Year 2012. Estimate That estimate, released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture May 31, is $3.5 billion higher than USDA’s February guess and [...]

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Go ahead and bet against Europe

When I hopped on the ag journalism jet in 1981, the European Union (known then as the European Economic Union) forecast it would spend a fabulous sum — $5 billion or so — on its farm support program, the Common Agricultural Policy. By comparison, the USDA estimated total 1981 farm program costs here would be [...]

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Take a guess how this is going to end

Since you speak English as well as anyone, perhaps you understand the working paragraph of a May 19 Washington Post column that explains the trading strategy employed by JP Morgan Chase & Co. to, ah, hedge its market risk. It reads: “It is this exemption that would allow (J.P. Morgan executive, Ina) Drew and her [...]

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Big numbers should trigger hard questions

Hard numbers, hard questions and even harder answers.

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The wisdom of hard work on the farm: ‘It won’t kill you’

It is the universal German Lutheran explanation for all the unnecessary sweat generated by farm folks since the Garden of Eden, “Besides, it doesn’t kill us.”

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Sugar water or Kool-Aid?

Alan Guebert reacts to the recently passed Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012.

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USDA’s unused case to push own rule

In a striking, two-and-a-half page analysis that ran counter to department leanings, the chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture strongly objected to the department’s use of two outside studies that justified the massive retooling — essentially gutting — of the 2010 update of Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) rules to ensure [...]

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The best ag economist I ‘never’ met

Before I was lucky enough to keep myself in suds and my family in socks with this weekly effort, my previous boss liked to remind me that I had “the best job in ag journalism.” He was right because I spent most of my time and his money writing profiles of the political and intellectual [...]

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Truth and the slime situation stinks

It’s hard to mix today’s politics with today’s food and not get slime, slimed or both.

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Bigger and bigger and …

It was, literally, a sight for sore eyes. Two years ago March 12, trumpets blasted in Ankeny, Iowa, as America’s new gladiators for agricultural justice — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., his antitrust chief Christine Varney, U.S. Department of Agriculture boss Tom Vilsack and hundreds of farmers — gathered for a day-long discussion on [...]

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Agriculture needs better leaders

How will we — farmers everywhere — sustain our ability to feed any of us when there are more of us and less of everything else? Sheep, excellent or otherwise, ain’t gonna get that job done. Leaders will.

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