Farm and Food File

Stubborn, yes; ‘un-teachable,’ no

In the five months and three weeks since readers last took over this space, my snail mail and e-mail has taken on a decidedly red hot-ice cold nature. Those who enjoy the column smother me in roses. Those who can’t stand my views — and, often, the fact that I exist — cannot believe someone [...]

0 Comments

Ag’s two faces in global warming debate

Once, during a friendly debate over global warming, I asked a well-informed acquaintance what the consequences were if he was wrong in his insistence that global warming was simply Al Gore’s revenge for the 2000 presidential election. “Well,” he replied after a long pause to, I guess, stare 40 years into the future, “if I’m [...]

4 Comments

You want funny? I’ll give you funny

All truth passes through three stages, German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once explained. “First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” That line came to mind June 18 when I heard a nationally known ag radio reader report that, the day before, the National Farmers Union had publicly [...]

0 Comments

I’ll be thinking of Uncle Honey July 14

As the end of June edges into sight, my mind floats back to those hot, long days on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth when noon dinner brought everyone together for the day’s big meal. Afterward, all the adults napped until precisely 1 p.m. Uncle Honey, my father’s uncle who spent 20 of [...]

0 Comments

NAIS should be fixed or forgotten

Four days before the seventh and final “listening session” June 1 to gather producer comments on NAIS, the National Animal Identification System, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced USDA would host six additional meetings for the public “to voice their concerns about the current NAIS system and offer potential solutions.” The extra meetings are [...]

6 Comments

Rain makes grain — if grain’s planted

When I was drawing a paycheck as a cocksure marketing advisor and newsletter writer nearly 30 years ago, my colleagues and I often explained our hedging mistakes by simply declaring our advice had been “ahead of the market.” We were right, the line of malarkey went, but the slicksters in the futures markets were too [...]

0 Comments

Take free trade — please

When the international trade portion of your resume is as thin as Ron Kirk’s — you do remember that Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas, is now U.S. Trade Representative, don’t you? — it’s likely you’d stress personal ideals over professional accomplishments when talking about your new job. Kirk did just that in a May [...]

0 Comments

Health care reform a winner for rural America

If you want to see just how badly broken America’s health care system is come to the country. Be careful during your visit, however, because rural America — where just nine percent of the nation’s doctors serve 17 percent of its citizens scattered across 80 percent of its geography — is not an ideal place [...]

1 Comment

Silencing the circus we call television

A month or so ago, the manager of this one-dog farmette clipped the coaxial cable that linked our rural home to the yellers at CNBC, CNN, Fox and the 264 other big-haired television airheads bloviating about other bloviators. Our children, both fulfilling their destinies on the East Coast and therefore no part of the coming [...]

0 Comments

Cutting a fat hog on the taxpayers’ tab

The year isn’t five months old and hog farmers already have had a year to forget: a sick global economy sickening pork demand, costlier feed and a call-it-whatever flu that’s lopped $15 off hog prices in the blink of an eye. Indeed, 2009 has been so bad — on May 5, the National Pork Producers [...]

0 Comments

No bank should be too big to fail

The biggest maker or breaker of business in rural America is not Washington rulemakers, state environmental agencies or local taxing bodies. Instead, it’s usually the local bank. A bank’s collective fairness and wisdom can be seen from Main Street to surrounding farms. Not so with the money center and Wall Street banks. Citibank, Bank of [...]

0 Comments

Big biz and the big university

When David Chicoine explains his new, part-time job — one of 11 members of the board of directors at seed giant Monsanto Co. — it all sounds very smart, very modern, very…good. “Big companies like Monsanto,” related Chicoine in an April 21 telephone interview, “have contacts anywhere they find talent. Their only interest is high [...]

1 Comment

Report on global agriculture’s future

If you had a nickel for every magazine story that detailed the best ideas to pass your farm or ranch on to your children and grandchildren, you’d have one wealthy farm or ranch to pass on. If, however, you had a nickel for every magazine story that detailed what economic, environmental and political actions are [...]

0 Comments

How to hide 8 million acres in plain sight

American farmers and global food makers have had more than a decade to get comfortable with wild, year-to-year swings in crop acres brought by decoupled, “freedom to farm” ag policies, an 800 percent boom in biofuel production and an increasingly hungry export market for American meat and grain. A punch Still, the 2009 Prospective Planting [...]

0 Comments

To fix this mess, just fire them all

Only Wall Street bankers and Capitol Hill lawmakers can sport such a sorry record and still keep their jobs.

1 Comment

Maybe AIG ain’t great after all

More than 40 years ago, my father and his good friend, C. John, had a three-letter code they often tossed back and forth when enjoying their shared passions of fishing, camping and winning nickels playing euchre. “AIG,” one would say whereupon the other would reply immediately, “You better believe it; AIG.” Old meaning AIG meant [...]

0 Comments

Meadowbrook Farms collapses

A sudden surge of spring-like warmth put a hint of green in my backyard just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. Whether the lovely weather lasts or if it’s just the luck of the Irish matters little because, clearly, winter is doomed. So, too, seem the hog-growing farmers of Meadowbrook Farms, the Rantoul, Ill., pork [...]

0 Comments

The aggies to Obama: No!

Of the many talents Americans — and especially American politicians — have acquired in the last 25 years, coupling fact with fiction to create baloney might be the most creative. For example, in 1996 the Republican-led Congress created Freedom to Farm, that year’s farm bill, to decouple farm programs from set-asides, a grain reserve, taxpayer [...]

0 Comments

Known by the company they keep

If it’s even partly true that you’re known by the company you keep, then the farmer-loved ethanol business got a lot less lovable Feb. 8 when Valero Energy Corp., the largest crude oil refiner in North America, announced its intent to purchase five of the choicest plants owned by mega-biofuel maker, mega-bankrupt VeraSun Energy. Should [...]

0 Comments

Pouts, preachers and persimmons

It’s been eight long, commentary-filled months since readers who’ve dropped letters, e-mails and napalm on me have had their say. Sorry, but time screams by when you read, write and nap as much as I do. The market crash, bank bailout, election and my views on each brought torrents of mail. For example, Dan H. [...]

0 Comments

Latest News

Columnists

FFA & 4-H News

Letters to the Editor

Choose a Classification

Upcoming Auctions

Market Reports

Food and Recipes

Get our Top Stories in Your Inbox

Similar to Farm and Food File

About Farm and Dairy Newspaper

Company Links

Social

4 Information Packed Sections!

Farm and Dairy Cover Section

Weekly Auction Guide

Antique Collector

Rural Marketplace

Get Farm and Dairy Delivered to Your Home

the Farm and Dairy family