Farm and Food File

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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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. [...]

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Watchdog bites the hands that fed it

Despite over-promised and underpaid by millions of dollars, the 100 or so producer-members of Meadowbrook Farms Cooperative said little during a recent public meeting the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Grain, Inspection, Packers and Stockyard Administration held to discuss the Feb. 4 closure of the coop’s Rantoul, Ill., hog slaughtering plant. Startling remarks The few farmers [...]

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Let’s go on rural broadband

One the biggest drawbacks of living in rural America is the high cost and low quality of connectivity: antiquated dial-up Internet speeds, costly satellite television and cellular phone service that cackles more than Grandma’s hens. Congress hopes to address these needs in the Obama stimulus package. Presently, the House-passed version of the plan holds $6 [...]

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Old guard still reigns at USDA, even under Obama

Although Barack Obama has been president but a few days we can already say with certainty — unlike before his inauguration — he cannot fly, leap tall buildings or walk on water. Those feats, however, are chopped liver compared to cracking the good old boy cabal at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Buckling So far, [...]

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Where will ag spend Obama billions?

The new president wants Congress to approve upwards of $800 billion in cash and tax credits by mid-February to, hopefully, stem the worst economic slide any American under 70 has experienced. And that’s in addition to the yet-to-be spent $350 billion from the $700 billion, October 2008 bank bailout. How do you spend $1.1 trillion [...]

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Average Crop Revenue Election awaits

On Jan. 8, 2008, an investment banker at Goldman Sachs predicted crude oil prices would top $200 a barrel by summer, then slip lower but remain well above $100 through 2011. What looked smart then looks ridiculous now. Today, crude prices are far closer to zero than $200 and the spectacularly wrong investment banker, like [...]

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A new secretary; another governor

If conventional leadership and bureaucratic competency had a face, it would look exactly like Thomas J. Vilsack: round as an apple pie, chin disappearing under sagging cheeks, graying (and amply present) hair. President-elect Barack Obama’s selection of Vilsack, the two-term (1998-2006) Iowa governor, to lead the U.S. Department of Agriculture is as safe and sound [...]

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Is ‘sucker’ written on our foreheads?

It’s the end of the year, but columnist Alan Guebert still has unanswered questions.

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A life of simple living and giving

(Author’s note: The following column was first published the week of Christmas 1998. Now, by tradition, it returns. Merry Christmas. –Alan) The Christmas tree was a scrub cedar hacked from the edge of the woods that bordered the farm. Big-bulbed lights, strung in barber pole fashion, generated almost as much heat as the nearby wood [...]

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Credit crunch crunching markets

If recent conversations with elevator managers and farmers are even slightly predictive, it’s gonna be a long, cold winter in corn and soybean country because the majority of 2008 grain, they say, is — gulp — unpriced. Wow. In my flat, black and beautiful neighborhood, that’s a killer on land that giggled up 200 bushel [...]

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‘Twas the bailout before Christmas

Before ya’ll go gettin’ cheery-cheeked and weepy-eyed for Christmas, Old Scrooge here has some sour facts that will be waitin’ for you on the backside of the holiday season. Fact number one After Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson’s bailout of banking giant Citigroup, the total amount of government cash thrown into this year’s credit mess [...]

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Rural Americans way ahead of leaders

In a brief presentation to some 250 or so farm and small town members of Iowa mutual insurance companies Nov. 17, I asked for a show of hands on two questions. First, I asked, regardless who is president, how many here think there will not be some sort of national health care program within the [...]

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Elections do matter to everyone

Whoever said elections don’t matter was either a royalist or a royal idiot. Of course elections matter. For proof, ask Robin Hayes, Marilyn Musgrave, Randy Kuhl or Tim Walberg. All are Republican members of the House Ag Committee who, on Nov. 4, were fired by their constituents in, respectively, North Carolina, Colorado, New York and [...]

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Time to re-examine, re-invent

One of the more astute observations on the role of government in farm policy ever uttered was offered by then-congressman, later (from 1991-93) secretary of agriculture, Ed Madigan. “The majority of farmers,” Madigan, a moderate Republican, told me in a September 1984 interview between campaigning around his central Illinois district, “just want to be left [...]

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Ah November …

Somehow, some way, 700 became the number the month of October revolved around. The stage was set Sept. 29 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 777 points after Congress failed to pass the White House’s bank bailout plan earlier that day. Chastened by the break, the massive, $700 billion deal then cleared Congress Oct. [...]

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Doha? No really …

If you list the top 100 things President George W. Bush will complete before noon Jan. 20, the World Trade Organization’s Doha Development Round would fall somewhere after polishing his mountain bike and re-organizing his sock drawer. The White House and Big Ag might place a trade deal slightly higher, say top 10. Both know, [...]

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At least agriculture pays dividends

Call it coincidence, serendipity, interstellar planetary alignment, whatever, but two events Oct. 13 proved again economics is the most refreshingly maddening subject (I cannot bring myself to say ‘science’) in the history of mankind. First, after watching every major market index from Hong Kong to New York crack like pigeon eggs the week before, the [...]

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Presidential election: We are deep into the rabbit hole now

When moderator Jim Lehrer asked presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama Sept. 29 what budget ‘priorities’ each would ‘adjust’ because of the pending $700 billion financial bailout, Obama, answering first, focused on federal programs he’d fix rather than fat he’d cut — energy, education, health care, rural broadband. Lehrer then turned to McCain. The [...]

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