Farm and Food File

Court piles on meatpackers’ power

Thursday, September 1, 2005 by Alan Guebert

Killed the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921. Largely gutted the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s mandate to “promote fair and competitive trading practices for the overall benefit of consumers and American agriculture.

Einstein influences federal budget

Thursday, August 25, 2005 by Alan Guebert

While Albert Einstein proposed the theory of relativity nearly a century ago, today’s Congress and White House have perfected its application.

What voters want in farm policy

Thursday, August 18, 2005 by Alan Guebert

Baseball has its winter hot-stove league when teams and players wheel and deal in hopes of improving their World Series chances.

D.C. sausage grinder running wild

Thursday, August 11, 2005 by Alan Guebert

In its rush to blow out of steamy Washington D.C. for a month of cooler temperatures and cooler tempers, Congress ran the legislative meat grinder hard in the final days of July to crank out enough fat-laden sausage to sate even the hungriest special interest.

Uncle Honey: dangerous, but sweet

Thursday, August 4, 2005 by Alan Guebert

The last week of July and first week of August were always the longest and hottest weeks of the year on the southern Illinois’ farm of my youth.

Dairy farmers mooch it up in Maine

Thursday, July 28, 2005 by Alan Guebert

Most freelance writers are born moochers.
With no corporate travel budget behind them and a flood-or-dust income stream in front of them, the art of mooching – traveling, dining, drinking and vacationing on other peoples’ tabs – quickly becomes a way of life.

Eminent domain decision: no shock, and qualified, if you follow history

Thursday, July 21, 2005 by Alan Guebert

To hear the major newspapers and farm groups tell it, the world of private property rights collapsed June 23.

Reporter moves to different ‘beat’

Thursday, July 14, 2005 by Alan Guebert

Hemingway went to Paris to discover, he once explained, if “I could write two good sentences.”
While there, however, Papa wrote two good books, The Sun Also Rises and Farewell to Arms.

Farm and Food File: Mad over mad cow disease testing

Thursday, July 7, 2005 by Alan Guebert

Once, while researching the amount of grain the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corp. had in storage, I hit the brick-solid bureaucratic wall of silence.

Why may ethanol be imported?

Thursday, June 30, 2005 by Alan Guebert

The harder anyone scratches the Central American Free Trade Agreement pushed by the White House, the worse the smell in American agriculture gets.