U.S. ag trade offer to be short-lived
After a few tough months at home - falling poll numbers, staying at Rancho del Lazio while New Orleans flooded, Harriet "Who?" Miers - the Bush Administration sought to get its mojo working again by dropping an agricultural trade bomb in Geneva Oct.
Matter doesn’t always matter
A month ago, Fred Kirschenmann, distinguished fellow for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, preached to the preachers of the Northern Plains Conference of the United Church of Christ in Bismarck.
Balancing ‘free trade’ with free facts
During a long-ago interview, the great grandson of a Kansas homesteader noted that only a handful of the 40 or so families who staked out farms with his family a century before remained after three years of disease, drought and death.
Not knowing beans about seed corn
Love him or hate him, controversial filmmaker Michael Moore has his self-described "America's biggest slacker" act down pat.
Let there be light in the pork markets
A Dec. 28, 2010, Wall Street Journal story laments the “near-halt” of pork belly trading at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Bellies were “once among...
Farm and Food File: Economic woes piling up
So corn is rockin' north of $7, beans are toyin' with $14, cattle look to be headed to who-knows-where and hogs, well, bacon is sellin' for what steak used to.
Sound of silence speaks volumes
Columnist Alan Guebert comments on where American farmers now sit on free trade.
What voters want in farm policy
Baseball has its winter hot-stove league when teams and players wheel and deal in hopes of improving their World Series chances.
Easy as hitting a bull in the backside
In late July, this space highlighted recent investigative stories by reporters at the Washington Post.
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...
