Farm & Food File

Federal policymakers have a problem: Their hope to make corn and soybeans the feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel hit a wall when the aviation industry ruled biofuel from either crop did not meet its “sustainable” guidelines.

The easiest way to win any game is to rig the rules. That’s what Big Ag and its loyal boosters at the U.S. Department of Agriculture appear to be doing to make sure their new project, sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, flies.

When word came out of Texas on April 1 that avian flu had made another unwelcome hop — this one from a dairy cow to a human — the news seemed like an April Fool’s joke. It wasn’t.

Even when Speaker of the House Mike Johnson finds enough baling wire to lash together the votes to pass the budget, it’s little more than a signal to some of his colleagues to heat up the tar and gather the feathers.

The first economist, Scotland’s Adam Smith, had it right almost 250 years ago, as writer Eric Schlosser notes in the foreword of an important new book by Iowan Austin Frerick.

On March 2, the 13th World Trade Organization ministerial ended like most previous ministerials. After its 164 member-ministers discussed the burning need to change two, key international trade rules, everyone went home without changing any key international trade rules.

If an important part of your business is flying between the United States and New Zealand — like it is for Air New Zealand — you get pretty skilled at making the tedious, 13-hour flight go smoothly.

Like much of the news anymore, the initial numbers from the Census of Agriculture were accurately reported, quickly downplayed — or even worse, ignored — by most Big Ag groups and then just pushed aside.

While my father milked cows and farmed for almost 50 years, I never heard him say he loved — or, for that matter, even liked — either cows or farming.

Recently, a retired friend asked if I planned to retire anytime soon. It was the right question. While I have considered retirement, I explained, I have no real plans — soon or otherwise — to do so.

For at least the past decade, “a growing number of peer-reviewed medical studies have linked exposure to nitrates in drinking water to elevated incidences of cancer.” As the environmental news service clearly states, this news isn’t exactly news.

There’s a joke about my fellow Baby Boomers making the rounds that goes something like this: In the 1960s, Boomers didn’t trust anyone over 30, but as soon as they reached their 60s, they didn’t trust anyone under 30.

While January left the old year behind, it didn’t leave behind any of the baggage 2023 saddled American farmers and ranchers with.

Like some character in Alice in Wonderland, we’re well beyond the looking glass when the presumptive presidential candidate of the political party that prides itself as being fiscally conservative asks farmers, “Look, did I get you $28 billion…?”

The pain I felt late Sunday, Jan. 7, was hard to pinpoint until I realized exactly when it struck: just moments after news of a tentative, 2024 budget deal between Senate and House negotiators had been announced.