By far the biggest lender to U.S. farmers, ranchers and rural businesses is the Farm Credit System, whose four banks and 56 associations hold nearly 50 per cent of all debt in rural America. What’s more, the largest lender within the massive FCS is CoBank. In mid-2024, CoBank reported an “average loan volume” of US$149.9 […] Read more
Tag Archives Alan Guebert
Just how expensive is U.S. food compared to other categories?
Nearly every autopsy of Vice-President Kamala Harris’s stinging White House defeat begins with some variation of the phrase, “voters pointed to the rising price of food as their chief concern…” True or not — and more on that later — the Trump campaign tied that tin can so tightly to Harris that everywhere she went […] Read more
Deportation, tariffs expected as Trump’s second act
Every pre-election poll for the U.S. presidential race saw it as a too-close-to-call nail biter. Not one predicted the sweeping victory posted by former, now President-Elect Donald J. Trump. How did all miss the coming rout? And rout it was. Trump swept all seven of the swing states, a feat no candidate had pulled off […] Read more
U.S. ag policy: buy more deck chairs or chart different course
Calls for US$20 billion in “emergency” farm program payments won’t go away now that the proposal’s principal audience, voters, have done their duty. The idea’s chief promoters, congressional Republicans, have built a wobbly case for the aid, and lame ducks or loud winners, their quacking will continue. Should they succeed, federal agriculture subsidies tied to the […] Read more
‘New U.S.-China trade war could cost farmers billions’
Let’s pause to consider the-above headline. First, it’s a quote; I didn’t write it. That’s important because the third rail of today’s ag journalism — the deadly, high voltage topic that can burn your career — is Donald J. Trump. Question a Trump-related topic such as tax cuts, tariffs or immigration and you’re quickly tagged […] Read more
Big Mac bites Big Meat over alleged ‘artificially higher prices’
If you buy nearly two billion pounds of beef a year — an on-the-hoof equivalent of seven million cattle — you’d think you’d get the best deal ever from your suppliers. You are, after all, the world’s largest red meat buyer. Think again, says McDonald’s. On Oct. 4, it sued the big four meat packers […] Read more
American agricultural exports continue their downward slide
When you set a record ag trade deficit for the third consecutive year, the decline isn’t an aberration or a coincidence. It is, in fact, growing proof that a key element of your national ag policy is headed in the wrong direction. And, according to an Outlook for U.S. Agricultural Trade report released by the […] Read more
Massive Nebraska feedlot ‘just the opposite of what we need’
Like farmers and ranchers, veterinarians love to pour concrete. Many build customized facilities dedicated to their animal health mission: examination rooms, operating theaters, cattle chutes, holding pens and loading docks. Three Canada-based vets, however, are pouring enough concrete in far southwestern Nebraska to cover what they say will be a square mile — 640 acres […] Read more
Farmers’ waning fortunes revive interest in U.S. farm bill
A late September, 300-kilometre drive through the sunny centre of northern and central Illinois reveals blue sky, yellowing fields and not one roaring red, green or silver combine gathering in any of the anticipated abundant crops. “We’re a solid 10 days from corn harvest,” a central Illinois farmer relates in conversation later that day. “Delayed […] Read more
Proposed merger of grain giants betrays firm’s Prairie origins
As American grocery buyers await a Federal Trade Commission verdict on Kroger’s two-year-old, US$24.6 billion bid to buy competitor Albertsons, the European Commission took just 35 days to give its blessing to the merger between two of the world’s largest grain merchandisers, Bunge and Viterra. The mega-deal, valued at about $34 billion at the time […] Read more
