![[Two recent] reports all but beg for immediate international action to reduce climate risk while developing “more scalable farm-level” solutions to address the looming food crisis. | Screencap via fao.org](https://static.producer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/29164236/10-FAO-report-climate-change-screencap-660x420.jpg)
The old maxim, “the more things change, the more things stay the same,” might ring true for some facets of our lives, but it’s not true for climate change. In fact, when it comes to our now fast-changing climate, the more things change, the more everything changes. That’s especially true in agriculture, as almost every […] Read more
Tag Archives Alan Guebert
Don’t bury just carbon dioxide pipelines; bury the very idea
“Mathematics,” once explained Edward Frenkel, a renowned mathematician and author, “directs the flow of the universe, lurks behind its shapes and curves (and) holds the reins of everything from tiny atoms to the biggest stars.” Another explanation notes that “math is the only place where truth and beauty mean the same thing.” That elegant, beautiful […] Read more
![As often is the case with House Republicans, however, the new leader’s hardest job won’t be any of [the] tough, all but intractable problems. The harder, more perilous task will be finding a safe path through GOP minefields to get to the other side of the political divide to even negotiate. | File photo](https://static.producer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/25161633/10-Washington-DC-Capitol-bldg-660x420.jpg)
New U.S. farm bill faces a tortuous journey through Congress
Whoever leads the U.S. House of Representatives, the speaker will have less than a month to push through a workable federal budget, compromise with Senate Republicans to craft an Israeli-Ukrainian multibillion-dollar aid package and — at the very least — extend the now-expired 2018 farm bill through the end of the year, if not through […] Read more
U.S. beef sector’s new range war won’t be fought over grass
The cattle market’s future, like the West’s wild and rowdy past, will feature sweat, brawls and blood. And that’s just the meat-packing side because today’s fast-thinning cattle numbers, plus the rise of at least eight new, smaller beef packers, promise a bruising fight among the upstarts and Big Meat for enough cattle to keep kill […] Read more
Plant-based meat business remains half cooked idea for now
Beyond Meat, Inc., founded in 2009, has had almost 15 years to build a product line that is — as its name claims — beyond meat and, by some business metrics, it has. After all, the company, whose market capitalization was pegged at $1.3 billion when it went public in 2018, recently reported April-to-June 2023 […] Read more
Congress plays games as grain markets continue to go south
Evidence continues to pile up that today’s political and grain market pile-ups will be bigger and messier than first thought. Right now, it’s political carnage that’s making headlines. I’m old enough to remember when Congress’s biggest worry was foreign bombs, not bombast, and when congressional leaders muzzled their party’s empty-headed lip flappers. Not today, though. […] Read more
Nature’s future requires that we alter our alterations
Sometimes the gap between what’s real and not real is so narrow that it’s impossible to tell truth from fantasy. For example, recently the front page of a newspaper I receive featured two stories that make perfect sense to almost every farmer and little sense to almost everyone who doesn’t farm. The first laid out […] Read more
Congressional infighting threatens to delay U.S. farm bill
Even before the U.S. Congress returns from its five-week, no-work period to its usual three-day weeks of little work, Republicans in both chambers are already signalling global markets, the White House and congressional colleagues that their return will bring no 2023 farm bill and no 2024 federal budget by the two laws’ drop-dead date of […] Read more
The red hot hounds of summer remain very much on the loose
To ancient Greeks and Romans, the “dog days of summer” began when Sirius, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major — Latin for “big dog” — “appears to rise alongside the sun.” That sun/Sirius pairing, they believed, always delivered the hottest days each mid- to late summer. The ancients were on to something. Typically, […] Read more
Appeasing hardliners all but promises failure of U.S. farm bill
When the U.S. Congress returns to Capitol Hill after the Fourth of July, members of the Senate and House face two enormous tasks with little time to complete either. On Sept. 30, the 2018 Farm Bill expires and, simultaneously, the federal government needs a new budget in place to open its doors Oct. 1. It […] Read more
