How Did We Get Here? Fifty Years of Federal Farm Policies

Monday, December 6th 1:00 pm - Discussion with columnist Alan Guebert.   The video of this Zoom meeting is available on the LWV UMRR YouTube channel at this link.   Due to inexperience of the Zoom operator, the recording was done in "gallery" mode until the discussion period, but the audio is good and there were no slides.  

Guebert shared his perspectives on the impacts that federal farm policies have had on our economy, our communities and our environment.  

Watch this blog for information on our February meeting, on the simulation "En-Roads Climate Change Workshop".  Jackie Armstrong giving us a live demo on how that software program works.  This will be an evening presentation - 6:30 pm on February 7.  

Extract from Guebert column, Hey Genius, Mind your Own Business:   "... our pedal-to-the-metal food system rarely pays farmers and ranchers to do the cheaper-in-the-long-run right thing and often pays them to do the more-profitable-in-the-short-run wrong thing.

Even our federal farm programs focus on fixing problems after they occur, not before; programs like federal crop insurance, the Conservation Reserve Program, the Environmental Quality Incentive Program, the Market Facilitation Program, and soon, on-farm carbon sequestration.  ...

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Alan Guebert bio:  Alan Guebert was raised on a 720-acre, 100-cow dairy farm in southern Illinois. After graduating the University of Illinois in 1980, he served as an associate editor at Professional Farmers of America in Cedar Falls, Iowa and Successful Farming magazine in Des Moines. Later he spent eight years as a contributing editor for Farm Journal magazine of Philadelphia.
 
In 1993, Guebert began the Farm and Food File, a weekly newspaper column on farm and food policy and politics. Twenty-eight years and 1 million words later, the Farm and Food File continues to be published weekly in 26 states and two Canadian provinces.
 
Guebert currently lives in Madison, WI, with his spouse, the lovely Catherine. They have two children and three grandchildren.