News

Chris Clayton has an entertaining blog post up regarding the inevitable "anonymous" sources looking to talk trash about the ongoing farm bill discussions: political people are now out looking for hacks to cast stones at others in the process. That became clear Friday when I got a phone call from a senior aide on the Senate Finance Committee. As...
Read more »

Last week's Bill Moyers Journal on PBS was a special on food, farming and the farm bill. Moyers covers the issues with his usual moral authority discussing the shortage at food banks across the country coupled with the continuation of unlimited payments to very large farms. Washington Post reporters Dan Morgan, Gilbert ...
Read more »

Well, the House has published their farm bill "framework" (pdf) and word from DC is that it includes a 50% increase in the direct payment limit. This was included in the House-passed farm bill from last summer (and we studied it in a previous report), but it was hard to imagine that such an increase would ever...
Read more »

Well, we've got down to it. The House has finally thrown down on the Senate and is about to either prompt a new farm bill or a whole lot of finger-pointing. So now is the last chance- either a new farm bill or an extension will pass in the coming weeks. It's hard to...
Read more »

Updated.  Last night the House named farm bill conferees (as a side note they appear to have named about half of the entire House to the conference committee). The House and Senate Conference Committees wasted no time, and are now meeting in a joint session. You can listen to the debate online here. Chief among...
Read more »

As many of you may recall, the number one political opponent of enforcing real payment limits is Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. She pretty much led the campaign to defeat the Dorgan-Grassley amendment. Anyway, she's back in the news, with an editorial touting her commitment to rural development in the farm bill: The...
Read more »

Rural economic development is under siege in Oregon, and it looks like petty politics is to blame: Last week the Oregon legislature took away money that paid for several rural development programs. Earlier in the month, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski closed the Office of Rural Policy, an office he had opened only four years earlier. There are arguments...
Read more »

Alan Guebert's column this week is the story of the modern livestock industry.  It is pretty much flawless, so go read it here.
Read more »

After my earlier rant against the CEO of Pilgrim's Pride, I received an insightful email from a friend in North Carolina who has an upfront and personal view on how changes in the poultry industry are impacting local communities and farmers. Hopefully on Monday I'll have something directly from him to post on the blog. ...
Read more »

As the implications of biofuels, particularly ethanol, have become clear, the opposition to federal mandates and subsidies has ramped up. The latest is a hope expressed by Pilgrim's Pride CEO Clint Rivers, who is looking for a "groundswell of opposition" against expensive food he claims is the result of ethanol subsidies. Pilgrim's Pride is the largest chicken...
Read more »