A farm bill, maybe sorta

Storm Lake Times Pilot Editorials, May 8, 2026

Finally, after a late-night session, the US House voted 224-200 last week to approve a five-year farm bill just three years behind schedule under Republican control. The bill heads to the Senate, where its future is uncertain because of deep divisions in the majority party over issues ranging from pesticide labeling to ethanol.

The parameters were set in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill pushed by President Trump that secured subsidies for crop insurance and cut food stamps by $186 billion over 10 years.

The chemical industry sought protection from lawsuits over herbicide warnings, a provision fought by Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) supporters lined up behind Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The chemical industry lost.

The ethanol industry sought permanent 15% ethanol blending. The effort to fold it into the farm bill failed. A separate vote will be taken, not a good sign for the future of ethanol. The renewable fuels industry insists that it needs carbon transport pipelines to maintain corn distilleries, which ignited opposition among land-rights advocates. This has resulted in a major feud among Republicans in the Corn Belt.

Democrats from Iowa show how politically tone-deaf they can be by beating up Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Marion, for not getting E15 into the farm bill. The only statewide Democrat worth listening to on this topic is Chris Jones, running for secretary of agriculture, who takes a necessarily extreme point of view on how industrial crop use is destroying Iowa. Rob Sand, Josh Turek and Zach Wahls would do well to listen to him for once. They say they are worried about cancer but they are more worried about offending interest groups that will never support them. Even Sen. Tom Harkin, one of the leading ethanol advocates of all time, now believes the sun should set on corn for fuel because of our chronic water pollution and health issues. The government should plan a phased exit before we choke on it. Nature will not allow us to carry on as we are. A strong farm bill would promote a diverse agriculture. At least, we understand that no harm was done to conservation funding.

The farm bill has been greatly diminished. The tax bill took care of crop insurance. Ethanol will be considered on its own. Nutrition programs are on their own, divorced from the farm bill. As the legislation takes on less importance, so do farm-state Members of Congress who used to hold forth through the respective Ag Committees. They are lackeys for the White House now. Farmers and Iowa will rue this day.

Throwing money around

Gov. Reynolds and Agriculture Secretary Naig trotted out a water-quality package in the closing week of the legislature that purportedly amounts to a $319 million investment. The result will be loans and grants with the aim of cleaning up or preventing pollution. It is supposed to be funded by the infrastructure account fed by gambling revenues, which helped to pay for Storm Lake’s dredging.

Alarm spread in Des Moines last summer when the water utility banned lawn watering simultaneous to a scientific assessment linking nitrate pollution to health problems. The nitrate removal system couldn’t keep pace with demand. Residents were up in arms. They demanded change.

The top dogs instead defend the status quo. This proposal would devote $25 million to building more nitrate removal facilities in central Iowa. It would be better if the nitrate did not hit the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers in the first place. It would be best if the applied nitrogen stayed in the field — we are losing a third of it to the air and water through waste and haste. The fertilizer industry owns the government, so the resulting schemes are not surprising.

Fall fertilization should be discouraged. Buffers should be maintained. More cattle should be on pasture. We can regulate livestock production. We cannot bank on ethanol and exports anymore. We repeat ourselves. We do not need to build a bigger pollution clean-up machine. We know how to do it right. We did not have a polluted Raccoon River before 1980 until we sold out to the conglomerates.

Their plan would dole out grants for water treatment systems up to $1 million. Storm Lake is embarking on more than $100 million in water system improvements made necessary by demand from agribusiness. The residents of Storm Lake bear the primary rate burden for a statewide benefit of meatpacking, eggs and concentrated livestock production that causes us to drill deeper for water. We are getting molested by rates while local and state leaders offer limp response.

Voters are looking for change but neither party is offering it (except for Jones, who is largely feared and suppressed by the Establishment). Storm Lake is forced to prostrate itself at the corporate altar and take the abuse. The water will still be polluted but we get to pay more for it. What is wrong with this bargain?

Shell game

Republicans control the Iowa House, Senate and governorship, and still the legislature could not finish on time. Thankfully, the politicians disbanded last weekend after a stupidly long session that lasted all night Saturday and through Sunday. It was moronic. Only flawed work could emerge.

The main result was something described as a property tax reform in response to hideous increases right here in The City Beautiful and many other places blighted by legislative machination. They concocted a property tax freeze that is slushy, and clever administrators will find a way to pay themselves even more. Republicans called the bill a historic reform, of course, with a November election looming and the voters having a foul attitude about affordability.

There will be no property tax relief before the elections, if there is any at all.

The legislature created the property tax rise in confluence with local officials who are not that good at controlling spending or keeping track of tax revenues. Apartment owners got tax breaks. Income taxes were slashed year after year, and flattened. Vouchers were issued for private schools. Teachers got raises that budgets must cover. All these things add up to a huge shift from income to property taxes and sales taxes, and a shift from the wealthy to the working class in taxes and fees. Something has to give: Relief cannot come to property taxes unless you increase other revenue (like the income tax) or you slash spending (as the Storm Lake School Board must).

We do not hear politicians talk about increasing the income tax in Iowa, or reverting to a progressive tax so the wealthiest pay more. Wealthy people are not moving to Iowa for flat taxes or for the weather. They just buy us and use us for awhile. The problem is that you can barely make a living out here and the beach has an E. coli warning. The school closed down because the state sets the rules. The hotshots in West Des Moines don’t care that Early can’t have a school. They have legislators who write tax laws for them.

They don’t necessarily appreciate that we are running young people off from Iowa, and making it almost impossible to attract them to rural communities that lack basic things like a school or safe water and air. Ultimately, there will be no servants left to do their dirty jobs. This property-tax charade is the latest chip in our foundation. You cannot continue to cut away at revenues, run up a billion-dollar deficit and keep paying all those teachers, especially when young people flee because this place is backwards and intolerant.

Something has to give. You would think that rational people would figure a reckoning is at hand this November. The rational voters of Iowa have let things get this messed up under our corporatist political system that appears to have purchased both parties. We may have to settle for property-tax slush, hogs owned by foreign interests fouling our air, mediocre schools and reeking green water. This is precisely how Iowa falls behind the rest of the nation, year by year fooled by shell games.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this editorial appeared. His latest book, Dear Marty, We Crapped In Our Nest: Notes from the Edge of the World, is available from Ice Cube Press. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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