It’s good that the United States and China are trying to patch things up before we blow things up. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s recent trip to Beijing is a welcome respite from tensions building between the intimate trade partners/superpowers. Blinken’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping sounded cordial enough and productive. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen followed it up with a trip this week to reassure China that we can do business. Everyone around Taiwan is keeping their bombs at bay. We are talking semiconductor manufacturing, cybersecurity and how to avoid each other in the South China Sea.
Bully. This is a first step toward peace. You have to talk. Usually, the conversation is improved by food.
“Hungry people are dangerous people,” said Roswell Garst, a hybrid seed corn man and business associate of former Vice President Henry Wallace. Garst hosted Soviet leader Nikita Kruschchev at his Coon Rapids, Iowa, farm in 1959 at the height of the Cold War. They turned swords into plowshares as Kruschchev marveled at the productivity of post-war Midwestern agriculture.
That visit put a crack in the Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall when trigger fingers were itchy.
Xi made a similar visit to Iowa as a young regional technocrat interested in feeding his people. He was hosted on a Muscatine farm in 1985 by then-Gov. Terry Branstad, a conservative Republican reared on a hog farm himself. As Xi was about to assume leadership of China, he returned to the Roger and Sarah Lande farmstead in 2012. Xi and Branstad renewed their relationship when the former governor served as US ambassador to China, as the Trump Administration launched a trade war that put soybeans and pork dead-center in the crosshairs.
China’s stated priority is feeding its people. That’s a big reason it stands by Russia — China needs the wheat and the oil. If Russia controls Ukraine’s rich eastern agricultural heartland at the border, so much the better for the Sino-Russian bloc. Russia and Ukraine grow the wheat that feeds Europe, the Middle East and Africa. And China.
Half of Iowa’s pork goes to Asia, primarily China. It also is the leading buyer of soybeans. Farmers are burning down and plowing up the rain forests of Brazil to make room for soybeans bound for Shanghai. China has been investing in infrastructure for years in Central and South America to serve its appetite for soybeans and beef. If you want to save the rain forest, you have to be talking about soybeans over your delicious Chinese garlic chicken.
Since Xi first visited Iowa, Chinese meat consumption has grown seven-fold as living standards increase.
Although China is committed to food self-sufficiency, production is not keeping up with demand. The U.S. and Brazil, along with Russia, will continue to fill the gaps.
Farmers discovered how much we need China when soybean prices tanked during the trade war. Anyone with open eyes should see that China, Brazil and the U.S. need to figure out how to grow enough soy to feed people sustainably. China is having a hard time with wheat because of drought, and so is Kansas.
Sustaining a world food supply is a root issue as the planet heats. It is China’s chief concern. Asia needs food from Iowa and Illinois. When the trade war ended, robust Chinese buying resumed. It’s not getting easier as long-term drought grips the Great Plains and China. So we must put our heads together.
We need China to keep a leash on Russia, North Korea and Iran, among others. It all starts with food.
President Joe Biden should ask Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former Democratic Iowa governor, to follow Blinken’s and Yellen’s trail to Beijing. Vilsack should take Branstad with him on a goodwill agricultural mission. Xi went so far as to have a replica of an Iowa farm built in China.
Branstad may be a Winnebago County hayseed, but he was the longest-serving governor in U.S. history. He is nobody’s fool. He is Xi’s friend. Vilsack is a smart policy wonk with an unassuming style that works well when you are trying to calm things down. He represents Food Inc. Xi says he loves Iowa. In a 2022 letter to Sarah Lande, the Chinese leader said, “Our friendship is not only a valuable asset, but also an important foundation for the development of bilateral relations.”
We should start on the path to peace and promoting human rights by taking him at his word on this one. Xi is vitally interested in protein. Nobody does it better than we do. Vilsack and Branstad should invite Xi to Iowa to restore old bonds, and sit down over a hot beef sandwich to talk — about how Russia could deprive China of wheat if the Kremlin were ever to realize Vladimir Putin’s nightmare, how fostering Indian rice production feeds China’s chief goal of self-sufficiency, how Iowa State University can work with scientists in China on improving seed and yields. We could do it in Muscatine if Xi wants. Better yet, Storm Lake.
It might sound corny, but so it did when Garst struck out on his own foreign policy during that summer picnic over pork and corn casserole followed by apple pie with cheddar on top. The world becomes less dangerous over a farm lunch.
Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this editorial appeared. 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.
If you’re interested in commentary by some of Iowa’s best writers, please follow the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative members:
Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights
Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll
Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines
Steph Copley: It Was Never a Dress, Johnston
Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake
Suzanna de Baca: Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley
Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County
Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji
Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames
Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines
Nik Heftman: The Seven Times, Los Angeles and Iowa
Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla
Dana James: New Black Iowa, Des Moines
Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo
Fern Kupfer: Fern and Joe, Ames
Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey
Letters from Iowans, Iowa
Tar Macias: Hola Iowa, Iowa
Kurt Meyer: Showing Up, St. Ansgar
Wini Moranville, Wini’s Food Stories, Des Moines
Kyle Munson, Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines
Jane Nguyen, The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines
John Naughton: My Life, in Color, Des Moines
Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines
Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politics Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.
Dave Price: Dave Price’s Perspective, Des Moines
Macey Spensley: The Midwest Creative, Iowa
Larry Stone: Listening to the Land, Elkader
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices, Kalona
Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County
Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport
Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines
To receive a weekly roundup of all Iowa Writers’ Collaborative columnists, sign up here (free): ROUNDUP COLUMN
We are proud to have an alliance with Iowa Capital Dispatch.
Well done, Mr. Cullen. Apt, and timely.
Calls to mind Lauren Soth, long-time Editor at the Register and Tribune, whose 1955 editorial "If the Russians Want More Meat. . . ." invited a Soviet visit to Iowa. This not only won him the "Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing" but directly led to Khrushchev's 1959 visit to our state. You can google him.
Time for another Pulitzer? Would be the first to wind "Editorial Writing" twice. Eligible nominators, please gear up.
Art: you are spot on. Let’s work to get Vilsack and Branstad on a plane or a boat to China to talk food. While microchips are important, as well as rare earths, etc., food keeps folks happy and healthy. Happy and healthy folks aren’t generally angry with others nor interested in taking them over. Fair and reasonable trade in food can be a win-win for all, as you noted. It also might provide a foundation for addressing Iowa’s water pollution and other environmental issues. Thank you for an informative and well reasoned piece.