On the road trying to find Iowa

We’re on the road again with cinematographer Jerry Risius, not quite gypsies, trying to find out what grinds Iowa’s gears.

Jerry and I toured the state from Alleman to Algona making video with our friends, Iowans for Stronger Communities, affiliated with Teamsters Local 238 in Cedar Rapids led by Storm Lake native Jesse Case. Our aim is to advocate that the world turn our way. Willie rides shotgun in my mind on I-35 heading to Lansing on a hot Friday morning.

Jerry was brought up in a hoghouse near Buffalo Center. He knows the game.

The farm boy toured the world as a photography director for Anthony Bourdain but feels the tug of June corn tall enough to rustle along a gravel road golden hour.

Jerry shot the documentary “Storm Lake” that won wide acclaim after its national PBS broadcast in November 2021. Although he lives in Brooklyn, NY, Iowa is always on his mind. He considers himself an Iowan who likes New York for the rent. We’ve wanted to work together for some time but no project presented itself. Case said he was going to produce a documentary exploring issues that actually matter to Iowa instead of what sort of underwear you have on: cancer, polluted water, bad roads, failing rural hospitals and nursing homes.

Jerry and I jumped at the opportunity. Jesse hooked us up with producer Tamara Marcus of Cedar Rapids and creative assistant Jim Toohey, another Storm Laker lost in Iowa City. The life we love is making movies with our friends and eating hydrated eggs from a bag at the I-35 hotel in Ankeny.

We talked with Liz Garst about soil health at Whiterock Conservancy, where she is helping recreate the oak savannah that the Native people knew along the Middle Raccoon. The granddaughter of the legendary seed man Roswell Garst, contemporary of Henry Wallace, warns that we are losing our soil base. We all need nitrogen. Corn remains king. If you follow the science and the money you can achieve conservation. Prosperity and conservation are not mutually exclusive.

Buffalo Center Mayor Rick Hofbauer farms and sells Golden Harvest seed, owned by Syngenta, which bought Garst Seeds years ago. He believes that about 150 Latinos live there, working in the nearby Thompson egg factory owned by Rembrandt Foods. They need help with housing and streets. They feel fortunate to still have a school.

Iowa Farmers Union President Aaron Lehman proved Garst’s point about conservation: His organic beans planted into a knocked-down rye cover crop yielded the same as his conventional soybeans, about 60 bushels per acre, last year.

We asked him about a series of hearings IFU held around the state during the last legislative session about Iowa’s alarming cancer rates. He and other farmers see links between common chemicals, water quality and cancer.

At the Spencer hearing, Rep. Megan Jones, a conservative Republican from Sioux Rapids and Rep. Megan Srinivas, a liberal Democrat from Des Moines agreed that chemical companies should not enjoy blanket exemptions for liability on labeling. “When people are willing to open up and have those conversations, these kinds of things can happen,” Lehman told us.

That’s what we hope to accomplish. We are trying to bring the conversation back to nuts and bolts, how we get screwed when you try to pit Latino against Anglo, gay against straight, farmer Jones against Dr. Srinivas (high school rivals in tennis).

Gov. Kim Reynolds is not seeking re-election That’s an opportunity for pragmatists to steer away from phony divisions and get down to business: How we gonna grow corn without gagging the Mississippi River? Keokuk should be the center of the universe but progress left it behind, like Buffalo Center but bigger. Consolidation has changed Storm Lake such that mass deportations send waves of fear up and down Lake Avenue. We need an honest discussion here, Poncho.

Iowa needs to get back to the basics of life. It’s a complicated route. Watch for the videos coming up.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column 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.

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