Who feels threatened?
An editorial, Storm Lake Times Pilot
A farmer with beer in the belly and a bur in his britches stormed out of Byron’s Bar in Pomeroy Saturday evening offended by the very idea of a meet-and-greet with Chris Jones, Democratic candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture. He had been playing in a cribbage tourney that afternoon. Famed troubadour Dave Moore was warming up the crowd with some accordion squeezings when he was reminded that he is not in Iowa City anymore.
The farmer reminded folks who butters our bread. He declared in front of everyone that he couldn’t abide it.
He plunged into the dark and cold night. Jones took the microphone and delivered his familiar critique of our ag production system: It poisons the water, erodes the soil, bankrupts farmers and kills rural communities. It was not always this way. Pomeroy used to have a school.
The farmer is frustrated. So is Jones. Why does the farmer feel threatened by a retired research scientist running for a job with a bully pulpit but little actual authority?
The farm economy is not good. Operators feel pressured. Trump pledged $12 billion to make up for his trade war, but the Farm Bureau and soybean growers say it isn’t nearly enough. You could blame it on Jones or tree huggers, but …
The landlord and the banker tell them how to farm. The government just piles on without providing a lifeline to the ones sinking in the commodity quicksand. More bureaucrats. More regulation with little payback. They feel like hogs in the chute at slaughter. The cropaganda machine churns out exhortations to plant and fertilize and spray every acre right up to the river or even into the banks of a lake if you feel the need. It repeats on the radio, on social media, during the basketball game on TV, day after day and night. Do it our way or hit the highway.
Ag Secretary Mike Naig says Jones is anti-farmer and they believe him because everybody outside the bubble is anti-farmer. And here, Jones was just wishing that Quaker Oats bought Iowa oats instead of Canadian oats. Make oats great again. He says we need more cattle on pasture. He laments hoghouses whose inhabitants are not owned by the farmer and whose manure becomes a liability in such onerous amounts. He doesn’t hate farmers. He says he hates the outcomes: the pollution, the consolidation, what Iowa is becoming.
Farmers feel threatened because the vested interests control our thinking for their profit. They want you to think Jones is the bogeyman. The craven want you to believe that Jones is out to steal your property rights or tell you how to farm. Jones asks for a buffer and crop diversity and whole towns. Up in the board room, they don’t much care what happens to Pomeroy or that farmer so long as they have pliant hands with ready acres to accept their product. To hell with the river, we have a Roundup Ready world to feed with corn ethanol.
When his beery indignation abated the farmer apologized to Byron Stuart for letting it all blurt out. They reconciled. Feelings are raw. Anxiety is real. The interlopers foster it. They want the working stiffs to be fighting each other while they pick our pockets. They don’t care if they destroy friendships over it, or subtly try to mute a real discussion about the agri-industrial transformation of rural Iowa.
What they don’t count on is the fact that Stuart and the farmer will remain neighbors committed as they are to each other in a tiny village that depends on itself for survival. People do feel threatened in rural Iowa. Don’t shoot the accordion player. Jones is Iowan through and through, going back generations just like that Century Farm. So is Naig. So is the other Democrat running for ag secretary, Wade Dooley of Marshalltown. Jones is the one so far willing to call out the overlords who tell us how it will be. Few others will. Down deep, the farmer knows it. It bugs him. It should.
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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Well said! As Chris Jones said in a recent town hall event, he’s not outspoken, he’s just spoken on what needs to be said. There’s no candidate more pro-Iowa farmer than Jones, he sees their plight and has the tools and the know-how to fix the outcomes that aren’t working. The only benefactor of the current production system is Big Ag. Iowans need to be united on these issues and elevate Jones message if we want different outcomes for Iowa farmers & public health. Iowans deserve better than the same old status quo crap that does nothing to create more prosperity for farmers or establish a healthier Iowa. Time for bold change, let’s at least be willing to give it a chance to succeed
When I was growing up, almost all my relatives were farmers, but not the typical type of farming that happens now. So many changes since those days. And the banksters almost destroyed farmers and farming in the 1980s. Now Iowa is “Hog Shit Nation” and what passes for farming now is nothing like it used to be. We raised most of our own food, had a huge vegetable garden, butchered our own meat, canned meat, vegetables, and fruit. We did business with our small town businesses in our thriving communities. Those towns are not thriving anymore, our water is unsafe to drink even from artesian wells which used to be pure and uncontaminated. We were friends with most of our neighbors, everyone mostly looked out for each other. I don’t need to explain to most Iowans what happened, most people know, even if they don’t admit knowing. And life is a huge struggle the way things are now. But until people actually admit to themselves that this is an attack on both right and left, and that it’s actually an attack by those billionaires to completely drain the pocketbooks of all the rest of us, I fear for all of us.