You could put up $80 million worth of hog buildings in Cherokee County and the board of supervisors might just as well go howl at the moon trying to block it. But if that $80 million is for solar panels and batteries, then the supervisors have full authority to call a moratorium on renewable energy projects.
How backwards is that?
Many years ago, the hog integrators did not want to mess around with 99 sets of zoning ordinances. The legislature decreed that you may put up a massive livestock operation anywhere zoned for agriculture. Local input is tolerated but ignored by the regulator, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
Here we have the Smith brothers — Tom, Mike and Mark — planning to invest $80 million in a solar project on 200 acres that includes safe batteries and provides for grazing 500 beef cattle. This is supposed to be what we want in Iowa: local ownership, hooves on grass in the open air, taxable valuation, low-cost energy for the grid that lessens our reliance on coal or natural gas, new revenue streams for Aurelia.
The fire chiefs are interested. They sound up for growth. Battery technology is developing rapidly in safety and storage efficiency. The Smiths propose lithium iron phosphate batteries that are more stable than the batteries found in your cellphone or auto. Solar/wind storage battery fires are rare.
If you were crushing beans or hooching ethanol or laying eggs from millions of hens you might get a county subsidy and an award from the chamber of commerce. If you want to go solar with cattle, you can’t.
Good that the supervisors ordered up a draft ordinance from the county zoning board. That work should proceed with urgency because time is money and opportunity can be lost.
The Smiths say they want to work with local officials to develop a plan for safety. The county’s moratorium on new developments could make it appear that we don’t cotton to that sort of thing around here. The county should encourage the Smiths and draft an ordinance as soon as possible.
Climate scientists say we should buckle up and batten down for the worst El Niño weather pattern in 140 years. That suggests even wilder weather around the world — in Iowa, warmer and wetter with a mild winter, perhaps followed by a nasty drought should an extreme El Niño swing to a sharp La Niña pattern. For a detailed analysis, we refer you to former KCCI meteorologist Chris Gloninger’s essay on Substack warning of strong chances for a radical weather pattern.
Extreme weather has become the expected norm. Impacts are felt in higher food prices in the present. Tyson shut down its beef slaughter plant in Lexington, Neb., in large part because of declining cattle supplies induced by long-term drought on the Great Plains. Cattle placements on April 1 were 15% lower in Texas compared to last April. Nature makes its own corrections if we refuse its laws.
Global warming drives severe weather.
The oil industry paid Donald Trump to deny its link to climate change. The more we drill, the wilder it gets, from flood to drought and back again. Overall, the trend in the Corn Belt is warmer by the year until it gets so hot in July that pollination stunts. Livestock can’t handle it. It’s climate change happening in huge swings that challenge our ability to react.
For this we bomb Iran to smithereens, and Iran engages in perpetual attacks on its neighbors, while somebody is making a ton of money from all these market swings. Ultimately, oil imperils our ability to feed ourselves.
Less plant diversity is leading to pollinator collapse, and pollinator collapse leads to less plant diversity. That’s what Iowa State University ecology Professor Brian Wilsey and his graduate assistant Nathan Soley found through their research. “Bees maintain diversity at a lower rate. So if bees decline, plant diversity will be lower, and then that’s going to lead to fewer bees and fewer species of bees, which would in turn lead to more bee declines, which would lead to more drops in plant diversity,” Wilsey told Iowa Capital Dispatch. “It’s kind of like an extinction vortex.”
Other research at Iowa State by Dr. Lisa Schulte-Moore shows that nutrient runoff and leaching can be drastically reduced by planting 10% of a field to native species.
If everybody planted 10% of their fields native we could stop the suffocation of the Gulf of Mexico. We could dramatically clean up the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers. We could reduce sedimentation of our lakes. We could attract bees that pollinate our crops that feed us.
We used to set aside 10% of our fields in the government program. Then, we did not have a Raccoon River toxic with nitrate. We do not recall any landlord starving to death. There was no bee collapse. We have more chemicals now, and a lot less livestock on grass.
It all seems fairly obvious, confirmed by research.
We heeded the call to plant fence row to fence row once and for all, and look what happened. Progress isn’t always what it appears.
If we had a farm bill, we would write in a mandatory acreage set-aside to qualify for taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance. We don’t have a farm bill, and conservation is a dirty word. We are hooked on cheap corn. That’s what fence row to fence row gets you. Cheap corn, cheap hogs, until the independent can’t compete with Wall Street anymore.
The bees and the rest of us were better off with a set-aside and a more diverse agriculture. There is a logic to Nature that is incontrovertible. Systems are served by diversity, which we have killed in the last half-century of chemical row crop industrial agriculture. We have all the knowledge we need to fix this broken system.
The Iowa Legislature was scheduled to adjourn by the time this is printed, and you would think that since Republicans completely control the legislative process the session would close on time.
“All we heard before session was that Republicans were focused on property rights and property taxes. Almost 100 days in and no agreement on either of them or the budget. Good times,” said Rep. JD Scholten, D-Sioux City, last week.
GOP leaders were bouncing around ideas on property tax reform, promising that it will be historic. Whether useful or not, the effects of the legislation will not be immediately felt. Republicans will claim before the midterm elections in November that relief is just around the corner, as it has been since Terry Branstad was governor.
The majority party is deeply divided over eminent domain and pipelines. The ethanol industry wants to lay carbon dioxide pipelines through Northwest Iowa. Many agland owners view condemning property for a pipeline as a theft of land.
Scholten has had enough of the good times. He is not running for House again. He should be the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor.
The assault on nutrition programs is relentless. Politicians find every opportunity to weaken food assistance and restrict it to reinforce the point that there is no free lunch in America. Undocumented immigrants shall not be included. If you can’t find a job, you might not find food stamps.
The Big Bad Bill by Trump whacked away at nutrition support. If a farm bill can pass (three years past its due deadline) there will be more cuts. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins presented a budget that calls for a 20% reduction in nutrition support.
Rural areas depend disproportionately on nutrition assistance because incomes are relatively low. Sen. Mitch McConnell, a soulless conservative from Kentucky, has warned that cutting food assistance will weaken support for the GOP in rural areas. It also weakens support for farm subsidies.
That matters little to the Fearless Leader. His blithe take on rising fuel and food prices: “We’re having some fake inflation.” Poor people can just eat it.
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