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 that he couldn’t abide it in front of everyone.
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.
Canada last Friday agreed to allow Chinese cars into its market, and China agreed to buy a whole bunch of canola. The Chinese electric vehicles are supposed to be the cat’s meow, selling for as little as $10,000 and driving like a Lincoln Continental. China also pledged to invest in the Canadian auto sector.
We are ceding the Canadian auto market to the Chinese. We have lost our soybean export market to China. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says the Chinese have become more reliable trading partners than the United States.
Soybean growers are begging the USDA for more welfare.
This is what all that winning looks like.
We think we are bringing China to heel with tariffs, that they will improve their human rights record as we lock up citizens in US detention centers for just being at home. Our moral righteousness has lost its luster. Let’s sell some soybeans. If the Japanese and Koreans and Germans can sell cars in the USA so should the Chinese. The Canadians seem to have this thing figured out. Trump is trying to start a trade war with Europe over Greenland because of China, when we should be selling them pork chops.
Rep. Randy Feenstra told supporters in Oskaloosa on Saturday that immigration agents arresting and detaining US citizens is “incidental” to the mission of the Department of Homeland Security. “I stand with ICE. I stand with Kristi Noem,” Feenstra said as journalist Bob Leonard recorded.
It comes as no surprise to us that Feenstra, R-Hull, is inhospitable toward immigrants. His deference to arresting citizens — including members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in Minneapolis — should disturb voters as Feenstra campaigns for governor. Even more disturbing is his dismissal of the shooting death of Renee Good by an ICE agent. “They are just doing their jobs” is the excuse. Their job is not to shoot citizens for blocking a street.
Feenstra and President Trump are out of touch with a strong majority of Americans who do not approve of herding and shooting citizens. A CNN poll said 57% disapprove of ICE procedures. As they see it happen, people realize that Trump meant what he said when he campaigned: He intends to deport all immigrants, not just criminals. He said he does not care if they are citizens. Of course, he cannot if people intend to eat meat or drink milk. Immigrants do the work. Feenstra knows it. He approves of the terrorism. He should not be governor. Thank goodness he is relinquishing his seat in Congress.
Gov. Kim Reynolds proposes to allow counties to have the board of supervisors appoint the auditor, recorder and treasurer rather than let voters elect them. It is part of her scheme to put a check on property taxes by reducing the size of local government. This idea would not save much money because you still have deeds to record by the recorder and license plates to issue by the treasurer and elections to conduct (we hope) by the auditor. What it would do is consolidate power into the hands of the county supervisors who may have the collective intelligence of a crawdad.
The auditor must be elected. She conducts elections, and as such should be elected to be perceived as conducting herself beyond reproach or influence. She also rides herd on the board of supervisors as clerk and secretary to the board, where independence should be maintained. The sheriff must be elected. We should elect the treasurer, who can serve as a check on the auditor. There has been a debate for many years about whether the recorder’s office could be merged with the auditor for its largely clerical functions. The assessor is appointed, and is overseen by the conference board, a collection of elected officials.
If the auditor and treasurer were appointed by the board of supervisors, spending would go up with two important whistleblowers silenced. Fortunately, the governor is a lame duck and the legislature may safely dispatch this proposal to File 13.
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