Iowa farm group expresses frustration, outrage on issues from fertilizer prices to consolidation to potential 'farmerless' farms at Ames convention
AMES, Iowa —
Iowa farmers and other rural stakeholders who gathered in Ames over the weekend told a leading lawmaker on ag policy that fertilizer and other costs are hurting crop and livestock producers already struggling in a highly concentrated corporate business environment.
“Where we are getting squeezed is on the input side with fertilizers specifically,” said Josh Manske of Algona, an agricultural entrepreneur and influential member of the Iowa Farmers Union.
Manske and other members of the Iowa Farmers Union spoke with U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, over breakfast Saturday at the Quality Inn & Suites Ames Conference Center. The union held its 110th annual conference in Ames.
Suzan Erem, the former executive director and co-founder of the Sustainable Iowa Land Trust who now operates a diversified farm with high-value specialty crops in Cedar County, expressed concerns about out-of-state farm land ownership.
“These corporations are coming in and the Mormons and everyone else and they’re buying land under family LLCs and they’re all corporate farms,” Erem said.
And Erem, the secretary of the Iowa Farmers Union, had another urgent concern: the potential effects of artificial intelligence on farms.
“Ten years from now it’s all going to be robotics so we’re going to have farmerless farms anyway,” Erem said. “So the only people who are going to be able to afford to do any of the commodity farming are going to be people who can buy the robots and the self-driving machines and the chemicals. We can see it from here. It’s like Kodak thinking they had to go digital in 10 years and in two years they were out of business.”
Welch shot back, “That is a terrifying analogy.”
Welch said his home state, while not the size of Iowa, is populated by heavily agricultural communities.
“They all, ultimately, are founded on a strong ag base,” Welch said.
Welch, who has pushed for an extension of the Affordable Care Act, said diminishing health care under the Trump administration is a major concern in farm country. He just heard from a constituent who expects premiums to jump from $900 to $3,200 a month.
That Vermonter told Welch his family would just go without health insurance.
While he is not optimistic about a near-term passage of a farm bill, Welch said he wants to see legislation address input costs for farmers.
Tariffs and the loss of markets also are alarming for farmers, Welch said.
Welch said Iowa historically has been good at “kicking the tires” for presidential candidates during the first-the-nation nominating contests, the Iowa Caucuses. While the future of that status for Iowa is threatened by national Democratic Party decision-making, Welch, in response to questions from The Iowa Mercury, made a strong case for Iowa being in the lead-off role.
“What is really interesting is that a candidate has to get out on the ground and meet people,” Welch said. “In the beginning, if you are in a rural community like Iowa people have got pretty good judgment and it can give a real boost obviously to a candidate so see real merits in Democrats having to go through Iowa.”
When asked if at age 78 he was unlikely to be in Iowa to explore for any potential White House run, Welch said, ‘Good assumption.”
About The Iowa Mercury
(Douglas Burns, founder of The Iowa Mercury and a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )
Information from IWC makes the day. Both Doug Burns and Bob Leonard have filed important reports on the IFU convention. IFU has a presence and voice that I will continue to monitor.
Great questions and great quotes,from a great journalist and an amazing farmer activist; thanks for capturing this tersely succinct analysis with us, Doug. Suzan Erem should be writing agricultural policy alongside Chris Jones and the other leaders in the IFU. But, I guess we already agree on that point don’t we?