“It’s a religious issue in Iowa that you cannot interfere with the production of livestock in any form and that’s handed down to us by Moses. Agriculture is our state religion and nothing will get in the way of it.” – Art Cullen

In this fascinating podcast on Heritage Radio Network,  The Storm Lake Times editor Art Cullen expounds on what is wrong with Iowa agriculture and how to fix it.  He lays out just exactly why Iowa is so very stuck and provides what he says is a simple solution that will return us to a more holistic, sustainable farming economy.  Support the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation here

Here are a few highlights from this lively conversation.

The system

“…this is the way Bayer and Corteva and DowDuPont want it…the system is set up that way… They didn’t want local control in Iowa because they knew the Koch Brothers and Bayer and Monsanto couldn’t control 99 counties but they could control one statehouse…”

Politics is personal

“If you’re a young farmer… and you’re trying to hang on by your fingernails through the last 4 years of Trump’s trade wars –  the only way is to get that hog house and get another $20-30,000 in revenue…  it’s very difficult to break through that political culture where the guy you’re in church with is saying you’re gonna drive me off the farm if I can’t put in that hog house…”

Hope

“What will change our politics is the fact that everybody knows down deep – they see our soil blowing away and washing away into the Mississippi and down the Gulf of Mexico. There is a change of thinking going on in the midwest about agriculture that most people don’t appreciate and that change of thinking has affected Tom Vilsack as well.”