Editorials: Beware the attacks

It will take an extraordinary amount of unity and discipline for Democrats to win an open US Senate seat in Iowa. Republican Ashley Hinson, a member of the House and former TV newscaster, will be a formidable opponent to succeed Sen. Joni Ernst. Hinson almost will have an incumbent’s advantage.

Against those odds, it has to make Democrats nervous when Nathan Sage trashed candidate Zach Wahls as Sage exited the primary campaign for the nomination. Sage endorsed Josh Turek of Council Bluffs, and set out on a character attack on Wahls. It was obvious that the Turek campaign used Sage as the attack dog. That’s disappointing for Democrats hoping to create a counterbalance to Sen. Chuck Grassley.

Primaries are good to sharpen candidates if you don’t set out to destroy them. This is not a good look for Turek. Nathan Sage will be in the shadows by the June primary but the attacks will resurface against Wahls from Sage’s lips in Republican attack ads in November should Wahls win the nomination. It is stupid for Sage and Turek to front load Hinson’s forthcoming media blitz.

Democrats would be silly to reward such fratricide. They are famous for their circular firing squads. Primary voters should be reminded of who took the first shot. Wahls has most of the labor endorsements, leads in fundraising, and seems to us to be a friendly and sensible state senator. Wahls leads with anti-trust — he talks about breaking up big conglomerates that hold farmers and rural communities hostage. That all speaks well for his character. He is good to his mother and his wife seems to like him. If his opponents are bringing out the knives they must fear for their political lives.

Farm bill erosion

You wouldn’t want to bet the farm that Congress can pass a Farm Bill this year, heading into a midterm elections. The 2018 Farm Bill expired in 2023 but Congress keeps on punting it, mainly because the Republican-led House can’t get its act together. The House and Senate agriculture committees abdicated their responsibilities over an issue so fundamental as food.

Instead, Congress passed what President Trump coined the “Big Beautiful Bill” with tax cuts for the wealthy and most of the kitchen sink — including increasing ag production subsidies while slashing food programs. That spelled the beginning of the end of the farm bill negotiating process as we used to know it. Democrats and Republicans used to come together over this basic framework. Now the Republicans can’t even agree among themselves on how fast we should destroy food programs or whether we should subsidize carbon pipelines.

Republicans controlling the process released the text of their long-delayed farm bill last week. Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, described it as a “shell” of a bill, considering that Trump’s BBB pre-empted most of it. Craig said it would be “impossible” to vote for it.

"Farmers need Congress to act swiftly to end inflationary tariffs, stabilize trade relationships, expand domestic market opportunities like year-round E15 and help lower input costs. The Republican majority instead chose to ignore Democratic priorities and focus on pushing a shell of a farm bill with poison pills that complicates — if not derails — chances of getting anything done," Craig said.

This while many farmers struggle with solvency. Regular programs have given way to routine ad hoc disaster payments — $10 billion last year, $12 billion so far this year — that become fiscal disasters themselves. Iowa cranks out soybeans with fewer places to get rid of them because Trump continues to destroy export markets. Disaster payments and crop insurance encourage us to plant those acres back to corn and beans no matter floods or trade wars.

People in power don’t care if there is a farm bill. That should be obvious by now. Perhaps that would be a good thing. The coalition that sustained over-arching legislation grew out of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. It made the USA the most efficient food provider in world history and her people the best-fed. Rust started to build up in the mechanism over recent decades as all-out production and cheap corn won the argument over stability, diversity and sustainability. The failure of the farm bill coalition is the coda to a period of unparalleled food abundance. It couldn’t last because it stood in the way of corporate ownership and consolidation.

Republicans are reaching their goal of having everyone fend for themselves. They are unraveling the safety net. If you are a player, you are subsidized — protein processors get theirs, and so do the big boys bidding up farmland. If you are among the bottom third of farmers, good luck finding a job in Des Moines. Remember that when the hungry French were told to eat cake, a lot of heads rolled during the revolution.

The Reagan Freedom to Farm movement is reaching maturity. We can see the results. Half as many farms and rural schools. Dying small towns. Polluted water. Food becomes a weapon and point of privilege. It’s as if they don’t want a real farm bill so this can continue.

Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Hull, is in on it. He is a lackey on the ag committee. He wants to be governor. So is Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Marion. She wants to be our US senator. We could vote for clean air and water, independent ownership of livestock, transparent markets, and whole communities where everyone gets to sit at the table. We could quit punching down at poor people.

It is considered normal when one person farms 5,000 or even 10,000 acres in Iowa. Abandoned farmsteads are quaint features of Iowa nostalgia. Agland doesn’t pencil out at $32,000 per acre but that’s what it fetches in Sioux County. The farm bill apparatus in its dysfunction and neglect has served those interests well. The rest of us can eat cake.

Undermining ethanol

The Trump Administration last week prescribed the demise of corn ethanol to fuel ground transportation when it gave up regulating tailpipe emissions from autos. The administration has been wiping out regulations against pollution for a year. The latest came when the EPA abandoned the idea that air pollution endangers us.

Ethanol is predicated on the fact that it burns cleaner than gasoline. There is no reason to force it on petroleum refiners if air quality rules in California are laid asunder. Trump promised a bonanza for the oil industry if it gave him a billion bucks. Each side delivered on the deal.

Corn growers and ethanol distilleries have been having a rough go of it. The Quad County plant at Galva couldn’t find a way. Plenty more will follow without help from the federal government.

Ethanol is also sold as cheaper at the pump, although non-ethanol gasoline gets better mileage (which is why E85 went nowhere). It also is sold as an alternative to oil. We just took over the largest oil reserve in the world underneath Venezuela. Trump is more interested in making that pay. Ethanol made its strongest argument when we were importing oil — now the USA is the largest exporter of oil.

The rest of the world is driving past us. The Chinese are fully invested in an electric transportation fleet that will race past the internal-combustion clunkers. Ford’s CEO acknowledged that the Chinese are leading the market. They’re building $10,000 electric vehicles in automated factories that can out-compete anything built in Detroit or Texas. They are not in the market for our ethanol.

Trump is not helping matters by kicking out the only surviving argument for ethanol: that it helps clean up the air. We officially do not care about that anymore, the EPA concluded. As such, they don’t really care about corn ethanol.