Secret to success: Quit giving it away

The corn looks record-setting, but Iowa State Extension figures it a loser because of falling prices. The heck, you say.

We should be kings out here. The black soil, rain at the right time, should be perfect to grow wealthy. Something is amiss. The money goes someplace else, along with our soil and water.

The farmers who pay high rent and own a loan on their machinery are stressed, as always. The people who work in the packing plant get by if they don’t get deported. There’s a place on the lake for the bankers and doctors, farmers who inherited 1,000 acres or married it, lawyers and accountants. The view isn’t as expansive from Russell Street near the railroad tracks in the shadow of Tyson’s pork plant.

Median household income in Buena Vista County in 2023 was $65,000, about $15,000 lower than the national number. Median household income in Dallas County was $102,000, according to the state library’s Iowa Data Center.

It illustrates that there are two Iowas within two Americas.

We should live on Easy Street. We pride ourselves on on our work ethic. Working harder doesn’t matter that much. You can pack in more hogs as we have since 1990, but all you have to show for it when you’re done is a shelled-out building and a depleted aquifer. They kept you going while your sweat was split as profit by others up the food chain in Dallas County or beyond.

The median income numbers are striking. Rural counties struggle. Emmet (Estherville) $61,000. Palo Alto (Emmetsburg) $64,000. Appanoose (Centerville) down in the southern tier of counties $54,000. The poverty in southern Iowa is akin to that of Appalachia.

Politicians fed by agribusiness keep on telling us that the polluted water won’t hurt us, that regulation stifles innovation in the hoghouse, and that looming $900 million state budget deficit will not be paid by the working fools who thought they were voting for tax relief.

Property taxes on the hoghouse and your house are going up. You can barely afford Dollar General or Walmart. Storm Lake can’t afford a community daycare center. Rural housing demand is pent up because rural incomes can’t pay the mortgage.

No place is more beautiful than Iowa in temperate times. No place is more bountiful. People line up for food in Storm Lake. Our trout streams are dying from runoff. Our schools used to be the very best. They’re not anymore.

We still have the richest soil, but we are losing it way faster than nature can rebuild it. All for cheap corn. We have plentiful water, but the Jordan and Dakota aquifers beneath us are threatened by rapidly increasing consumption.

Iowans could learn one thing from Donald Trump: Quit giving it away.

We sacrifice our soil to grow corn for critters owned by global corporations that don’t pay enough to support a daycare center.

When will we as Iowans say we are tired of taking it from the back end of the proposition? You folks take the money and we will take another truckload of sewage. You get the sweet smell of cash, we burn off the methane.

We could set standards in Iowa by which the put-upon could at least get some relief from toxic drinking water.

If you limit pollution you limit scale and promote economic diversity. That scares the hell out of people in Waukee who drive consolidation and concentrate wealth into pockets of our state. They can afford a home-filtering system. People along University Avenue in Des Moines can barely swing the water bill.

We’ve been giving it away to the railroads, chemical companies and meatpackers for well over a century. Now come artificial intelligence and data centers with soaring demand for electricity and water. We have both. Will we give it away again? Will we put the costs on all the residents regardless of their consumption? Of course, so we can subsidize the Trump bitcoin operation.

We are at the center of it all: food, water, energy. A few people get rich, even some around Des Moines. The rest of us agree to give it away. We will work like mules and die without the burden of an estate so somebody else can taste the bacon. Close the hospital in Keokuk and wonder why the young folks leave.

It would not have to be so. We don’t have to grow so much corn that we lose money at it. We could vote for ag conservation that actually pays a farmer. Working conservation programs are chronically underfunded. State efforts are a drop in the bucket. We could require stream buffers. We could limit manure application. These are not religious issues.

Storm Lake residents are paying more for water because we are giving it away to the corn/ethanol/hog complex. Buena Vista County is giving it away in the form of roads for a soy processor. Hogs and soybeans will be here no matter what. What am I getting except for higher water rates and higher property taxes for streets littered with potholes?

We could vote with our good sense. Vote to quit giving it away, Iowa.