Planting on Hope

By ART CULLEN

Green sprigs are sprouting along the ditches of the blacktops where the anhydrous tankers rolled en masse on a recent Sunday in April. Most of the fields were bare black, the round bales were stacked by design to resemble something of a monument on a county road corner between Storm Lake and Cedar Rapids. The creeks flow but have abated from bulging. Des Moines was an island with standing water all around it, slowly dissipating from the melt.

It’s that anxious and hopeful time of year, and oh, that smell of diesel in the chill April air. The soil temp was about 39 degrees. They were monitoring it every day, the eager beavers. It was supposed to warm up that week into the 70s. That would get them pacing. And then they would explode into the fields and do it all, the Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, in a month. That’s the hope part.

And then there’s the anxious part. Some farmers are still trying to get financing. What cash they had from the ethanol boom of 10 years past is gone. A trade war cratered corn and soy markets. The economists say it could take years to recover even if the Trump Administration can call off the dogs with China. The president says he is close to a deal, but so he said with the North Korean dictator, too. Farmers wait. They hope that the man they supported can prevail, somehow, and get them a better deal on world markets. Some day. Not quite yet. And, no doubt there will be some sort of trade deal affirmed by Congress with Mexico and Canada, that will update NAFTA. But it is not a done deal, which adds no certainty to anything.

Southwest Iowa was washed out. There will be no corn planting on thousands upon thousands of acres this spring or several springs to come for what was given up to the Muddy Missouri. The Iowa senators say that relief is on the way. Yet again, Congress has not approved disaster funding for flooding, because the Trump Administration objects to disaster funding for Puerto Rico. The farmers can wait. Hamburg can wait.

They have lost money so many years in a row they could get used to it, if it weren’t fatal. But another year or two of down markets, delayed machinery maintenance, and rolling over an old loan onto a bigger new one, and you start to have a serious conversation with someone.

The Democrats say that they can do something sometime after 2020. Can they get away with that in Iowa? Will we let them? Do they not control the House? Can they not shame the Senate?

Farm suicide rates are rising to their highest level since the 1980s Farm Crisis, especially among plagued independent dairy operators. Nobody we heard is talking about opening up that lame farm bill and actually doing something that might save the last of the independent producers.

So we occupy ourselves with hope.

That markets will swing up. They have been known to.

That we will produce a yield like we have never seen. It happens.

That Congress and Trump could do something productive, sooner than 2020. It’s not something you can take to the bank. Trump knows he needs the Midwest, which is suffering from Ohio to Iowa, and so we can pray for largesse. Or just pray.

That weekend tour can make hope spring at least for a few hours. It is the loveliest place anywhere on the planet as it comes to life. The smell of the soil tells us we live in the place of the greatest bounty. It is always a struggle, but we plant thinking that this could be the year. Hope prevails.

Art Cullen, managing editor of “The Progressive Populist,” won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in his day job as editor of “The Storm Lake Times” in Northwest Iowa. His book, “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper,” was published by Viking Press in October.

From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2019

Populist.com