It’s going to be a banner year around here despite the drought and all the other troubles.
Corn is coming in at over 200 bushels per acre. Prices remain strong, with premiums popping up on spot localized shortages. Land is selling in the neighborhood of $20,000 per acre, rising interest rates be damned — that’s the power of accumulated cash.
Net farm income this year is expected to rise 5%, according to the USDA Economic Research Service forecast in August — up 45% from 2020. That’s after paying for higher fertilizer, chemical, seed and fuel costs. In Iowa, net farm income has been increasing every year. The peaks were in 2011 and last year.
Interesting that the high points come during Democratic administrations.
So why no love on the farm for Joe Biden?
Donald Trump started a trade war with China, which rocked soybean growers and pork exporters. Trump responded by showering cash on farmers, meatpackers and traders.
Trade with Asia, generally and China specifically, is up with Biden. The Iowa Corn Growers just came home with a big sale from Taiwan. Beijing has been in the buying mood post-Trump, too.
Farm net worth has been rising faster than the rate of inflation. We’ll see what this year brings. It could be a dead heat.
All that cash employed at bidding up land in Northwest Iowa is subject to tax. Farmers fear taxes more than they like increased exports and income, obviously.
They hate regulation. They believe Barack Obama wanted to steal their guns and their property rights by regulating creeks and ditches. Taking a payment to plant grass near the river is another chip in the foundation of freedom, the gospel goes.
That’s all I can figure, because when Democrats are in the White House farmers tend to do better. The Herbert Hoover years were not so good. Happy days returned to the farm with the alphabet soup agencies and the New Deal. The Dust Bowl died down thanks to FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and Sioux Citian Harry Hopkins. Folks remember Jimmy Carter’s Soviet grain embargo — it would be our ruination! — but forget that it was a record year for grain exports. Hard times in Iowa under Ronald Reagan.
Tyson is doing fine these days. Wages are up. Deere is profitable and just signed a new union contract. Biden (with an assist from Tom Vilsack) averted a rail strike that would have hobbled agriculture at harvest.
Vilsack just announced $3 billion in “climate-smart” projects that will pay farmers generously for conservation initiatives.
Why the “Let’s Go Brandon!” cheers from the back 40? Why not a farm bill with a strong conservation title? How has Iowa been done wrong? Why is getting paid not to farm into the river something to scorn?
Some have their seed corn caps strapped on too tight.
We’re going into a midterm election seeing Chuck Grassley and Kim Reynolds with solid leads. The legislature looks to remain under GOP control. One must assume that our three Republican Members of Congress will be re-elected.
Taxes and regulation are not the concerns of those who are flushed out, but those who are flush.
Agriculture has been so consolidated that the remaining players who can bid $20,000 while holding onto corn against a premium find the government to be their adversary. Rural Iowa may have steadily eroded since Mr. Grassley went to Washington, but for those who survived it with grain in the bin he is all about protecting their position.
Yet the ethanol industry was seeded by Jimmy Carter and sustained by Tom Harkin and Tom Vilsack.
The rural propaganda machine is fed by corporations for which taxes and regulation are paramount. Abortion and guns are the wedge issues used to shield those who don’t pay taxes or care about the Raccoon River — or the land itself — from the rapacious libs.
If you don’t think propaganda is that powerful, I refer you to Cuba. Or Russia.
Because the facts are that rural areas do no worse when Democrats are in charge, and farmers usually do better. It’s hard to believe when all you are told is that Joe Biden is pretty much singularly responsible for inflation — it certainly couldn’t be Koch Enterprises or ExxonMobil or Bayer or the Chinese livestock feeders who now run Iowa.
Art Cullen is editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in northwest Iowa (stormlake.com). He won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2017 and is author of the book “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from America’s Heartland.” Email times@stormlake.com.
From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2022
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