With the announcement in April 2024 of a Daisy Brand dairy processing facility to be built in Boone, Iowa, and the following pronouncements of the positive aspects of this new facility would be to rural Iowa, it would be prudent to take a closer look the plight of dairy farmers, how their loss has impacted our state, and how we can use the dairy issue to see a path for transforming agriculture in Iowa - and beyond.

I grew up in the 1960’s on an Iowa dairy farm. To be precise, my family had a diverse farm that included dairy cows. The character of our farm, the seasonal flow of work, was largely defined by the 20 or so gentle Guernseys that needed to be milked morning and evening. One of my most pleasant memories of that farm was when my siblings and I would ‘bring the cows home’ from the far corner of the pasture.

In 1964, there were 59,673 farms with dairy cows in Iowa. By the time I graduated from high school in 1974, that number had dropped to 18,213. According to the 2022 Census of Agriculture, Iowa’s farms with dairy cows had dropped to 1,016. Large mega-dairies with thousands of cows in confinement have increased in number made possible by cheap feed and low-paid immigrant labor.

Iowans boast that we are number one in corn, pork, and egg production, and number two in soybeans. What if Iowa could boast that we are the state that is leading the transformation of our agriculture system to diversify our farms?

I’ve been farming for 48 years, the last 10 organically. I helped my uncle farm in the early 1970’s when Earl Butz said “plant fencerow-to-fencerow, the world needs your grain.” Pasture and hay fields were plowed up, cows sold, and the corn-soybean rotation became the norm.

We shouldn’t be surprised about the digitalization of agriculture. IBM created many iterations of digital record keeping and analysis over the years following WWII that made the management of giant modern corporations possible. Those types of business machines now seem quaint.

The evolution of US agriculture has reached a stage where farming operations have become so large that analysis of digital data (with AI?) for decision making is necessary to manage them. Modern big farmers not only have to figure out optimum fertilizer, seed, and chemical choices, more and more they have to manage a workforce (capitalist agriculture). Since the evolution has bifurcated livestock production into corn and soybean farming, on the one hand, and corporate CAFO/feedlot production on the other, farmers have no choice but to focus on maximizing corn and soybean production—at any cost.

There’s no question – advances in science and technology have improved the lives of most people. However, as we have seen with the recent concerns regarding Artificial Intelligence (AI), having a blind faith in technology without questioning and analyzing its benefits and risks can take us down a precarious path. This is a growing concern in agriculture, especially with government and private sector emphasis on the need for technology-reliant climate change solutions with what are termed precision agriculture and climate-smart agriculture, practices that have been called false solutions by environmental and Indigenous-led organizations. As a result, the use of drones, robotics, autonomous tractors, sensors, and AI-guided agronomic advice increases, locking us all into an agriculture system that exploits people and nature. Farmers, peasants, consumers, and farm justice advocates from around the world have recognized the risks of genetically modified seeds for decades, including the ecological and social costs to this technology and its threat to food sovereignty. Now, the threat is increasing dramatically through the political and economic power of corporations that are collecting huge amounts of data on land, seeds, water, livestock, production systems, and consumer behavior.

We must also end neoliberal free trade and restore universal food sovereignty so countries can democratically design new agroecological farming systems to protect their natural resources, produce healthy culturally appropriate food supplies, restore economic opportunity, and create food security reserves. Progressive movements like La Via Campesina must regain the lead in abolishing free trade enforced by faceless bureaucrats at the WTO, or reactionary movements will co-opt this issue with inauthentic right-wing opportunistic politicians like is happening here in the United States.

We can count on the giant movement of La Via Campesina to demand an end to free trade which allows corporations to freely exploit our fellow citizens and the planet. We need to support La Via Campesina to create an even more giant movement keeping in mind the big picture and working for new standards of democratic governance. Today’s utopia might just be joining hands around the world in this vital struggle. Is there any other choice?

Anyone involved in the good food, family farm, or environmental movements knows well the dreadful outcomes of our agriculture system. Unfortunately, many organizations document these outcomes without recognizing the basic economics or the history of our agricultural system, thereby perpetuating policy proposals based on mistaken analysis. These are often deeply funded and capably staffed organizing efforts that have influenced food and agriculture policy debate for decades and continue to do so today.

We will not be lured into organizing efforts that only talk about the symptoms of a sick agriculture without building the understanding for real reform. Parity must again become the foundation of opportunity for new farmers of all colors, genders, and backgrounds to become stewards of the land, and for all food producers and laborers—and their communities—to thrive.

When we look at our food and agriculture system, any farmer will tell you that many technologies have proved beneficial, relieving them of some of the most physically demanding work, improving safety on the farm, and providing new insights for farm management. As agricultural technology is advancing, with sensors, artificial intelligence, robotics, drones, genetic sequencing, machine learning, and communications networks to collect, process, aggregate, and analyze data, any new benefits to the farmer – and their ability to make ethical land use decisions – is quickly disappearing. Big Data, the massive accumulation of digital information on land, seeds, plant genetics, livestock, workers, production systems, and consumer behavior is an emerging source of power and profit for both tech companies and agribusiness.

Global supply chain disruptions, rising prices for foods and farm production inputs, increasing evidence of agriculture’s impact on climate change, and unconscionable numbers of people experiencing hunger and food insecurity set the tone of the World Trade Organization’s 12th Ministerial meeting which was held in Geneva, Switzerland during the week of June 12.

Iowa farmers, and Iowans as a whole, in fact, all the world’s people, need stability in agriculture and in our food system, not volatility and fragility. We are led to believe that it is good that Iowa is in the top two producers of corn, soybeans, eggs, and pork, with a promise of new markets to raise prices. This path has not benefited farmers, communities, or our precious ecosystem. We need policies that allow farmers to be paid a fair (parity) price, to have diversity in our production system with livestock on farms and beneficial crop rotations. For us to have any chance of achieving these goals and to end food insecurity at home and elsewhere, the World Trade Organization must get out of agriculture.

Our rewilding is paying off on the Naylor organic farm. (See photos.) The end of the day offers the beautiful sight of monarchs roosting in clumps in our grove and windbreak before their migration to Jalisco, Mexico. Seems like more this year than ever. The pollinator habitat (CRP) and 85 acres of oats/red clover provide milkweeds for reproduction and sources of nectar for the long journey. When I windrowed the oats, I dodged patches of milkweed. Patti provides flowering herbs, too. Our many trees in the old grove and windbreak provide shelter towards evening (as in photo). We saw them head in from the clover at sunset. Wow, can they fly! This is one of the many pleasures enhanced by going organic.

To be frank, the movie Kiss the Ground uses reductionist thinking and razzle dazzle movie making to lead viewers to think that the main problem with modern agriculture is that farmers lack a focus on “soil health” i.e. “regenerative practices.” Miraculously, we as consumers can seek out regeneratively produced food, and we as farmers can change our farming techniques and actually be more profitable, end of story. All will be well if consumers change their diets to be more healthy and farmers change their operations to be more regenerative, thus more profitable!

In summation, I believe a film like Kiss the Ground actually does more harm than good by proposing simplistic answers to a more complex and challenging problem than most people realize. What is at stake is not only healthfulness of our diets, conservation of soil and water, the avoidance of polluting the ecosphere and destruction of biodiversity, but whether global citizens have a chance to democratically put an end to modern agriculture’s insanity and fashion a healthful, agroecological future for future generations and our planet. Parity policy through global democratic participation must be the answer, not enlightened consumerism.

I know you are asking, “Is a parity program realistic?” Well I ask you, is continuing with the free market system we have realistic? I think not. Not if you are concerned with climate change. Not if you want farmers being real stewards of the land, and young people becoming those stewards. Not if you believe in real democracy.

Here are the features of a parity program that would stabilize agriculture and get livestock back on family farms with sound crop rotations:

1) Storable commodity prices supported at parity—If the parity program hadn’t been destroyed, buyers like Iowa Select would have to pay $13/bushel for corn instead of $4 or $5. This involves NO government payments.

2) Supply management—QUOTAS—to avoid wasteful overproduction

3) Reserves supplied by surplus years to meet the needs of short crop years. This assures food security and avoids the notion that we should increase prices by creating scarcity.

4) Control of cheap imports.

5) International agreements to eliminate dumping and destructive races to the bottom.

Having livestock back on the land, with perennial grasses and legumes in hay and pasture, and manure to provide nitrogen for other crops can actually create topsoil, stop soil erosion, and sequester carbon deep down in the soil. Breaking up corn-soybean mono-cropping will eliminate the need for chemical weed control. Conventional farmers can prosper without having to raise more and more for less and less. Getting livestock out of CAFO’s offers an opportunity for young people to join farming operations and enjoy this more labor intensive, humane way to raise livestock.