Ask the Land for Forgiveness

In a well-choreographed dance, farmers have harvested corn and soybeans from about 23 million acres of Iowa’s farmland. Over just a few weeks each fall, combines, grain carts, and semi-trucks rumble across this land, stripping fields of their grain and shredding the remainder of the plants, dramatically changing the landscape.

While this harvest scene is considered an economic boon by this state’s politicians, industry leaders, and others who have a stake in the status quo, the immense harm of this intensive, extractive corn-soybean-CAFO paradigm is quite evident to many Iowans – and to many people around the world. I believe it is high time that we take a new look at agriculture and put an end to the notion that this type of farming is inevitable, simply a result of progress and new technologies.  Yet, even Iowa’s commodity farmers are not benefitting from this system, and must do whatever necessary to produce the highest yields possible, even when that means toxic herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides applied to the fields. These socially, environmentally, and economically devastations have been overlooked for much too long.

I am not alone in calling for a new way forward in respect to farming these beautiful lands of Iowa. However, I see some missing elements in the discussions surrounding this topic.

First, we must recognize the political and economic power of agri-food corporations.

 World Food Day on October 16 is a reminder of the creation of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization with its goal of ending hunger and food insecurity for every human on Earth and recognizes the struggles millions of people for the basic human right of food.

As a participant in the United Nations Committee on World Food Security through civil society, I have the obligation to share the stories of

 with a perspective that doesn’t come from agribusiness and its lobbyists. Instead, we need a different perspective, one that recognizes the beautiful intricacies of life within our environment and how reliant humans are on the natural world.

Last July, during a counter-mobilization against the non-transparent and non-inclusive processes that eventually led to the United Nations Food System Summit in September, a Senegalese farmer who had seen the negative impacts of industrial agriculture gave this advice: “First, ask the land for forgiveness.”

Similar to the actions of Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin’s grandfather who kissed the ground each day before they tended their farm in Guatemala, asking the land for forgiveness must involve seeing the land on which we live with respect, recognizing the harm that has been done, and then taking action for a better future.

What does taking action look like here in Iowa?

It means looking at farming holistically. Trying to solve issues individually isn’t possible. Water quality is tied to animal confinements which are tied to the low prices corporations pay for feeds on a global free market system. Similarly, soil health is tied to the same low prices as farmers tear up pastures to produce more corn and soybeans which corporations buy to feed to corporate-owned livestock. Carbon sequestration claimed to be a solution to climate change. However, paying farmers for practices as Governor Reynold’s Carbon Sequestration Task Force  and several private companies are advocating will not result in an overall reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and is only a distraction from real solutions. The ludicrous Carbon Capture and Storage pipelines proposed for Iowa, including the one by Bruce Rastetter’s Summit Carbon Solutions, are simply means of ensuring that the exploitation of nature continues.

It means seeing the true costs to produce food are not included in the prices farmers are paid nor in the prices we pay for food. The parity price policies of price supports, supply management, and food reserves that we put in place during the Great Depression are needed today. The Disparity to Parity Project is working toward that goal.

Finally, it means looking beyond Iowa’s borders for solutions. Although we could certainly do more to regulate aspects of agriculture in Iowa, especially the siting of CAFOs, we need to see the broader picture. In my participation with civil society and social movements at the UN Committee on World Food Security, I know that the environmental and social issues we face here in are global. We must work together to confront the political and economic power of corporations.

But first, we need to ask the land for forgiveness.