Parity is the foundation of an equitable farm and food policy.

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?