For Farmers Not Farm Bureau

Art Cullen, the editor of the Storm Lake Times who won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing has a great editorial on the race for Iowa Agricultural Secretary this week:

http://www.stormlake.com/articles/2018/09/19/farmers-not-farm-bureau

here is his concluding paragraph. Please click on the link for the whole thing. It is well written and thought out:

Gannon comes from a John Deere lineage. We do not mistake him for Wendell Berry or Michael Pollan. But at least we know that his customer is the farmer and not the Farm Bureau. We need to know that someone is watching how agribusiness is spending our tax dollars. For now, the Koch Brothers are calling the shots over a huge river of money. The Farm Bureau, Iowa’s largest insurance company, last week endorsed Mike Naig. Gannon didn’t even get a mention. That tells us that Gannon is the man who can bring control over this increasingly opaque office that wields increasingly more power and influence in the state’s politics. The office is taking power and budget from the Department of Natural Resources to redirect the flow of money from natural resource preservation to agricultural engineering. Ag engineering got us into the problem of nitrate in the Raccoon River that poisons us and the Gulf of Mexico. It won’t get us out. Better stewardship will, and that starts with the Iowa Secretary of Agriculture. Gannon is the man who will watch out for farmers. Naig will watch out for Farm Bureau.

Plus a good editorial on the Grass man.