We have a new buzzword

Looks like some iowa farmers are "big
agribusiness" now, at least as long as it
presses an idea. The comments really cracked
me up.
For a good time.....

In all fairness,some of these uppity,hoity toity Billy better than yous have asked for it by calling themselves "growers" or "producers" at a time when food production is so intensely under the microscope. Surveys show that "farmers" are some of the most trusted people in the country,and these over puffed blowhards want to call themselves something else,then the rest of us pay for it with our reputations.

I grew up within a mile of the source of the Racoon River. Prior to the 1970s, I would guess 35-45% of the farm ground was comprised of Hay, Pasture and Oats. Now the area is all corn, beans and livestock confinements as far as the eye can see. Void of all other vegetation other than the grass in the road ditch.
The problem is not the farmer. It's Corporate Ag. Corporate Ag controls congress which in turn writes the so called "Farm Bill". I did some research a couple of years ago and found Iowa farmers sold corn for less than the cost of production 22 of 46 years. Earlier this year Monsanto was crying because their quarterly profits were down to a little over a BILLION dollars. How many of those 46 years did Corporate Ag operate at a loss? The program is specifically designed diminish farm product prices by promoting over production.They could at lease be truthful and call it the "Corporate Ag Bill".
You can't put all farmers in one basket, but any farmer that says current farm practices are not the problem, isn't a real farmer.
Isn't it interesting that you never hear anything about Corporate Ag. They are hiding behind the curtain and not saying a word.

Lol. Like usual, a few ruin it for most. However it is just a shot in the evolving wold of the disconnected. The fewer that grow up around and depend on farming the fewer that will sympathize with them.

The irony of it all is that Des Moines waterworks dumps the removed nitrate back into the Des Moines River from which down stream communities get their water. Maybe they should file suit against DSM waterworks.

Bill Stowe needs to go back to the street department and spreading salt like he had been doing.

What I find funny is the people making these decisions have never been on a tractor.

(quoted from post at 16:12:11 07/30/16) Looks like some iowa farmers are "big
agribusiness" now, at least as long as it
presses an idea. The comments really cracked
me up.
For a good time.....

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I started going downhill when the government started "saving" the family farm.

"grew up around and depend on farming"......I know lots of people who grew up around and depended on farming, and they want clean water in Des Moines and they want the farmers to clean it up......but....wait for it....they want someone else to pay. Case in point....I have good friends in Des Moines who really, really want clean water and certainly want healthy children and no "blue babies".....but they will squeal like pigs when there is ANY reduction in the annual check they get as payment from their brother who still farms their inherited portion of the "home place".

There is a very predictable solution to this.....Governor Branstad will form a commission to come up with a "bi-partisan" solution (grab your wallet). There will be a fee (not a tax ??) assessed to all water users in Des Moines.....the children will be saved....the water will be treated.....part of the fee will go to the farmers in the three counties to "encourage voluntary conservation practices".....and all the decent blue collar workers in Des Moines will have less money at the end of the month after paying their bills.

And last but not least......exactly why do farmers need our sympathy ??? Please explain

I"ve long been bothered by the farm or mainstream press referring to farmers as producers, or growers....like "farmer " is somehow a dirty word? It really is the world"s oldest profession, despite that other one!

I"ve followed the argument by Stowe for quite some time, and was so surprised when I heard his comment about what they do with the nitrogen that is captured by their facility....they discharge it downstream! So how is that solving anything, when he dumps it out?

The bulk of your comment is largely speculation and whining. One option is to buy a farm so you can get in on the gravy train.

Seems to me that big government, Stowe is making a run at you property owners and he's using EPA learned tactics to do it. What I didn't see anywhere in the article was any mention of what the parts per million that the nitrates are or were at before they started, only how they affect and kill children. Mention the latter and sheeples are on board running around yelling, "Don't kill me or my babies" even if it isn't happening.

Kill the Midwest (heart), and the nation will fall soon afterwards. I'm from Indiana and it seems to me that I'm constantly witnessing direct full on attacks on us from Washington DC with the help from useful idiots from within that aren't by accident, they're by design. It won't be long before this fella, Stowe will have Washington joining him, unelected bureaucrats imposing fines and enacting illegal laws without going through Congress...by design, and people are too dumbed down to even realize it, so they continuously get away with it by supporting it. In my state, they were discussing a tax for rain water runoff from the roofs of everything...homes, barns, tool sheds, and you name it, to prevent harm and be used for...rain water cleanup. Rain water cleanup?

Good luck.

Mark

Unlike the other oldest profession ,, We Farmers Always get the short end of the stICK

CaseChev 98.5% of you do not grow what you eat. Less than 1.5% of the people are feeding the rest of you for a percentage of income that is the lowest in the world and much lower than any time in history. So if you want to add cost to the farmer then I want that cost passed directly to the consumer!!!!!

If you want me to not have any exemptions for all of the federal legal dictates then allow me to set the price of my product like manufacturing corporations do. When you paying 2-3 times what your currently paying for food then maybe you would like the current deal back???

And......98.5% of you do not build the John Deere tractors that you use to raise crops on the farm......I'm not sure I understand your comments. Shouldn't we all work together on this ??

(quoted from post at 21:49:56 07/30/16) And......98.5% of you do not build the John Deere tractors that you use to raise crops on the farm......I'm not sure I understand your comments. Shouldn't we all work together on this ??

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This just proves what JD was trying to say 98.5% can't under stand that the marketing of farm products is set up against farmers. !00% of JD tractors are made with a profit margin fixed in the price. Not necessarily so with what the farmer sells.
You are right that we should be working together but there is such a huge % of the 98.5% that are against the farmer no matter what he does. I'm not a fan of big farms either but the big farms are a result of the 98.5% dictating the laws that farmers have to live by.

The term "agribusiness" has been used in Iowa since the early 1970's.

At the rate that nitrogen fertilizers are leached into the soil, eventually most water supplies in farm areas will have elevated or even hazardous nitrate levels. Maybe elevated pesticide levels too. There are no simple solutions. I believe one long term solution is to control nitrogen losses going into the ground water.

In the mean time, someone has to pay the costs to remove the nitrates, or worse, pay the medical costs of high nitrate levels in drinking water. Maybe nitrogen fertilizers should just be treated like tires? Add a disposal fee to each ton of nitrogen to cover the average cost to remove the byproducts from the drinking water. Some pesticides could get even more expensive if that idea is applied to pesticides.

I tried hard not to comment, but failed. It always seemed pretty stupid to pull water out of a river to drink. What is wrong with drilling wells? There are plenty of other contaminants in a river, not the least is fish poop. There always have been!

(quoted from post at 14:28:48 07/30/16) What I find funny is the people making these decisions have never been on a tractor.

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People have to have air, water and food to survive. Most can survive far longer without food than they can without water or air. If farming practices are causing poisons to be in our rivers, lakes and streams then it needs to stop! If people including farmers hear about a faulty product that is killing people we want someone's head on a stick. Why should it be different just because you sat in a tractor seat?

If they can prove the source of the nitrates and that shouldn't be hard what does having been in a tractor seat have to do with anything? I darn sure wouldn't want a guy making decisions as lets say the president of the US to have no other experience than having sat for hours in a tractor seat. In fact that would be one of the last things I took into consideration prior to voting. Providing clean safe water to people doesn't require any seat time experience.

If Exxon and BP have to pay to clean up their messes shouldn't the source of the nitrate runoff have to also pay? Lets not put profit in front of human lives! If we do then we are no better than any corporation that does the same thing!

Rick

However if they told the readers that most of these "big" businesses were just family farms then it wouldn't fit the narrative that big business is bad and little guys are always good. Please don't misunderstand me here, if the farmer is just flushing nutrients down the river he is being wasteful and that is not a good business model. From what someone on here said a few months ago it sounds like the tiling is too close to the surface and that is how most of it is getting on the waterways. It really depends on the person, some when shown what they are doing will step back and take a good look and make a decision. Some will just dig in their heels and refuse to listen to anyone that doesn't have cow $hit on their boots. My old boss was like that, if you tried to straight up tell him it was raining he would argue just on principle but if it was his idea then everything was ok. I'm not a big fan of the current farming model, bulldoze and kill anything that doesn't make you a dime because we're an industry and industry makes money! I'm not pinning that on the farmers, but that is the way it is right now. If there is a good year you spend the profits to improve your farm such as pushing out trees and old fence rows and tiling wet spots. Then in poor years you push out more trees and fences because you can't afford to have the land setting idle. For as much as some curse buffer strips there may be a legitimate reason here to look at them.

One day when all these idiot tree huggers are real good and hungry maybe they will wake up and realize their food doesn't grow on the shelves of supermarkets. Every time you turn around someone is trying to take agriculture down another notch. I was born and raised on the farm in Kansas, we drank water from a well, milk straight from the cow, ate food from the garden and butchered our own pork, beef and chicken. Amazingly we did all this without any advice from some goofball in some office somewhere. I am now 62 and in pretty good health, no I don't buy all this bull-butter they say about water pollution, food contamination and such. It is just another way for government to try to run the lives of the hard working American farmers. I believe in the one thing I know won't ever fail me, "God". He will never fail me and supplies all my needs.

Perhaps if levies were removed and rivers were allowed to flood previous flood plains some of the contaminates could be removed naturally. I've often thought levies merely exchange one set of problems for another. In my 74 years I've seen a lot of changes in farming in the Midwest. In my youth most all farms were enclosed with boundry fences and broken into smaller internal fences. Many acres were devoted to oats, hay and permanent pastures and timber. The variety of crops kept more of the ground covered with growing vegetation. The fences with along with the growing grass acted like mini dams slowing and filtering runoff water. Tractors and equipment were much smaller and less capable than today,s. In my area there was very little Fall tillage thus most of the land was covered thru the Winter.

I agree full heartedly with Roy, drill wells and quit drinking fish ,etc. Poop and pee , I think anyone drinking river water is not very educated .

No offense meant, but since when are you not allowed to set the price for your product? As far as I know, you're welcome to put a sign at the end of your driveway that says "Corn: $10/bushel" and sell all of it you want. In fact, I think your granddaughters are doing just that, and good for them and you,

The fact that you or any other farmer chooses to keep farming in spite of what you argue are intolerable business practices tells me that things are a little better than you let on, and I am sick unto death of that "feed the world" and "let's see how they like it when food triples in price" excuse for why farmers shouldn't have to play by the same rules as everyone else, be they workplace safety, child labor, or environmental rules. If it's a moral imperative to feed the hungry, should you really expect payment? Do you expect payment for not killing someone, or for not stealing from them? That's called extortion, if you were wondering.

You're not farming to feed the hungry, anyway. You're farming for the same reason everybody else is working: to make a living, you just happen, through an incredible set of fortunate circumstances, to be able to do it doing exactly what you want to do, and without a boss. Good for the farmers, but spare me the martyr act. You guys aren't climbing up on a cross every morning, farming for the sake of your fellow man.

UAFitter; I am willing to bet that you work in a job that has a minimum wage per hour floor under it. The Government actually works to boost wages. Farmers sell a commodity that has its price manipulated by the Government to keep the price as low as possible. I do not see that being done to any other manufactures.

As for the farmer setting a price and being very successful at it. It only works in small volume nitch markets. My grand daughters will sell maybe 700-1000 bushels this way. That is not much of a dent in the 500,000 bushels the farms produce.

Also What the fellow in Des Moines is trying to do is pass the buck on his problem to someone that MIGHT be causing him the problem. He has ZERO documentation that it is farmers causing the nitrate issue in the water he is pumping. Then the height of irony is that the Des Moines water department dumps the nitrates they remove form the water back into the river down stream form where they intake. I think that they should be on the hot seat for that.

Why does Des Moines still take river water for their drinking water supply???? The wells in the area do not show nitrate issues like the river does. Does the cities/towns up river from Des Moines raise the nitrates form dumping their sewage into the river???

The issue is that many outside interests are ganging up on the farmers in those three counties. There have been little scientific studies done to support the water CEO's claims but his statements are treated as fact by many groups. Water keepers being the most vocal about it. Then the left is using this issue to try and control all waterways in the US. No matter how little. Look up where land owners are being threatened for building small farm ponds. Just this last spring/summer a fellow won a court case on this issue but it cost him $75K to do it and four years of his life.

You also talk about child labor laws. We can not hire a non family kid under 16 to operate any type of motorized equipment. This includes a lawn mower. If you were around a farm did you drive a tractor before then???? We used to have neighbor kids that worked after school. Now we can not. The work included driving tractors and maybe skid steer loaders. I have the sons and daughters of kids that worked for us in the past stop looking for work. I tell them we can't hire them anymore.

I could go on for pages but I will quit now. I am not asking for a hand out. I just want to be left alone!!!!! Things that have been done a certain way for generations are now trying to be outlawed. Much of it with little proof that there was harm being done to anyone or anything.

My Grand father stated this fifty years ago and time has proven him right. "The federal government is slowly creeping towards communism." The current climate of asset envy is just the newest form of separating the people.

Well UAFitter I'm a farmer and I agree with you,I get tired of other farmers crying the Blues and all this "WE feed the World Bull Manure".Many farmers love to be called Agribusinessmen until something like this Nitrite problem shows then its back to being Mr Greenjeans.No one forces anyone including me to farm and I can quit just like other farmers can quit and don't worry about people going hungry and all that non sense other people that want to farm will be lined to take over their and my land and equipment.Most conventional farmers these days would be very
surprised at the negative way they are viewed buy a majority of the public.

That was before federally funded crop insurance,subsidies,cheap loans and the like enabled farmers turned agribusiness men to drive their farmer neighbors out of business
but it all will swing back when the feds run out of $$$$ to support the present system without federal $$$$ the system that's in place now won't last 2 years.

(quoted from post at 01:48:35 08/01/16) Well UAFitter I'm a farmer and I agree with you,I get tired of other farmers crying the Blues and all this "WE feed the World Bull Manure".Many farmers love to be called Agribusinessmen until something like this Nitrite problem shows then its back to being Mr Greenjeans.No one forces anyone including me to farm and I can quit just like other farmers can quit and don't worry about people going hungry and all that non sense other people that want to farm will be lined to take over their and my land and equipment.Most conventional farmers these days would be very
surprised at the negative way they are viewed buy a majority of the public.

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Your right about being surprised how people view farmers. This topic proves that. In Arkansas 1 out of every 6 jobs directly depends on farming to survive, I would bet that is near the ratio in most of the USA. You are also right about there also someone ready to farm your land when you quit. However that person will be a corporate farm. The average age for farmers is nearing 60. Even those that would inherit the farm are leaving for more lucrative and easier ways to make a living. The more nonfarmers try to force out corporate farms the more they force out true family farms. When the government got involved in farming the slow cancerous death of the family farm began.

I'm proud of being a farmer but at the same time I'm also thankful for the opportunity. I don't think that is any different than many people view their chosen profession. I've read some pretty boastful statements made by some on here about their chosen nonfarm profession, if they are so important to humanity maybe they should do them for free. The comment was made by another poster that we view ourselves as the ones that feed the world. That is mostly true. There are more agricultural products exported than anything else.

It seems we have reached the point in society that we want health care without having to pay for it , we want protection without the police, we want cheap food without farmers, I could go on. We live in one of the most selfish and gullible times in recent history.

Good morning,

In the spirit of reasonable debate, I'd ask how exactly you think the government is keeping the farm gate price of commodities low. There are no price controls, and in fact I'd point to the ethanol boondoggle as one among many programs created out of whole cloth as a means of funneling taxpayer dollars directly into ag's pockets. Add in the new crop insurance scam, where you can pay a premium to guarantee revenue with exactly none of the finances transparent or accessible to the funding taxpayer, and I'd say that exactly the opposite of what you are saying is what's actually happening.

As to the water lawsuit, what I've read says that they sampled water at the tile discharges into the river for two years to establish their data set. Given that the tiles serve agriculture exclusively (or so nearly so as to be exclusively) it seems a reasonable conclusion that the nitrate is coming from the tiles. Further, they tried to negotiate directly with the drainage districts for two months before filing suit, and the districts would not give an inch. They, and the commodity groups, insist that the only path forward is with the voluntary program that the state of Iowa created. Farmers, indeed anyone, can always do what's voluntary, so the fact that less than 2% of Iowa's arable cropland is in cover crops and buffers tells me that what they're volunteering to do is what they've always done, which is how they got to a lawsuit in the first place. The waterworks had to discharge their nitrates back into the river under the terms of their permit from the EPA, which seems stupid to me too, but at least they aren't putting them out the tap.

As to the child labor deal, ag has fought tooth and nail against any kind of workplace safety, wage and hour laws, and environmental regulations for as long as I've been alive, and I don't expect that to stop. I live just north of a place where two boys died in a grain bin a few years back, and ag's response to that has left a sour taste in my mouth that's not ever going away.

Finally, and I mean this sincerely, if you want a job where a wage is guaranteed, go on and get one. I know from reading, enjoying, and being impressed by your posts that any number of businesses would be glad to have you and benefit from your presence. The fact is that you don't want a job, you want a business, and part of being in business is that you don't have any guarantees, whether you own a gas station, a hardware store, a construction company, or yes, a farm.

Anyway, good luck to you, and stay safe.

UAfitter: The crop insurance program and the ethanol program both are ways the federal government is keeping production in high gear. If the market reacted to a farm commodity surplus like it would in any other business then there would not be record crops produced. Therefore the crop would get smaller and the price would raise.

Without the income insurance then the cash rents would be lower and the capital would limit how big most farmers would get.

The ethanol program is an artificial way for corn to be used in a process that is crazy to me. Corn based ethanol is not a good use of a food product to me. The current ethanol program has helped create a large crop of corn that could be worth very little this fall. Many farmers thought that ethanol was a giant user of corn. They thought that it was what added several dollars a bushel to the corn price. When in reality a back to back crop failure in Russia and Australia created a world wide protein shortage.

I want the government to get the heck out of agriculture. Close the Farm services offices and get out of the crop insurance business. This would help the average farmer more than anything else. There would not be 5000/10000/150000 acre farmers if the banks could not have the crop insurance to back up the operating loans. With ZERO government PAYMENTS then there would be fewer pure grain farms.

As for worker safety. If I made everything we do on the farm OSHA approved we would go broke in a short time. Half of the average stuff could not be done in a timely manner. Emptying a grain bin as an example. You can not have a HIRED man inside the bin IF the unload auger is running. Have you ever had a sweep auger that would work by itself??? Every single one we have you have to push them along the floor to move the grain to the center. I have mutable floor doors so you do not have to be in a bin until it is just about clear empty to install the sweep auger. Most deaths occur when there is grain that is out of condition being handled.

As for kids around the farm. I do not want them hurt. I also want them to learn how to work and do things on the farm. You can not wait until a kid is 18 and have them learn about farming.

So I do not have all the answers but I know that involving government bureaucrats will never make anything better.

P.S. I do know if Des Moines is successful in their lawsuit, I will not do business with companies in that city. Every single farmer in the state should refuse to deal with anyone or thing that involves Des Moines. Boycott the entire city.

Very well said JD. It would also be interesting to see what the runoff is from the city of Des Moines. A few years ago there was a lawsuit in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Testing was done at several locations including the lawn at the capital in Oklahoma. The nitrate level in the soil there was much higher than any of the farm land tested. Lawns and golf courses are some of the most over fertilized and have more chemical residue than any farm land. Since there are more buildings and pavement the runoff has no opportunity to soak into the ground and runs into the drainage ditches and streams that run through agricultural areas. Then farms are blamed for the high levels of pollutants.