Back in 2017 there was a common narrative concerning Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.  I’m sure it still exists today.  The Des Moines Register hit upon it in an article at the time.  The Center had lost 1.7 million in funding from the Iowa Legislature.  Many were offering opinions as to why.

A few lines from the article contain the best synopsis of the narrative I referred to.  “Sometimes, its research had been controversial.  It’s not always going to say what people want it to say.  ….it put a target on the Leopold Center’s back.”

As part of a Madison County Farm Family, and as an Iowa State University graduate of Agronomy, I knew very little about the Leopold Center.  A friend I knew through conservation work the was passionate about the center’s potential loss of funding when the issue was being debated.  Passionate enough, it made me look into whether or not I would get involved.

I went to the center’s website and downloaded their 2015/2016 Annual Report.  It began with a piece I could relate to as a farmer.  It talked about a bleaker economic outlook for farm families in the state.   It spoke about the environmental challenges we face.  Then it the piece pivoted.

These very challenges is what the State Legislature originally funded the Center to address in 1987, as part of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act.  It was tasked with “finding new ways to farm profitably while conserving natural resources as well as reducing negative environmental and social impacts.”  That opening piece seized on those facts and pivoted on optimism.  In those challenges was the center’s very purpose.

Realizing that within the challenges you face your own purpose awaits is a sign of maturity.  What could be controversial about that, I wondered?

Then I started on the next piece in their annual report.  It was written from a different perspective and didn’t pivot at all.  It didn’t begin with any sense of compassion for the farmers the center proposed to help.  In fact, it seemed to position them as the adversary, and lamented that the center was hamstringed in being able to take policy positions opposed to them.  It openly wondered whether the center was serving its purpose or not.

As a general rule with regards to maturity, if someone can’t find their purpose, it is unlikely you are going to give it to them.  Often the best you can do is to continue on your own.

While the second piece did contain a line that the “Center has a deep appreciation of the challenges faced by producers” it rang hollow to me.  Perhaps it was due to the context mentioned a couple paragraphs above.  Or perhaps because even it was only the second  half of a statement which began by attesting to the “broad knowledge” of agricultural practices the center has.  It appeared as though the only purpose the “deep appreciation” served was to reinforce the thought that only the Center has the proper perspective.

With regards to perspective, as I wallowed through despair, I couldn’t help but wonder in my role on a Soil and Water Conservation Board why it hadn’t mentioned the tremendous advances made using largely voluntary conservations practices to address soil erosion since the Center’s establishment.

I opted to do nothing when the debate was on in the Legislature.  In fact, I think most farmers opted to do nothing.  Most were probably in the same boat as I:  relatively uncertain about what the Center did in the first place.  Maybe the Center had lost its purpose.

While supporters of the Center maintain pieces like above created a target on their back from powerful farm groups, in all actuality they alienated the most important partner the Center had:  the producer they were tasked to help.  By being unable to decide whether common farm families in the state were either a friend or a foe, no one worked against the Center as much as the Center worked against themselves.

Reporters and even Pulitzer Prize winners have written about the center.  They fool themselves in their belief that they are writing a story about what no one wants to here.  In the tale of Corporate Agriculture, Industrialized Ag, Big Ag, and the Chemical Cabals, they are oblivious to the fact that they created boogey men under the public’s bed.

The real story, the that few really want to hear, is that we tend to oversimplify our challenges.  Usually those involved in the issue are much more like you and me than anyone lets on.  And while many of us, including myself, are tempted to be the martyr, true heroism for most of us usually doesn’t involve our figurative dying for a cause.  In fact, doing so sets us back.  If you really want to champion a cause, you ought to resolve to live for it.