The basement cafeteria of the Longworth House Office Building in Washington, D.C. is a bustling place to be.  Officials come and go, and their constituents do the same.  Tables are at a premium, lines are long, yet somehow everyone gets enough to go on with.  The most dedicated are able to carve out some little place for themselves, at least for a brief while, until someone else carves one of their own.  It’s a microcosm, I guess.

It was day three, and by now I was starting to get to know the group of Iowans I was in DC with.  All of us were involved in agriculture, and we had all come to give input on a particular segment of agricultural policy.  Some were making their third such trip.  Some, like me, were making our first.

Each segment was represented by a committee.  The committees had met on our first day.  I had spent my meeting trying to learn more.  I did.  I learned about Chevron and Auer deference in legal proceedings, the Endangered Species Act, air quality standards, and how it all impacted members of my committee who stretched from New Mexico to Montana and from Pennsylvania to Arizona.

Day two had been devoted to educational breakout sessions on various points of agricultural interest,  Day three, the day which had the delegation from Iowa entering the cafeteria, had us visiting our national legislators and their staff to speak about existing ag policy.

Here in the cafeteria one of our group was able to summit and place a flag on the only available table, a table for four.  There were 15 of us, but having a toe hold gave us a base to mount subsequent campaigns from.  My detachment raided a nearby table when it lost all of its occupants save one.

“Would it be all right if we joined you?” we asked the young woman.

“Absolutely,” she said.  So a farm couple, a veterinarian, a hog producer, and myself did.

“Do you work here, or are you in town for a visit?” I asked.

“Well I used to work here, but now I live in Colorado.  I’m here advocating for women’s healthcare on behalf of Planned Parenthood.  Where are you guys from?”

“Iowa.”

“What brings all of you here?”

“Farm policy.”

We went on continuing to share lunch together.  It was a fine thing.  Alongside Chevron and Auer deference and the rest, I now stored tidbits about living in Denver, working in D.C., and the answers she provided to the inquiries we made about Colorado’s marijuana laws.  If such a conversation can happen in DC, I suspect it can happen in other places.

At that table and in the subsequent visits with our Representatives and Senators, I frequently had time to reflect on the group I had stumbled into being a part of, and I began to realize my appreciation for them.  No one spoke about abstract, philosophical arguments on agricultural policy.  Instead they spoke about their real-life, real-time view of agriculture, revealing some of the things they were passionate about and a little of the hope we all have in being able to make a difference.

Those who didn’t have to catch a flight that night were finally able to gather for an informal dinner.  They spoke of their families back home.  By now we had learned something about each other’s sense of humor, and laughter was plentiful and came freely without costing anyone a dime.  Back at the hotel, headed to my room, I smiled the same way an eight year old boy would.

“It was a good day.”

“It was with good people.”

I don’t know what will come of all our discussions on free trade, the new Farm Bill, regulatory and tax reform, and renewable fuels.  I don’t know what impression of Iowa the Coloradoan had left lunch with.  What I do know is that occasionally we all get the opportunity to try to make a difference on the issues that mater to us.  Perhaps the way to make the biggest difference is in how we live our lives.  I’ve been fortunate in agriculture to continue to get to know those who live their lives in ways which make a difference to me.

Originally the school had a herd of 100 cows and 100 hogs to go with them.  The kids did the work, most of them were orphaned after a yellow fever epidemic.  That was what the place used to look like.

Today it boasts a herd of dwarf Nigerian goats.  Ten perhaps.  They milk them to make soap.  They sell the soap at farmer’s markets.  The garden was unkempt.

“If I have a kid that likes to draw, I tell them that’s okay.  You come out here and draw while we work.”  I bet they would draw it even better, if they had to do it, but even to make soap the school looked outside to source volunteers.

Where they were today was complicated.  Long ago they had to quit being self sufficient.  Government regulation forbid eating much of their own food.  Regulation also posed challenges with the school’s religious foundation.  By now the conversation had turned to a whole myriad of buzz words:  non-profit partners, socially-conscious, aesthetic value, increased awareness, pollinator seeds.

I make no claim I understand the complications they face.

In the background, through the nearby trees, I could catch a glimpse of the boys at the school playing ball.  They were dressed in the school’s olive t-shirts with khaki shorts, white and black, and still playing the way the boys that preceded had:  for keeps.  I suspect they used to farm that way too.

The kids still understood what it was about.  Even if farming had now become little more than a curiosity.  Even if the use of the term “farming” was questionable.

“We also have chickens here.  Our goal is that soon we will no longer have to source any chicken feed at all, generating it instead from our leftovers.  We are teaching them about the larger cycle, that nothing gets wasted, and that we shouldn’t consume needlessly.”

I suppose it’s a fine cycle.  Agriculture teaches us an even larger one, though.  To survive we have to find a way to make it work.  If we try hard enough, and the rain comes just right, sometimes we can make it just a little bit longer before that cycle gets the better of us.

Still, they were doing good for those boys.  Waiting in the hallway for the boy’s room just before we boarded the bus, the bell rang, classes began changing, and I was in the midst of them.  Today they are at-risk kids, encompassing anything from ADHD to having been kicked out of schools in the past.

Many knew more about trying to survive than most their age.  Many probably knew it better than me.  It was a shame their glimpse of agriculture didn’t give them a better chance to put those skills to use.  It would have made some of them fine farmers.

“House of Mercy” was the translation for the place.  I had it for the teachers.  For other people’s children, I had what the teacher’s had:  faith.  They had it in them from the beginning.  There was no sense in doing something different now.

He had a friendly southern draw, conveying a sense of southern hospitality, while producing words in the quick paced way of a man that is busy.  Sunglasses dangled from his neck as he spoke after lunch in the little town of Lyon, Georgia.  While one hand held the podium in place, the other would work to make his point.  Visually he would have fit right in with the group of Iowa farmers listening, but we were listening because he was a Georgia one, growing among other things, the Vidalia Onions Toombs County was known for.  He was 38.

“Now who of y’all wants to ask the first question?”

“A lot of our crops in Iowa use biotechnology.  It’s something some express concerns about.  You guys have huge urban centers in Georgia.  How does agriculture interact with those consumers?”

“At least two of your all busses have visited Pittman’s right?  They’re the produce farm with the country store.  Any of you all know what Silver Queen Sweetcorn is?  Down here it’s the sweet corn all the supermarkets carry.  They have for years.  It’s all most people have ever known.

Folks will drive out to Pittman’s, who sell sweetcorn, and they’ll ask Mr. Pittman, ‘You, uh, you got any of that Silver Queen Sweetcorn?’

‘No, sir.  I sure don’t.’

‘Why, uh, why don’t you have any of that Silver Queen?’

And he’ll answer ’em, ‘Well y’all didn’t drive out here in no Model T Ford did ya?’

Up north you have BT Corn.  Down here we have BT Cotton.  You have it for your friend, Mr. Corn Borer.  We have it for ours, Mr. Boll Weevil.  In 1996 I could have used 14 different pesticides to keep him at bay.  I don’t have to use any today.  I know which one I prefer.

Some consumers are using bad information.  That’s on them.  Sometimes we aren’t doing a good putting information out there.  That’s on us.  We’ve never had to do it before.  It’s important to understand how to do it without driving wedges.”

As a spokesman for agriculture, he was bona fide, in every sense of the word.

After lunch, our bus came to a stop in 20 acres of Vidalia Onions.  There we met the rest of his family, in the back of a pickup, serving up boiled peanuts to their third bus load of guests.  Their two sons, 7 and 3, danged their feet over the side of the box and took it all in.

“I’m sure you’ve noticed in your other stops how pebbly our soil is.  When my grandfather was looking for land, he’d look at them stones.  What he wanted to see is what y’all are seeing here today, good red rock.  If he saw quartz, then that land was of no value to him.  It is red rock that takes in the heat from the sun, keeps our ground warm even in the winter time, and allows us to do what we are doing here.  By April these onions will be harvested, and peanuts will be growing in their place.”

Two Georgia boys were getting their own chance to soak it up, in order to keep it going.  Meanwhile their father preached to the choir; looking, I suppose, for a few more preachers.  We need ’em.

 

 

 

 

A recent Des Moines Register article made a passing note on Linn County’s purchase of 500 acres for 7.2 million dollars.  A Linn County supervisor seems to be quoted as calling the purchase an investment in “conservation.”  Conservation is a broad term.  It could mean a lot of things.  The trouble is the article continues with a direct quote from the supervisor on what the purchase is meant to stem.  “They {residents} go to lakes and find them covered in algae.”

Most of the time numbers are numbers.  Sometimes they get personal.

As a commissioner on the Madison County Soil and Water Conservation Board, we oversee state cost-share funds for conservation on the county’s 359,680 acres.  These are the funds local farmers and landowners will match to establish waterways, build terraces, and construct ponds.  This year the amount of state cost-share we will be in charge of spending will be somewhere around $110,000.  The Linn County purchase could fund our county cost-share for 65 years.

In fact the Linn County purchase comes is very close to funding the 7.5 million dollar state budget for cost-share programs in 2016.  In the state’s case, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship notes that Iowa farmers matched it with 8.7 million, giving a total investment of 16.2 million.

I serve as a trustee of the local Badger Creek Watershed.  The County Soil and Water Conservation District is in charge of maintenance and improvement of numerous structures and investments previously made in the watershed’s 33,581 acres.  Our annual budget to do so is $84,942.  The Linn County purchase would fund that budget for 85 years.

It is a shame the Register article makes only a passing note of the Linn County purchase.  The real story, the one most uncomfortable to read, is that some might think spending 7.2 million for 500 acres is a feasible way to measurably improve water quality across the state.  It might be laughable, if it weren’t so sad.

Just two days ago I was the Iowa Statehouse to visit with my legislators about Iowa Farm Bureau’s number one legislative priority:  finding a larger, dedicated source for soil and water conservation funding.  This is the funding that will increase in value by being matched by the state’s residents.  I think this is the funding that will continue making measurable progress in soil and water conservation as we adapt to the challenges of today and look ahead to tomorrow.  I’m sure the 7.2 million Linn County spent will make a fine park.

The lights were dim in the Des Moines coffee house, mostly coming from strings of lights that would bow intermittently from the ceiling above.  On the far wall, above each table that sat against the big windows that kept the patrons from the street, stooped a solitary light for those beneath to share.

With me there sat a man with clear blue eyes and the face of a priest.

“I drink coffee now,” he said with his graying hair curling up against the bowed down edge of his ears.  “At one time I used to come to a place like this to smoke.  Then those damn Democrats over there took it away from me,” nodding over to the group of college students, huddled around a large table, some sporting t-shirts that gave an idea of their politics.

“Could have been worse, I guess,” he continued.  “A hundred years ago the group behind you would have took away my cocktails.”  I didn’t have to look for the bible study group.  I had already seen them.

“I’ve never been here before.”

“It is quite the place.  Very different people at different tables, all in the same room.  How one hasn’t protested the other’s existence, I don’t know.  I have been coming here for years.  I’ve seen no fights.”

“Perhaps the coffee is Swiss.”

Unamused, he continued.  “Do you know why I think people read what I write?” he asked, leveling his glare at me and exhaling like a man who still smoked.  “I write about being lonely.  Being lonely has no party.  It relates to everybody.

It makes them equally uncomfortable.  I have no idea if I write well or not, but I do take comfort that no book of mine makes someone feel better about themselves or worse about someone else.  Sometimes I wonder why anyone reads them.”

“There’s a truth to it, isn’t there?”

“Do you think people like that?” he laughed.

“I don’t know.  Perhaps a lot of us just respect it, especially when it’s delivered softly.”

“Respect.  Ha.  Some here would talk to you about personal responsibility, some about privilege.  Both represent the idea that someone else didn’t suffer enough.

You write.  You must look at people.  Have you ever seen someone that hasn’t suffered?”

“I’ve seen some that work like hell to avoid it.”

“Where does that get them?”

“More suffering.”

“Ha.  We sit in one big room together.  We drink our coffee together.  And we suffer together, whether we are at different tables or not.”

“Sounds a little depressing.”

“No.  What’s depressing is how we waste it and let it push us further apart.  I always find it hopeful coming here.”

“What do you do with it?”

“Me?  Well I write.  Occasionally, though, I shrug personal responsibility and in my privilege sneak an occasional cigarette.  But a coffee…sometimes a coffee will do.

What about you?”

In 1918, Susan Klein Funk was 31 years old.  In her last few years she had acquired a husband, a 3 year old daughter (Margret, my grandmother), a 1 year old, and a newborn.  In the few years which preceeded that, she had proved up her own claim for 160 acres of land she had homesteaded.  There she’d built her own cabin, shot her own game, roped and branded cattle with her sisters, and found time to teach school.

Her last days in 1918 found her with apendicitis.  The nearest hospital also housed wounded veterans of the First World War.  They carried the Spanish Influenza.  There was no cure.  Susan was exposed, and in that hospital she died.

By her side was her sister, Mary.  She had been for some time.

There were seven Klein sisters in Waverly, South Dakota.  Several were seamstresses.  They had all grown up on the farm.  Three were married.  The reminaing four, Magdalena (Lena), Susan (Sue), Victoria (Tory), and Mary, ranging in age from 22 to 27, were considered past their marriageable prime.

The federal government was opening up new territory in the western part of the state.  Anyone over the age of 21 was welcomed to stake a claim.  In 1909 the four struck out on their own.

They each selected a 160 acre tract not far from the emerging town of Faith.  Over the summer and fall of 1910, each built a sod house on the corners at the adjoining tracts central point.  Within 15 feet they’d find water.  It was considerably more to find wood.  They could still find “buffalo chips,” however.

The Klein girls (as they were called) relished the big waves in the new territory.  They had their work.  They had a countryside full of eligible men.  They had dances and excitement in the new town of Faith.  In 1911 they took a one month trip to the Blackhills and the Badlands.  Susan kept a diary of their time.  Her brief entries came to an end with one final line:  Sure saw some country and had a fine time.  End.

The oldest of the four, Mary, was the ring leader.  On her shoulders would forever lie her own mother’s blame for the taking of four of her daughters, and I suppose one’s death.  Fiercely independent, she’d fight for the right to work off her poll tax in order to vote.  She’d be the last to marry.  At 92, she’d be the last to die.

She was stubborn enough to disregard the good consuel of the day and fearlessly care for my great grandmorther in the hospital.  Most wouldn’t be.  After Susan’s death, her coffin was brought home, but fear over infecting her family would keep it out of the house.  Instead it was briefly laid open on the front porch for her children to say goodbye.  At least one of her sisters wished to do so as well.  She loaded up her family and ventured as far as the farm drive before turning around, unable to run the risk.

55 years later, Susan’s husband, Francis, would make his way back to Faith to rejoin her.  Out of respect, I suppose, for that Klein stubborness.  Or perhaps for a journey that began in Faith.

We should live the life we are called to live.  Some will stay in spite of the waves.  Some will come around.  Some will be attracted to it.  The rest is not our business.

All photos from Journal of the West.  Vol. 37, No. 1.  January 1998.

 

 

You won’t have to go to far in your day to run into the polarized political debate that is currently raging in our country.  Many voices compete to be heard, and while shouting is not without merit in acheiving that, it is often at the expense of a much more substantive debate we need to have.  One federal program that might illustrate that while minimizing emotional fallout is the Conservation Reserve Program or CRP.

The program came to prominence under the 1985 Farm Bill, though it had existed three decaes prior.  It targeted highly erodible land, placing it under vegetative cover for a period of 10 to 15 years and removing it from production.  These acres were essentially rented to the federal government.

There had long been a conservation push to expand the program, but the push was coupled with the collapase of the farm economy during the Farm Crisis of the 1980’s.  A farm family could now enroll their acres for a guaranteed yearly income and for a guarenteed length of time.  This contract gave families something firm to restructre their debt and removed acres from production that might boost sagging markets, saving farms and saving soil.  5 million acres were under contract in 1986.  40 million would be enrolled by 1990.

The program began with great intentions on all fronts.  As time has went on, however, concerns have arisen.  One can see many of them by simply travling down Highway 34 or Highway 2 in Southern Iowa.

Southern Iowa was hardest hit by the Farm Crisis.  Its rolling hills were also prime targets for the erodible acres sought by CRP.  Some of those acres can be seen today, unfarmed and ungrazed.  You can also see the impact it has had on local communities.

No seed, fertilizer, or equipment is needed on those acres.  No hardware store, or repair shop, or gas station sells anything of note to service them.   No steward is needed.

Many wonder if this is what conservation needs to look like.

The CRP rate can create competition in rental rates for other cropland.  In some cases it can set a floor that raises the barrier for entry for young farm families.  In some it simply offers a higher rate of return, attracting acres not for their conservation merit, but simply for the return that might not ever reside in the local community.

The rental rates can also prohibit cow/calf producers from competing for those same acres, who would leave them in grass, but generate prodcution from them.  Attempts have been made to change this, but to date each attempt runs into some dedicated to the idea that conservation needs to look presettlement.  The farmer, last in line, is often left without something practical.

It isn’t hard to envision an attempt to change the program being shouted down as an attack on the environment.  Shouts won’t extinguish embers that still smolder in rural communities from the meltdown in the farm economy.  Being faithful to both is how the program took root in the first place.

“Who’s Mike?” she asked.

“A basketball coach we first had in junior high AAU basketball.”

“What made you think of him?”

“He made us feel like anything was possible.  I wasn’t talented, but he believed in me.  In exchange I gave him everything I had.  I wonder what happened to that kid and his effort sometimes.  He used to call me the whirling dervish.”

“Sounds ferocious.”

“I was constantly in a state of falling down.

He taught us man to man, obscure zone defenses, and a full court press for each.  The teams we played against knew only the 2-3 or man to man.  Perhaps they knew one full court press.  We quickly understood the importance of knowledge, and the advantage to be had by aggressively putting it to use.

We had a kid so talented, Mike would have the rest of us set up in the press, then he would give the ball to Ryan and have him break it.  He taught us respect for one another.

There was a kid who got nervous anytime he had to go in.  One game we were down to six players with a quarter and a half to go.  The kid had a long time to think about it.  One of us finally fouled out, and Mike looked to the bench and found him white as a ghost.

‘You only have four out here, Coach,’ said the ref.  ‘He needs to come in.’

‘Those four can handle themselves.  Let me talk to my guy here for a second or two.’  Mike draped his arm around him and cracked a joke in his ear.”

“What happened to Mike?”

“He wore his heart out.  He’d always been a heavy smoker.  There was something about him that seemed to love the anxiety and stress of life.  He was born to be a coach.  It was his calling.  Hip deep in the thick of it, always making adjustments.

I remember going into see him in the hospital.  He was gray.  As a boy I found it hard to believe how a strong man could suddenly look so weak.  Then he opened his mouth.  He was as cantankerous as ever.  Still in the thick of it, making adjustments.  Undefeated.  All heart.

He got his transplant.  He quit smoking for quite awhile.  He set some goals for the rest of his life.  He died over ten years ago.”

“What sticks with you?”

“Mike had asked them to play ‘My Way’ at his funeral.  The pastor obliged.  I was twenty something and still a kid.  I thought the song was about pride.   Years later it struck me that for Mike maybe it was simply about him knowing who he was.  Not many know that about themselves.

We played for him.  Some coaches only desire that.  We played for each other.  Some coaches understand that.  I think what Mike most wanted was for us to play for ourselves.  Few really get that.”

“So he wasn’t a ‘there’s no I in team’ guy?”

“I don’t think he would have known how you could function in a team without knowing your own strengths and weaknesses.  He knew his.  He knew ours.  He knew something about who we could be.”

“Sounds like he made an impression.”

“I loved him.  He loved us.”

I first met Barry Dunn in 2010. It was at a leadership program sponsored by the American Simmental Association, and it was hosted by South Dakota State University. He had just become he Dean of the College of Agriculture and Biological Sciences. He’s since become the president of the school itself.

I recall him to be a slight man, tall and thin. He wore wire rim glasses. It all made it hard to picture him working cows. There didn’t seem to be an ounce of profanity in him.

I was there to learn new things. I suppose I thought I already knew a great deal at the time. A few of the things I thought I knew, I still know. One is that the cattle business is a people business.

The topic he chose to discuss was related to cattle production. Its application went far beyond that, however. Occasionally, I am able to dust it off and make some use of it.

“Have any of you heard of the idea of Systems Theory?”

I hadn’t. If anyone else in the room had, they decided to keep it to themselves.

“Systems Theory is an idea that has been around for awhile. It pops in a lot of places, and can be found in several of the sciences. The idea is that in order to properly understand something, we need to look at how the thing or individual functions and is impacted by the whole of the system it is in.

The popular author, Malcom Gladwell, uses the following story to describe the ideas of Systems Theory. It goes something like this:

On the most basic level there are two types of systems in life: simple and complex. The simple system works along the following lines: You are in your house. You are cold. You turn the thermostat up. You are warm.

The complex system, on the other hand, functions as follows: You are in your house. You are cold. You turn the thermostat up. You get colder.

We spend most of our lives convinced that we live in simple systems. What we fail to see is that most of the systems we are in are actually complex. In such a manner, we spend our time actively working against that which we most desire.”

from the comfort of my house
across a slickened stoop
into the brown grass
that laid in an icy tomb
with a silent hint of green
glistening its way through
ventured I in the January rain
into a frozen world
on the day for MLK

the only sound to rise
against the murmur of the mist
was the cattle who milled
discontented against the trees
and in the heat of living
kept the ice at bay
I thought of people
in another day

headed home from town later
on six lanes that lay new
built to carry those
who hadn’t got there yet
every star extinguished
by this icy mist
in the comfort of the car
heat and noise within