Craig Lang

What is the Farm Bureau?

Farm Bureau is a policy organization, and we’re in the business to create value to our members.  It has an agriculture heritage, and we’re in the business of sustaining that rural agriculture heritage.

It came together almost ninety years ago so that farmers and rural citizens could have a voice in legislation, regardless of the legislation being county, state, or federal.  They felt that it was very important to have an organization that represents the best interests of those people that lived in rural areas away from the center of activity.

I would say today we’re more than that, because we’re involved across the entire state.  Like the Iowa Farm Bureau, we’re involved in everything from agriculture to education to healthcare.  Those are our three pillars of the organization that are extremely important to us.  We develop policy around those issues, legislation, taxes, issues that are beneficial to the family farm, and issues of good jobs.

Issues of health care, we wanna make sure there’s equity in education, equity in affordable health care wherever possible, so we’re involved in those issues across the entire state, and they do involve the activity areas like the capital here in Des Moines.

The Farm Bill is a work in progress.  What’s the Farm Bureau’s official take on the House version of the bill?

The American Farm Bureau supported the House version. We’re a federated system. The federated system means that the American Farm Bureau exists to support the State Farm Bureau, the State Farm Bureau exists to support the County Farm Bureaus, and the County Farm Bureau exists to support the membership.  And that’s how it starts at the grassroots on policy and works its way up.

The American Farm Bureau through all the work and all the discovery of policy and development does support the House version.  That doesn’t mean that there aren’t parts of the House version that need to be changed.  And there are parts that we would like to see changed.  But we like the idea of the direct payments.  We like the idea that there’s not a changing within the titles, back and forth.  Now, when the Senate comes through with their version of the Farm Bill, we’ll try to get that version as close as what our policy asks for in the American Farm Bureau, and then the Conference Committee really makes a difference.

So, there’ll be some changes made and suggested to the Conference Bill after the Senate Bill is done.  The Senate failed the mark up last week, and so it won’t come back into discussion until after their recess later in the month.

There are eleven titles in the Farm Bill.  We’re really happy about the energy title, because it’s putting two point five billion dollars into renewable energy, which is really important.  That’s quite a drastic change from the last Farm Bill.  But let’s deal with this issue of subsidies, and what they really mean.  Back in 1996, when we got the Freedom to Farm Act, that came through, our discussion was that we believe that the best place, and this is still the way we are today, the best place for a price is at the marketplace.

But we deal with a competitive world.  And not everything within the world is competitive.  The tariffs, and taxes on imports, in some cases, are in such a place that they don’t allow our marketed products to get into their countries.  So, we asked for several things to happen to reduce the subsidization of agriculture.  One of those was a reduction of regulations.  We believe that we need to farm, that we need to be husbandry to our livestock and agriculture in such a way that it protects the environment but we can get to a point where it’s over regulated and costs too much compared to other countries.

We also believe that there should be a leveling of trade around the world so that it’s easier to get our products into countries with less restrictions.  That’s a very simplistic way of talking about trade. We also said when those things happened, that we would have less reliance on subsidies, because the truth is that some of those subsidies we have today allow us to stay competitive with other countries that are uncompetitive in nature of agriculture, and they’re subsidized even more heavily than we are.  Like the European Union, and Japan, India, and some of those places even though we want to get our products into those countries.

And so until that happens, there is a certain need for subsidization of agriculture.  We also believe from the perspective that it’s important to keep agriculture competitive and doing well with itself, with as many farm families as possible on the land, and that takes a certain amount of synergy and energy from a central government, to do that. And when you look at the Farm Bill today, we’re talking seven billion dollars per year that’s going into farm kind of titles, which includes energy, which includes fruits and vegetables, which includes direct subsidies for those major commodities.

That’s very little to pay to make sure that this country still has the best, most reliable, and the least expensive food of anywhere in the world.  Less than ten percent of our disposable income on all of us in this country is spent on food today. And half of that is spent on food away from home that’s prepared for us.  So, when you talk about the Farm Bill and the subsidy in the Farm Bill, you also have to think about the consumer in general, because the consumer is also a huge benefactor indirectly from the Farm Bill, which keeps the necessary amount of food flowing to the tables of Americans as well as those in other countries.

If you look at which sector in agriculture gets most of the subsidies, it’s the commodity group. What’s your take, given that really only a trickle of money goes to these specialty crops?

I’d say that’s true, too, but see in the last Farm Bill they were protected, because we weren’t allowed to put what [Charley Stanhome] referred to as specialty crops on our land without losing the connection to a base in the future.  And so they were protected, it was restrictive planning, and they couldn’t.  So, that in their case, kept us from competing with them on the fruits and vegetables.

But I don’t want to get in an argument with fruits and vegetables ’cause they really are important to this country.  And they have a very important place to be here.  I think what you wanna do is you wanna design a farm bill that provides the most protection for the highest quality food to flow in this country.  And in some cases, that goes to part of the energy bill, where we’re doing renewable energy, where we wanna reduce our reliance on foreign oil.

It’s very, very important, because fifty years ago — Sputnik. It shocked the entire country, and all at once, we woke up and we found ourselves behind the Russians.  I think we’re in a similar place today when we’re talking about energy.  We’re relying upon other places in the world, and sometimes the most dangerous places in the world, for the energy that we’re purchasing and it drives the entire economy.  When they say food prices going up because of ethanol, it’s not because of ethanol; it’s because of the cost of energy.

And we have to be in a position like we were fifty years ago.  We wanna win this race.  And we wanna put research money forward so we can create more renewable energy from agriculture; our farmers and communities are working together every day to process and bring us sources of energy so that we’re less reliant on those dangerous parts of the world for our energy.  And food’s the same thing.  I think we never wanna be in a position where we turn around and say, “Why did we let our food industry leave this country?”

Because it was at a time when it was at ten percent of our disposable income, we spent very little in comparison to a federal budget to keep it there, and it’s not just about titles, it’s about farmers in general.  It’s about agriculture, it’s about livestock producers and crops and commodities.  And today this is the fairest way to distribute those funds to make sure we maintain that basic source of income that our farmers are reliant upon to stay on the land.

There isn’t much support for young people getting into farming. And a lot of towns seem half-alive.

Right.  It’s never been easy to get into agriculture. My dad’s 81, works on the farm every day, my mother’s 77, she’s on the farm, it’s a family operation, and they remind me that back in the days when land was three hundred dollars an acre, it was just as hard to pay for as it was last year at three thousand an acre.  Now, land prices have doubled in some cases where it’s extremely difficult to do that.

But what I would say, from the perspective of young farmers, is that every time a young farmer starts, it’s usually with a mentor.  Even this generation, last generation, the generation before, they either had a father, or a grandfather, or an uncle or an aunt that were in the farming business that helped them.  I’m helping my son get started in farming.  I have off farm income; that’s here.  If my son was married, I’m sure that his wife would have an off farm job to help supplement to be on the farm and that’s the reality of agriculture today.

It takes a million dollar minimum investment to make a living for a small family in agriculture today, and that’s without much debt, and so it’s very difficult to do that.  I would say the one thing that’s different today than it was when I started farming is there’s a lot more opportunity to write contracts with certain kinds of industries within agriculture.  Whether you like the integrators in animal agriculture, if you wanna work hard, you don’t have to own a lot of land, and if you can get the banking, you can start a very aggressive animal operation, which will give you the opportunity to be on the farm.

That did not exist forty years ago. But it does today, and in some cases it means that you can actually start farming with a small piece of ground with a minimum amount of investment, but you’re going to have to work very hard.  Now, how is that different than a businessman in town?  Not much different.

Some towns are half-alive, that’s true. What I have seen over the past twenty years is the towns that have survived it’s been because of a few key people that wanted to make sure that town did stay alive.  Whether it was an industry that came in, whether they became a bedroom community for a larger area, they figured out how they could fit.

And that’s what’s really important to Farm Bureau because we wanna make sure that these towns that are connected all across Iowa, that have a rich heritage that are connected by blacktop and concrete continue to survive, and that’s why we wanna grow the population by creating jobs, and in many cases jobs are created out of modern agriculture because it adds value to that. And the processing industry part of that adds jobs to that, where ten years ago that wasn’t the case.  All our corn was shipped down the river.  All our corn ended up somewhere other than the U.S., where today we’re processing, we’re cracking, we’re making energy, we’re growing our livestock industry, we’re adding value to that.

And each time that happens, transportation’s an issue, and the closer you can do that to the source of where it’s grown, the more jobs that are created and the more opportunity there are for young families.  And I think Iowa is leading the country in creating that kind of value from agriculture.  Thanks to renewable energy, thanks to livestock, number one in pork production, we’re number three in ice cream production, in this state.  We could use forty eight thousand more milk cows in northwest Iowa for Wells’ Blue Bunny Ice Cream, instead of shipping it all from Idaho, we could use it right here in Iowa!  But it takes people to do that.  So, it’s acknowledging where you fit.

So in many cases a young farmer needs to look further than the bean field in order to have an opportunity to live in that community.  That’s really a prize star for Iowa, is our small communities, and we hope it starts to pull people back, but you have to have good jobs.

A lot of people are wondering whether this ethanol boom is here to stay?

Well, I think ethanol’s gonna be a commodity; just like corn is today.  I think that it’s gonna be one where you wanna keep your debt low and keep your bills paid and start to store back capital because it’s gonna become very competitive, you need to be in any kind of situation like that.  I believe that the real value of ethanol is the next level of discovery that comes from it.

And cleaners.  I’m talking about ways in which you reduce the amount of energy need by recycling what you produce in the first place.  I think that’s going to be the real future and each time you do that it creates more jobs. There’s an individual over here in Iowa that’s making top shelf vodka out of corn with the same kind of process that the ethanol is.  And so if you can keep adding value to that I think there’s going to be a remarkable, sustainable years ahead of us for opportunity, but if you’re just talking about fuel and ethanol by itself, I’d say, yeah, I think the glory days are here now, they’ll be here for another year or two and then watch out.

Nitrates are getting into the water table and going down the river. They reached the limit this year, and had it gone any higher, people wouldn’t be drinking water out of the tap in Des Moines.

Yeah.  Well, I think that’s why we’re asking for more research and more discovery.  More support for that kind of industry.  First of all, you have to realize that farmers have done a very good job of reducing and placing nitrogen appropriately for corn yields.  If you increase the corn acres, of course there’s going to be more nitrogen available.  But you have to weigh the years.  What happens in and out.  This was a very wet spring.

Where waters actually leached out.  And farmers are doing a better job and split applicating nitrogen and all those things too.  But if we want to grow our renewable energy sources out of corn, there will probably be more corn acres planted.  Therefore we have to be more, what I would call more educated in a way to apply it better.  For instance, this year, we split applied on our farm.  Not only do we use effluents, from the animal livestock, but we also split applied while the corn was growing.  Farmers are doing that.  They’ve done a great job of that.

There’s also research being done where corn is nitrifying itself. That’s like soybeans; it pulls the nitrogen out of the air and produces nitrogen itself.  That research is ongoing.  But the other thing you have to realize is that these soils in Iowa are so rich, that regardless of whether we had one acre or ten million acres of corn, you’re still going to get nitrogen in the water.

And they haven’t told us yet what the baseline was before corn was grown in the state.  But, just the denitrification of the soils and those halving it happens in nature by itself.  We want a water quality bill within the state of Iowa as a policy position for Farm Bureau and our farmers that shows that we’re making very good improvements on reducing all kinds of what we call ingredients in the water that shouldn’t be there, including nitrogen.

And we’re working very hard to do that, showing farmers practices that takes to reduce that.  And we think that’s going to be necessary as we grow this renewable fuels energy market.  The one thing that Des Moines Waterworks didn’t tell you is that they take the nitrogen out here in Des Moines and then they dump it back in the water so Ottumwa gets it.  So, when he says they can’t use the water downstream is that the result of the farmer or is it De Moines Waterworks?

How about the Gulf of Mexico?

And see, that’s another thing, we can solve that.  As farmers, we can solve that issue.  But there isn’t a federal umbrella over it that says this is really what we want to focus on.  The research money and stuff has not become available to do those kinds of things and I’m convinced we can solve those problems.  Just like we convinced we could be first on the moon, we can solve these things too, because it’s about security, it’s about food, it’s about putting ourselves in a position to improve the environment for the next generation.

And I know we can solve these.  And too many people stand around complaining and point fingers at the things that are happening without giving us what the solutions are.  And we know what some of the solutions are.

One of those solutions is that for instance, we don’t put nitrogen on the soil until after its fifty degrees Fahrenheit in the fall.  And there’s a penalty if you do.  The support and infrastructure isn’t able to handle the movement of that much nitrogen and hydrous to this point where it’s grown all in the fall.  Another one would be say we recommend that you split apply the rest of the nitrogen on when the corn’s eighteen inches tall.  Those kinds of things farmers will adapt to.  And it’ll take good policy on the part of farmers to make sure that happens, but those are some things we could do right now.

And we’ve really reduced the amount of nitrogen that we’re putting on the corn in comparison to what it was even ten years ago.  And think how the yields have increased, too.  Where at one time recommended a hundred fifty pounds of nitrogen for a hundred and fifty pound crop, you recommend a hundred and twenty five pounds now for a hundred and seventy five bushel crop.  So, that all takes research, coordination, and takes a strong will policy to push forward to make sure everyone is coordinating the programs appropriately.

It’s going to require some regulations then?

Well, we don’t want regulation.  I’d much rather see incentives.  And farmers make good decisions when there are appropriate incentives in place.  And I’m not talking about money or anything else; sometimes peer pressure works better than more regulations.  And regulations only come about to take care of the worst offender.  And the worst offender is usually about one percent of the total population.  So, if we could put the worst offender off and take care of everybody else, we’d be a lot better off.

But, if you have the worst offender, then you take care of that through penalty.

What’s the Farm Bureau’s opinion of the debate over local control?

We believe that any farmer, regardless what they’re involved in, as long as they’re a support and a value to the local community, should be allowed the right to farm.  That means that you respect your neighbors, that means you respect the environment, you do everything possible and sometimes you do a hundred and twenty five percent of what you think you should to keep people happy.  Therefore the hog facilities fit.  And the hog facilities fit and they fit because they are of value yet to the community.

They bring benefit in financial dollars return, they provide jobs and opportunity, and then they provide valuable nutrients to the soil for that life cycle of replenishing the soil for the nutrients it needs for the crop you take off of it. But we believe that you should do that balanced with the value of your neighbors.  And we recommend that all farmers, regardless of whether you’ve been established there and have had neighbors for years and years, that when you build, and you start a new facility, that you talk with your neighbors first. Then, when you go past that, there’s a matrix you have to follow, a distance differential for a separate site, and that site could be the neighbor’s home. There’s a long distance in there and then you follow the regulations in which the state says that you need to have your livestock operation.

It’s not just pork.  I mean, it’s any operation of a given size.  To follow that, there have been a hundred and thirty eight new regulations, three major legislative overhauls, on the livestock industry in the last ten years in the state of Iowa, and still people suddenly need more.  But it wouldn’t make any difference whether it was dairy cows or beef, it could be dust, traffic, activity, some of those people don’t want it in their backyard.  And it’s simply impossible to do that and leverage the tremendous value and resources we have in this state.

Ninety-five percent of our land is land that is used to grow crops within the state. It’s rich soils, twenty five percent of the richest soils in the world are right here in Iowa, the rain falls from the sky, we need to leverage that land in a way to continue to bring more value, and the livestock fit within that cycle very, very well.  Because there are many areas of this state that don’t have a cow or a pig or a chicken on it.  That that soil could really utilize those kinds of nutrients.

What if neighbors say, “we don’t want it,” but someone puts it up anyway?

That’s where the regulations come in.  Twenty-five hundred feet.  Half a mile.  And that’s why the regulations come in, because the neighbor says they don’t want it in there anyway.  And then I think, you work with the individual that they landscape in such a way, tree planting, those kind of things, if it’s a nuisance, that you try to do that.  And that’s why we believe you have to have statewide regulation on the livestock industry, because the county supervisors in many cases if it’s local control they don’t want to say.  I mean, they’re voted in by people.  They don’t want to say on that.

And it’s like when the railroad first existed, and the train stops all had different times.  You wouldn’t know where you could go, what you could do if every county was different.  You need everything uniform, not only to protect the investment of the livestock grower, but also to protect the people who live there so they know what to expect.  And through a statewide regulatory framework for the livestock industry, you get that kind of knowledge and understanding.

There’s an antibiotic regimen in an animal confinement operations.  People are concerned about residues, be it antibiotics or chemicals.  Is this a valid concern?

Absolutely not.  They’re not valid within the livestock industry.  I’m a dairyman.  And our milk is tested every time the milk is picked up.  The test is very sensitive.  A spot of antibiotics in the milk, the milk is dumped.  If it gets in the milk tank, you pay for the milk tank.  You talk about penalty.  If it happens more than twice you no longer have a market for your milk.  Within the livestock industry there is regular testing that goes on for livestock.  Those animals cannot go to market; I mean farmers are certified not to do that.

So, there’s a lot of fear there.  As far as crowding, today we’re raising our animals very humanely. We’re raising our animals in positions where there is satisfaction for the animal, that they have enough room to move around.  We’re doing it very efficiently.  We’re getting animals to market more quickly than we did before with more of a feeding kind of a challenge than was ever done in the past.  And we’re doing that, and we’re keeping the price of food down.

Now if your choice is for organic food, fine.  I understand that.  I have a garden.  I like I like my tomatoes out of the garden.  But if you want to work at it, if you want to go out there and scratch the tomato worms off and if you want to dust them off and do those kind of things that’s fine.  That’s your choice but it’s gonna cost you a lot more.  And if we went to a more of an organic production of food say, U.S. wide, we’d have a lot more people in this world starve.  There is no doubt about it that modern agriculture today using the technology that we have and that’s why we have the larger farms because you can plant so many more acres, thirty acres per hour compared to thirty acres per day when I was a kid. That’s why we move in that kind of direction because we really need to be in a place where we feed not only ourselves but the rest of the world.

The organic has its place.  People have a choice.  It usually is made of people that that have more disposable income than others; and that’s not the majority in this world, I’ll guarantee you that.  If you’ve been to Africa, Asia and those parts of the world where people are hungry, and they wouldn’t ask whether it was organic or what it is just so it was there, those kind of things.  So, there’s a place for both.  And you find out where your market is.

But there is an overproduction for a perceived market that may not exist.  Whole Foods on organic dairy is one.  Where the price of organic milk today isn’t any more than conventionally raised milk, and it costs a lot more to feed those animals on organic regimen than it does the other kind of conventional.  So, I’m not going to speak against it, because I have a lot of friends that sell at farmer’s market and do pretty well with it.

We need to raise food for the rest of the world?  Why do you say that?

Well, I think whenever you have the ability or the inherent knowledge to do something well, I think you ought to be in a position to share part of that bounty with someone else.  And at the heart of agriculture farmers who wanna run dirt through their hands and wanna watch the seed grow.  And the more that seed produces, the happier we are.  And it’s quite obvious that we can’t use it all ourselves; so that we produce more than ourselves ought to be in some position to market somewhere else in the world.

Whether it’s a charitable or whether it brings value, those things work into the supply and demand part of it.  But I think it’s just our nature.  When I graduated college in 1973, I wanted to milk two hundred cows, I wanted to farm two thousand acres, I wanted to continuously have a twenty thousand pound herd average for the cows, and produce two hundred bushel corn.  We did them all!  And we’ve surpassed them, now, except for the acres because of the change in what I’m doing today.

But you set those as milestones, and you know very well that when you’re producing more food than you need yourselves, you don’t cut back so others can’t, you increase so others can.

Is the Farm Bill devoting enough resources to develop technology for farmers interested in going organic?

The truth of it is this technology today is wonderful.  And you have to realize the cycle of the plant, if its competition for water is weed seed, cocklebur, and a cocklebur takes more water than twenty five bean plants.  Why would we ever want to invest our money in a machine that could handle cocklebur?  Which has no value outside looks like Velcro.

In fact, it sits in the ground for fifty years and splits in half.  If one half of the seed dies it’s still got another half that comes back up.  And if you follow Biblical reference we’ve had those from the beginning.

Research money, there’s always competition.  Whether it’s federal level, whether it’s state level, you have to figure out the priority, and that’s what I’m saying today, we need to revolutionize the way we think, that we wanna be more energy independent than we’ve ever been before.

And that’s gonna take money, that’s gonna take capital, it’s gonna take researchers that understand that once you spend the money, and you research and discover, you don’t white paper or shelf it, it has to be of value to people out here.  And that’s what policy’s all about.

The Farm Bureau has a strong lobby and contributes to campaigns.  Is there need for an electoral reform that creates a fair playing field?

Well, I believe in fair politics, I believe in honesty.  Where you go from there, how you manipulate what happens sometimes, is very questionable.  I would say, from our perspective where we start at the ground roots level, the most effective lobbying that we have is not on the money spent on campaigns, it’s not on the money spent on lobbyists in Des Moines or Washington D.C.; it’s each personal voter that takes a personal stake in what happens with our policy.

And that’s why we tell our members, when the Senator comes home and has a coffee on Saturday morning in your local community, you be there.  Because it doesn’t matter, what’s your gender, what’s your race, what your financial status is, you have the ability to catch the ear of that individual.  And if we ever lose that ability, then I think we need to look at some kind of reform.  But as it exists today we still have equal opportunity to vote, and if the majority of people aren’t voting we have a problem there before we start changing anything else.

And number two is to influence.  Whether it’s a school board; whether it’s the governor when he comes, whether it’s your state representative, you should be there and you should be listening to what they say.  I mean, the days of the Lincoln/Douglas debate have not existed for a long time, but if we got back there and we did that kind of debate then I’d say, we’d got a better shake up of really knowing what the individual’s like.  And we need some kind of reform, but right now I don’t think we’re at that place, because our individual members back home still have the ability to email, to write, to call, to speak personally to those individuals.

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