Gary Larsen

How long have you and your family been farming?

I think we came out here in 1984. Well, actually it started before that, while my dad was still living, and I started farming five or six years before he died. In a small way. Just farming on the farm. And then I picked up a few neighbors who I sharecropped with, and it got big enough that I went back and quit my job in town and I went to work for a neighbor down the road here about a quarter mile who raised cattle on a farm. And I moved out to his place and farmed, working for him.

Had my own livestock here at the place and farmed a little bit and farmed a little bit more, and it got to the point where as I got a little bit bigger I quit working for him on the farm but I stayed feeding cattle on his place to live there. Until finally my dad passed away in 1982, we remodeled the house here and moved over.

How many years have you been at it?

Well, I must have started in 1975, about. So it’d be 25 plus 7, it’d be 32 years I’ve been doing it. It’s been a lot of fun because when I worked in town, it wasn’t something where I really enjoyed what I did. And to move to the farm, even to work more hours, was fun. It’s hard, working long hours, but it’s been so rewarding, to protect the land. It’s like a big garden. And it’s been really fun. So if you don’t even become rich, the fun is still the best part.

That’s what life’s about. Enjoying it, not about being large or rich or whatever. Rich is just entertaining what life’s about; you don’t take it with you.

What kind of changes have you seen in your years of farming?

Well, it’s the larger farms, the crops are changing somewhat, or you have just two crops, corn and beans, that’s a big change. Not very many people have livestock anymore. It gets concentrated in certain areas. Everybody’s just a grain farmer, anymore. And that’s the biggest thing that I see; it’s just so different. When I started farming, there was opportunities for young guys to advance, and start with nothing; I mean, I started with nothing.

But looks like those opportunities are long gone. Unless something gets changed as far as government controls, you can’t help the situation, because it’s clear out of control as far as I’m concerned. With most of the money going to the larger farms. I heard a neighbor yesterday, telling me he’s had to raise his cash rents to $200 an acre. That’s getting it right up there, you know. There are some higher than that yet. But this is not the best crowd.

That’s the biggest change that I see: there’s no opportunities anymore. Less you talk to these people who want to have a young guy. This one guy he told me they got these young guys who start a farm corporation, but they don’t own anything but the building; it’s just like a hired man. As they call it among us, janitors. That’s not what I would want to do with the rest of my life. I was lucky I had the opportunity to buy some land when it was still kind of affordable. Took me some years to pay for it.

Having a lot of land isn’t that important to me, but to some, so you don’t have to go out and fight over the rent. I probably don’t have the neatest place in the world, but it’s still mine. And that’s about the only answer I have. Such a big change.

What do you think of commodities subsidies?

Well, subsidies in my opinion are okay to protect the farmer, but I think he needs to do something for them. Like take care of the farm. And sometimes it just makes him expand. Drives the land prices up, drives the rent up, to the point where everybody’s fighting over how they’re going to pay the rent. Well, that’s what’s happened, at any rate.

Well, see, that’s what’s caused the land prices to go up, too. Not because the rent, but because the land owner sees the farmer get subsidies and thinks, oh, this farmer’s making more money now, I should get part of that. So, that drives the rent up. The more you get, that drives the rent up. It’s a never-ending cycle. I mean, that’s always the way it’s kind of been. But it’s really gotten almost out of control. And the answer is, if you’re going to pay the farmer, then make him do the right kind of farming. I mean, and protect the land. And if he doesn’t do that, make sure there’s rules implemented so he doesn’t do that. Otherwise you don’t get any money. Otherwise you’re back to the same program. Now we have two programs; I’m in the CSP and I get subsidies.

And that’s why they need to open up the CSP to everybody. Cause I’m getting more money than others who don’t quality, cause the watershed’s not over. So I’m actually getting more money. That’s why they need to swamp the whole plan. It’ll be a big procedure, but it needs to be done.

Who really benefits from the subsidies from commodity crops?

Well, it’d probably go back to landowners and agribusiness, because the more that we raise, the more that agribusiness makes, selling the products more, corn, beans, chemicals, fertilizers, all that stuff. So you kind of pass it on. You get the money, but it sails on through and you give it to somebody else. And it could be with new equipment, too; new equipment isn’t as cheap as it used to be. I mean, you used to be able to buy a tractor for $7,000, like 40-20; well, now they cost $60, 70, 80, depending on how big you get, $100, $200,000.

See, you kind of just take the money in one hand and hand it over to the other, to somebody else, somewhere. But, if you get enough, I guess you can make it work better. I got mixed emotions about the efficiency. Sometimes it becomes more efficient when you’re bigger. There’s more people in it, too. I guess it doesn’t matter about people, I mean, what are we going to do with all of them?

What happens when there are fewer farmers?

Well, that’s part of the problem, that you have less people, till there’s no one to participate in the town. I mean, if there’s only like six people living around the town, then it’s pretty hard to have a town with six farmers living around there. They don’t buy anything. Well, there ain’t nothing in town to buy anymore because all the businesses have fallen by the wayside. That’s just what’s happened.

So what’s your take on this farm bill, which brings so much money to these towns that may not even have a market or a high school?

Well, yeah. It’s probably because of agribusiness has caused part of the problem. Telling people you gotta get bigger to survive, but actually that’s making it go the wrong direction. Actually, it’s not so bad up here in this area as it is over in the larger plantations down south; that’s why the program is made bigger with more money for them, because the farms are so much larger down there.

And the senators and representatives have some power down there and worship D.C. in order to get these bills passed that don’t make sense.

Do you think there’s enough money in the farm bill to promote a more sustainable approach to farming?

Well, there’s not enough money now, but there should be. All the money that goes into subsidies, if it was converted to the CSP, which the farmers could still get the money, but then it would be implementing equally to everybody if they want to comply with protecting the soil.

That’s what it should be about. Because it’s about the future, unless you don’t care about the future. We have one grandchild, another one coming, so it’s about them, not about me, cause I ain’t going to live forever. I got children and grandchildren. That’s what we’ve got to think about. It’s just like a racecar driver who doesn’t look past the end of his hood and there’s a wreck out front and he plows into the whole deal. We got to look past the wrecks.

Do you think past farm bills have included enough to promote sustainable farming practices?

Well, the subsidies have all gone to get larger. It hasn’t promoted enough the protection of the land. I mean, I talked to [Senator Harkin’s] office six months ago, and I said in 1985, they had a farm bill that we had for ten years, we were supposed to implement things like terraces. Now that was at the beginning of my farming years. And all these things that we had to do to protect the land to get money and set aside land to protect it. Then in 1995 they said, well, we’re going to have the freedom to farm bill, you can kind of just do as you want, plant what you want, and you’ll still get money. Well, that became a disaster, in my opinion, because they were just tearing up headlands and waterways. Nobody cared, cause it didn’t matter. There were no rules, that was the problem.

That was why I’m saying when they came out with this new program four years ago, I said wow, this is a good program they’re coming out with. I’m not going to say the name of it, but it was to pay farmers for the right type of farming practices. That’s what it should have been about all the time.

Given that there are so few watersheds across the country that qualify for CSP, is enough money being allocated to the CSP (Conservation Security Program)?

No. There isn’t enough cause they don’t open up hardly any watersheds. And then there are different levels in that thing and there’s no funding for it. That’s what’s happened. I don’t know what the new farm bill will say, but they’re sure not leaning towards doing too much different with the farm bill, the way it’s going. [Colin Peterson] has said that. So that’s the whole problem.

How many farmers are qualifying for CSP funding?

Well, there’s a few in [Ottoman] county; I think at the beginning there were 42 that qualified. I mean I don’t know how many farmers there are in [Ottoman] county. That was quite a bit. But that was in the watershed; we were in that watershed. I know some other people that are in it, but not a lot. Because their watershed hasn’t opened up. I don’t know everyone in every county, but I don’t think there’s anybody in [Adair] county, or anybody I know [Adair] county, well, it could be Atlantic, but there’s not really that many I know that are involved.

Some. But it’s just so far in between things; that’s the problem. Just not enough.

You’ve written that since subsidies help the price of grain to go down, this winds up being a boon to factory farmers.

Well, yeah. Price has been driven down by subsidies, I guess you could say. We had pretty good corn crops, then the price got driven down to where we had to give the LDPs; well; the problem is both the price of corn got driven down below the price of production, so that then these hog corporations could buy the grain with taxpayer dollars because it was subsidized to the farmer to give them money. Which means they were subsidized cause they could buy the corn real cheap to raise hogs. That doesn’t seem quite right, to me.

So they’re getting taxpayer dollars to dig their manure pits?

Well, that’s called equip. Yeah, they get money, it’s called a pollution control. I don’t know if I’d call it a pollution control, and yeah, they get this money for their pits to do that, and then of course the problem is, with the pits, everything from the slats of the pit on up, or the slats on down, is tax-free as far as property tax, that’s the way the law’s set up. So they didn’t have to pay any property tax on everything down below the pit. Didn’t make any sense to me, either, but they called it a pollution control device. Well, it controls the pollution in there; if the concrete cracks it will sometimes leak out.

Do you think taxpayers should be aware that their dollars are actually encouraging factory farms?

Well, I think there is becoming more awareness; it’s kind of slow, but there is becoming more awareness of this fact that these subsidies have come from the taxpayers’ money. And they’re becoming more aware of it. Slow, but sure, it’s happening. And then we just need to get more awareness about this to the people. Because there is a lot of awareness about it, more and more, but there needs to be more awareness about it, too.

What’s the problem with factory farms?

Well, the biggest thing you first notice is the odor that comes out of the building. It’s really, really bad. That really catches your nose, I guess you could say, and of course we know that in those odors there’s nitrogen sulphate and ammonia, and there’s many other chemicals in there, too. And we know they can be harmful if there’s too many of them ingested or breathed in. So, but the odor’s what really catches you right away. That’s part of the problem; it could be not safe to live around them. Two, that they get the grain at a cheap price. Not now they’re not, but they have been, which is a big deal for me. But I think health is the biggest concern, really. I raised hogs for many years, and not in confinement like that. It smelled, but nothing like this.

There’s a complete difference. They say it’s the same, but no, it’s not the same. But it bothered me, being with the hogs in my building, too, because the dust from the hogs bothered my sinuses; I had a lot of sinus trouble all winter. Once I quit hogs, I didn’t have it anymore. Maybe in these fancier buildings they say they won’t have dander; but they’re going to have some. If you have allergies, it’s going to be a problem. If you don’t have allergies, you’ll be lucky.

Does the rising cost of hogs affect young farmers’ ability to get started?

Well, it’s hard for a young farmer to get started without having a terrible investment. I mean, I started with practically nothing, just built some pens and a barn and raised a few hogs and had a market close. Well, as time went on, I still kept doing it, and it went fine; the price was okay, it was a good price; sometimes it was a high price, $68, sometimes as low as $38. But then we got into quite a big expansion with corporation hogs, I guess you might say, probably in the early 90s. It got to where there were just too many hogs, and price really went down. And then there was a situation where the place to market was kind of disappearing; they were closing up some of them. Then if you didn’t have contracts — I never really had too much trouble with that — but then a lot of contract hogs came in, sometimes there wasn’t opportunity. But by that point it got to in the late 90s; I decided to quit in ‘98. I was old enough to know I didn’t want to keep doing this. I wasn’t making any money.

Cause there was one time in the mid 80s, or 90s there, hogs got down to $8. No one could make money, I don’t care who it was. It really drove a lot of small farmers out of business ‘cause they didn’t have a lot of corporation money behind them to help survive them through it. But I was watching as time went on in the 90s, I was losing a place to market. That was a problem. Now, I had to drive forty miles where before I had to drive only ten miles to get rid of my hogs. Now, you have to drive about 40. Most times. Sometimes I could sell them in [Ottoman], but it was tougher. Because the contracts filled everything up. That was part of the problem, too.

You lifted yourself up by your own bootstraps?

Well, yeah, the way I got started farming, and it was available to almost everybody if they wanted to. But I had to work hard. I mean, it wasn’t like I spent time in town drinking coffee, because I was busy out here all day long, you know? Not in the building. But, I was doing many things. And that opportunity was there, and with hogs compared to cattle, there’s a quicker turnover. It only takes, like, five months for a pig to go from birth to the slaughter. So, you had a quicker turnover, so you could turn over another bunch, another bunch, and you could start without much money, and roll into something.

I started with ten sows. And that’s where I made money. It wasn’t that I raised corn and beans and made money. I got to the point where I couldn’t make money on the hogs anymore, and I finally quit. But, I’d gotten far enough ahead that and bought some land, that that helped me. But I made my money raising hogs. To me, it’s plain and simple. I just took them from birth to death. I had the sows, and I kept the pigs, and they were just on open-front buildings, and nothing fancy. But, I had low overhead, hardly any expense. And that’s how I made this thing work.

Nowadays, how is it?

Well, I think there could be in an organic market, probably, somewhat. But, of course, you could soon flood that, too, probably. If you have to go in with contract hogs or something like that, you have a tremendous investment. I mean, you have to put up buildings close to a quarter of a million dollars. Now, that’s a pretty big investment, in my opinion, when I think my first investment was like $1,000.

There’s a lot of difference there. And the price of hogs is still about the same, so, you need volumes of hogs to make this work. But also, if there’s an environmental problem then the guy that owns the building is the guy that’s in trouble. It’s not the guy that owned the hogs, that makes the most money on them. He just walks off. He just takes his money and runs. But, boy, I tell you, I’ve said to many people, if it wasn’t for hogs I probably wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today. Because they’ve always been called “mortgage-lifters.”

That’s what they’ve always been called in the farming, back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Because you could make money on them. You might lose some money on cattle or something, but you would always make some money on hogs, because they turn over all the time. That’s why they were called “mortgage-lifters.” That’s why I decided to start with hogs, because I figured, well, that’s where everybody says they make their most money. So, might as well go do that. And it was good. It was actually good. It wasn’t every day that was great, but we can’t have every day be great. As long as you have some good ones along with the bad ones, or it overwhelms you with that.

Can “small” be beautiful sometimes?

Well, it can be, because actually, when we have smaller farmers, you’d actually see the hogs out running in maybe lots, in little pens, or whatever. Or the sows would be running out in the pasture. Now, you drive by a hog building, you see nothing. There’s nothing live there, unless one man’s going in the building, or something, or coming out of the building. You never see a livestock unless they’re squirted up into a truck and going to slaughter.

You don’t see any animals, and the animals were kind of neat to see. You’d watch them walking around, and enjoy them. You don’t see nothing. It’s just like a dead zone. That’s the way it looks to me. And other people have commented about that, too, that we used to see livestock constantly. We’d see the cattle running out, in the pasture, the cows. You can still see some of that, but you don’t see hogs out there anymore. You did at my place, because they were running out in the pasture, and they were kind of enjoying it out there, playing in the mud puddles. They like mud puddles. They don’t want to be clean. But, actually, the best thing, too, sometimes you get mastitis in sows, when they’re nursing and you dry them up. They have trouble with mastitis. It can be when they’re nursing, too, but mainly when you dry them up.

Well, then I would turn my sows out after I had weaned them, and they would go out in these mud puddles out there. And that’s the best thing for them, that cools them in that mud. And it’s just kind of like a mudpack, when you used to get hit in the eye, you’d put a mudpack on your eye or something. Well, I never had trouble with mastitis. They just used the old mud and water to make it better. It worked. It was neat.

Is there any connection between the fact that there are less hog farmers and these towns look like they’re fading away?

Well, I think that, along with the larger farmer operations, too, that has made a difference. You have less young people out here. There’s less people. Either one. All these things contributed to it, the hogs and the grain. It’s the same thing. It’s the same cycle. You’ve got less people doing a certain thing, so, you have nobody around. It’s pretty hard to keep your kids around if there ain’t nothing for them to do. That’s the way it looks to me.

How important is it to have an industry that attracts young farmers?

I want to see something. I want to see something better with incentive to help, and some of it has to come from the people that own the land, too. They’ve got to be willing to help a young farmer, in some opportunities.

But a lot of that’s kind of gone away. We have so many outside investors; you can’t believe how much land around here is owned by some people out of California. These 10-31 land exchanges should be changed. And I’ve talked to Charles [Grazni], my Senator, about that. Up to three or four years ago. They keep saying – him and [Harkin], too – we’ve got to change this.

But they don’t change anything. There was a piece of ground four miles east of me, three months ago, that brought $5,500 an acre. One of the farms I bought, I paid $900 an acre. Well, there’s a lot of difference to try to get that paid for, and that $5,500. It was two guys with 10-31s that were bidding on it. It wasn’t even a local farmer. They were long out of the business. They couldn’t even buy it. And then they turned around and rented it at a high price rent. But then, the problem with some of that is that the land owners not here, and the guy that’s farming so much, it’s hard for him to do a better job of taking care of the land.

So, there’s nobody here that actually sometimes cares. And that’s where you lose that feeling of caring about the land. Some of the land I’m farming was my great-grandfathers. Well, that’s a pretty good feeling for me, and I really would like to take care of it.

The more you farm, you can’t pay as much attention to every acre. I mean, if you’ve farmed 100 acres or you’ve farmed 1,000 acres, it’s very simple. With 100 acres, you probably can’t make a living. But there’s got to be a happy medium in there somewhere. For me, I don’t have to farm a thousand acres because I don’t have as much overhead. I’ve got most of my land paid for, which took quite a few years. But if you’ve got a lot of overhead, then it’s a different story. You’ve got to farm more.

But, I guess I call myself lucky. My kids don’t want to farm. So, I don’t have to expand into that. So, I’m a fourth-generation, and it’ll end when I’m gone. It could no longer be the Larson name. It was in the Larson name since 1885, and it’ll end, then, unless they keep it, but they won’t be farming it.

And I used to really worry about that. What am I going to do with this land? I want my kids to do this. And I finally, I said, “Well, you know, the honor and the privilege of doing this from my great-grandfather, to my grandfather, to my dad, to me, it’s been fun, and I’ve really enjoyed it. But I’m not going to put the burden on you, that you have to carry this on. Because your life is your life and my life is my life. I can’t tell you what to do.”

And I think they do care, a little, but they’re never going to have the same as me, because they’re not farmers. Both my boys never did like hogs. And, I didn’t always love hogs either, but I sure made some good money raising hogs, and that got me to the point where I eventually got old enough that I didn’t have to raise hogs. But, it was fun, because you’re working with a live animal. It didn’t always do what you wanted.

But, still, there was nothing more enjoyable than to watch your sows out in this pasture, and ten little pigs running behind it, all over with other sows, just running in little rows and groups, just having a ball out there. But like I said before, you go by these big confinement buildings, you don’t see any hogs have any fun. Maybe they’re having fun inside, but I don’t know how that could be. Doesn’t look fun to me. Looks like jail. And I’m not interested in going to jail.

I must be weird. I’ve heard somebody say, just two people, not too long ago, say, you know, I don’t often hear farmers that talk about, you should do away with subsidies. I said, “I guess I’m really weird.” I think subsidies can be fine, but God, let’s have some rules on it.

I’ve always said this. We’ve got to have some rules. We’ve got make sure these guys do the right thing. Unfortunately, everybody that’s a farmer isn’t just a great person. Well, because they must not, because I don’t see them have that same feeling I do. Some do. Others do, but not all do. And I don’t know how you make it happen. Compared to the way I’m farming, and what I have in my life, it’s so much more than my dad ever had. I mean, I feel like a king compared to the way my dad lived. They had running water in the house, but it was cold. There was no heated water. There was two outlets in the house when I remodeled it, one in the kitchen, and one in the living room. No insulation in that house. And they struggled. I mean, Jesus, we’re living on top of the world compared to my parents. I shouldn’t have anything to complain about, except it would be nice if it rained a little bit right now. But other than that, we are living well. We’re kind of spoiled, actually.

But, yeah, you talk about this caring, quality of life. Yeah, you don’t have to be rich to really enjoy life. I mean, I could mention Paris Hilton, I mean, holy cow. I don’t think her parents have done her great justice by having all that money. You’ve got to have incentives for something. And there are people like Warren Buffet that have a lot of money that really say a lot of good things and do a lot of good things with their money. And you’ve got to really respect people like that. They know where they came from, and they never forgot it, and they could almost live like that again, but not everybody does that.

Sometimes money gets people clouded. I don’t know why it does that. And maybe it could happen to me if I had a lot of money, but fortunately, I don’t have a lot of money. So, I can’t get messed up in it.

Well, you know what? Sometimes politicians that go to Washington, D.C. or Des Moines, I mean, do they change? Some of them change. I mean, their attitude can change once they get power.

I remember when I went to become a board member, on the telephone company, that every time that we voted, whether we’d give the workers a raise or not. And if we did, the workers would come around and give me thanks for giving the raise. And I really was uncomfortable with that, because I didn’t think I needed to be thanked for giving something that we thought they should have. And I felt this power that I had over these people that I didn’t that feeling, because I felt like I could ask them to do something that they maybe didn’t want to do or would help think my way. And I didn’t like that feeling, that I was convincing them or overpowering them with money. So, I mean, I had that feeling in a small way, and that’s why I probably couldn’t be a politician.

What do you think helps politicians when they go to Washington, D.C. or Des Moines? We have a system that forces people to fund their campaigns from deep pockets.

Well, I know some that went there, and they said that they got approached by lobbyists, if they did get there, that they could offer them money to kind of think their way, is pretty much what it was like. And if you wanted to keep up and be reelected, you needed to keep having some income coming, because the salary at $24,00 a year wasn’t-wasn’t a lot. So, they needed this income stream coming, and that was one way they could take it. But they would say, now, this isn’t going to secure my vote, but once you get this money from these certain people, in the back of your mind, when you vote, you might tend to think just a little bit off of where you would have thought before when you had no obligations. So, if we had clean campaigns, and public financing, you would not have anybody to answer to but the public. What an idea that would be. And you could vote your conscience. I guess if the people didn’t like what your conscience said, they could vote you out the next time.

We know that big players are giving millions of dollars. Do you think that ends up having an effect on the farm bill?

Oh, I think it absolutely does have an effect to it. I mean, because that makes them decide possibly where they’re going to vote. It can’t help but do it. I mean, if somebody gave me $100,000 and said, “Don’t worry about, you don’t have to think like I want you to think at all.”

I’m not going to forget that. I don’t care who you are. Because you know that if you don’t kind of lean that direction, you may not get that big chunk next time. And if you’re expecting it, you won’t get it, because it’ll go to the guy who says he’ll do that. So, there you go. It’s just so simple. I mean, it’s like, when you’re thirsty, you want water. The more water you get, if you’re really thirsty, you get more water. Well, that’s the same way with money.

The people have the power, because there’s a lot of people in this country. The world is run by those who show up. And if you’re talking about elections, the elected candidates are elected by the people that vote. If you’ve got 50% of the people that are voting, the rest of them are, what, they’re busy shopping at Wal-Mart? Or, I don’t know what they’re doing. But the world is run by the people that show up. So, if you don’t like the way the world is run, show up. We’ve got a little bumper sticker up on the wall, there.

It says, “The world is run by the people that show up.” So, get to the caucus. Well, that’s about the truth. I didn’t used to do this. If you go back 12 years, I was so busy working, I didn’t know I needed to participate, until of course, my kids were gone, well, they went to college and went off. And then we started getting information from Iowa CCI that you actually can do something, if you don’t like the way things are going, you should be able to do something about it. So, that’s how I got involved, and it’s right. It’s hard for people, especially if they’re in they’re in their middle-aged years and they’re busy raising a family, and it’s understandable that they can’t all be involved. But you should think a little bit about it. But I can’t so much, because I didn’t do much about it when I was 40, either.

But I’ve kind of understood that if you don’t like the way things are going, you have to do something about it. And clean elections would be the best way, because I think too, with clean elections, I’ve heard people say – and I’ve said it myself, many years ago – what good does it do to vote? You can’t change anything. Well, yeah, if you have that attitude, it’ll never change, because you don’t do anything. So, clean elections I think would allow because you thought it was all controlled by the poll – the money people and the politics. But if you had clean elections, I think a lot of people would say, well, golly, I think it would matter if I vote because now, my politician is not being bought by this other guy with all the money. So, that would maybe tend to make people want to say, well, maybe it does matter. I think we need that, to give people more faith back, because a lot of them have given up.

They really have. They just give it up, especially the poor people. They figure it doesn’t do any good. Shoot, they’re going to do what they want, anyway. But they need some kind of incentive to realize their candidate isn’t bought by the money, and then they might step up to the plate, when they feel there’s hope. Because there’s a lot of poor people, and I’ve heard this from many people. They’ve just given up. They figure, what good does it do? And I’ve heard people say that, “What good does it do? We can’t change anything.” But, you’ve got to work together. You can’t work apart. And that’s the way I see it. Elections would be the big start, because they do it in Arizona and Maine, and like Pam Yoccum said, they fight tooth and nail to stop it too, in Maine and Arizona. Every day they’re lobbying to stop it, but it’s working.

Cedric said, “In theory it’s a good thing, but in reality…” Critics say, “Money will find a way around.”

Of course, I’m going to disagree with him. Well, his attitude is like what I used to have, what good does it do? But it does do some good. And what you need to do is give people the faith that it does matter. That it will matter. And Arizona and Maine, they have done that, and it’s working well up there. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Democrats or Republicans. The both are winning, but it’s the ones that are running clean campaigns, are doing better. Yeah, it does matter.

I guess I don’t know how to say it, but it’s just going to help. I mean, this guy has the attitude of, just give up. Just take what we can get our hands on and forget it.

Part of the problem with the farm program is that subsidizes go towards corn and beans, and if you talk about health, what you make out of corn – you make oil, soybean oil for fatty foods now – these are not healthy things.

We shouldn’t be [voting] them. I listened to a guy from a University of California talking about that there should be more subsidies, if you’re going to do that, for vegetables and something that’s healthier for people. Because we have an obesity problem now in some people, and we need to feed them better.

So, the program is in the wrong direction. If we’re going to have it, we should promote the others, too, and which would be better for the country. Because that’s what the government should be helping with, not just making commodities great price. For a farmer, he should be raising the proper stuff, me included. But we’re all in this game that this is what they pay us for, so we do this. But, it’s been led by agribusiness to do this. That’s the whole problem, of this guy that you’re talking about. He’s in the game. He’s just in the game until the game is over, that’s all. I mean, he said that to you. He didn’t want to change the game. He’d follow the game, you know? But, I mean, maybe some guys feel that’s the way to go. But, not in responsible living, it’s not the way to go. He’s just hanging on until the world dies, is about what it amounts to.

He’s just like global warming. Well, what the heck? So, it gets too hot. You may be dead someday, of your old age. What about your children and grandchildren? I’ve had people tell me for years, I just had a grandchild a little over a year ago. And for years, people younger than me – 20 years younger than me – had grandchildren. And they said, “Boy, it’s too bad you don’t have any.” I said, “Yeah, I don’t know what to do except go buy one.” But, I don’t know how I do that. But I said, “You talk to me about how much you love your grandchildren. You’d better start thinking about the future, if you really love them.” Because the future’s for them, it’s not for you. You’re not the future. You’re near the end of the future. It’s the future generations, that’s what we got to think about. Do we actually care? We’ve got to think about this.

It’s like the racecar driver, right? You look past the end of the hood. And I think that’s important.

Well, I think the main thing is, and my wife would agree, and many other people, clean elections would be a start to change something. Because I don’t think, according to other friends that I have, that you can’t change much if you have the same players that don’t want to change the rules. And the farm program, there’s not many players that don’t want to change the rules much. Because [Colin Peterson] said, why do we want to change it? We don’t want to change too much. Well, really the program is not working well. Well, it is for some people, but not for everybody.

And not for the wellbeing of the country. That’s why clean elections I think would help. I know it’s working, and I think everybody should support this new bill that Senator Durban and Senator Arlen Specter – you’ve got to respect these two guys – and they’ve got this new bill that’s based on something like Maine. They’ve had it out for four months now. We need to go and ask all the Presidential candidates, “Do you support this thing, and in what way?” Because that’s what we need to do, because I think that’s a step in the direction, to clean up the money.

I listened to a movie guy on Chris Matthews. Chris Matthews said, “What do you think we ought to do with campaigns?” He said, “I think we ought to keep clean campaigns. That’s the best way we could do it.” Well, this came from this actor. But, a lot of people say this. “Why would he worry? He has money.”

There is a proper use and the gung-ho use of pesticides.

Well, I use some herbicides. I use a less rate than some people. And I seem to be able to make it work. I would like to use less, and I try to use less. That’s the only thing I’ve got against “no-till” farming, is that I have to use some herbicides, or I won’t be able to kill anything. Because I’m not doing tillage. So, it’s kind of a catch-22, to do the tillage or to not do the tillage. But, not doing the tillage has really protected my farm from erosion. It’s unbelievable what it’s done. A lot of people are spraying these fungicides out there to increase their yields and things on corn. Now, they’ve been spraying it when it’s dry; it doesn’t do much good. But, to increase yields, they spray it on their bean fields to kill some certain beetles. We’re getting where we’re spraying, and spraying, and then all these products that never should go to the field for two days.

You shouldn’t be out there. It’s just too much. I think we’re just doing too much spraying. I think we’ve got to step back and look at what we’re doing here. Sure, we’re getting a big yield, but then the trouble is, you get a big yield and it drives the price down. So, I mean, it’s just like shooting yourself in the foot, here. We should have less yield, and get the price up. But the thing is, everybody wants to have the best yield so that when they go to the coffee shop, they can brag about, they had the most yield. What I’m concerned about is, who makes the most profit? You’ve got to make profit to live, but you could have less yield and make more money than the other guy. It’s not how much yield I’ve got, it’s, did I do it responsibility? And I think we have to take a look at that. That’s why I like to go to [Starter Fertilizer]. I have for 30 years. And started putting my fertilizer on, and I learned from other people, too. Putting it on when you need it. So, you only place what you need there, because no matter what we do, we’re always going to have soil runoff. As well as we do to protect that, we’re going to have runoff.

I know some people that have fertile soil. Every bit of their soil is fertilized to the limit. If they have soil runoff, they’re going to pollute more with more nitrogen phosphates. But, if I place it where I need it for the plant, and the plant uses most of it, my soil won’t be highly fertile, so if it runs off, it won’t pollute as much. But, I’ll still get a crop. And I didn’t have to go to college to figure that out.

Is there anything available in the farm bill for outreach?

Well, it was in 1985 to ’95, but then they went to that Freedom to Farm, and then they just said, you can do what you want. There’s no controlling it. The only thing that controls is nitrogen use in the CSP, the conservation security program that they came out with four years ago to protect the land, then you had to control how much you used. Up to that point, you could put on 500 pounds an acre of nitrogen, if you wanted to, if it was affordable.

It didn’t matter. There are no rules. Not that I’ve ever seen, because I used to put more on, but I sure didn’t like the idea. And I did, trying to get a yield. But I figured out that if I place it more at the right opportune time, it’s better. I don’t think there’s any rules, until the Conservation Security Program came out, that you had to follow rules. That’s why they paid you. You got so much for doing it differently than you’d been doing it. Or, if you’d been doing it right all the time. When this program first came out, I went to the meetings, and they said, have you been doing all these things? And I thought, gosh, these are all the things that I’ve been doing. You mean, they’re going to pay me for doing what I’ve been doing different than these other guys? Yeah. Well, this is great. I got paid to do what I was doing. The rest of them were complaining. Some of them, by golly, they won’t pay me for that.

Well, you aren’t doing the way that they want you to. Well, I didn’t know what to think. Well, that’s the way it is. But, I felt good about it, that my gosh, I’ve been doing the right thing, then, I think. And so, we all got to get in step. I’m not saying what I do is right, but I was following the program, which I thought was responsible.

If there were more outreach, we’d see more responsible use of chemical inputs?

Well, yeah. I don’t know about pesticides because I just don’t use them. Other guys spray beans and stuff around here, and I just don’t do it. I’m just not going to do it. I just don’t want to do it.

But, I think it can help, yeah. But I really think, too, that you’ve got to make sure when you pass these things, that they have to do certain things to get money, that you have to make sure that they do these things. I mean, it’s like setting a speed limit at 70, but don’t enforce it. Yep, you can’t go over 70. Well, they’re all driving 80. Well, yeah, but that’s okay. Why do we set the speed limit, then?

Why don’t we just ignore it, then? Drive whatever they want. That’s the only thing I agree with my legislature [Kyle Bowder] on, it doesn’t matter what you set. He used to be a patrolman years ago, and he retired from that. And he said, “It doesn’t matter what you set the speed limit at, they drive what they want, anyway.” That’s about right. If you’re going to be responsible, you probably drive the speed limit. If you don’t care, you’ll try to get by with not. So, I pretty much don’t drive the speed limit anymore.

Cedric says that commodity subsidies help our trade deficit, helping average Americans. That’s just a bewitchment of words.

Well, it doesn’t make sense that we’re growing grain. They always said, we have to feed the world. Why is it our job to feed the world? I mean, they have land other places. They can produce, too. And so, we don’t interfere with their trade. We shouldn’t have to buy everything from another country. We could have some trade, but it shouldn’t be a big, gigantic thing like our trade deficit now. It’s the biggest it’s ever been, isn’t it? And we’re getting inferior products for our trade. It’s just a lot of it. All this stuff made in China, a lot of it is just junk.

It’s not good stuff. But, we’re supposed to be sending a good product over there, and they’re sending us junk back? Sure, we can help other countries, but we shouldn’t have to rely on our living by shipping everything over there. But, China is doing the same thing. They’re living has gotten better by shipping everything over here. Why don’t we just quit shipping back and forth? Look at all the fuel we’d save.

Is there any connection between corn going to Mexico and immigrants coming up illegally?

Oh, absolutely. Our grain going to Mexico drove their farmers in Mexico off their land. Because the price that we’ve driven it down to at that time was so low that the Mexican farmer could not grow it for that, which pretty much ran a lot of those small famers off-off their land. And that’s why a lot of them are coming up here to the United States, to make a living, because they couldn’t make it down there with NAFTA.

Our current policy is causing health and immigration problems. Who’s benefiting?

Well, the corporations are what’s caused this problem, of these commodities that are subsidized, now. And they make the most money on this, the more it’s subsidized, the more they make. The more product we handle, the more product they sell. And so, it’s driven by those corporations, I would say. Monsanto and those big corporations, like [Syngenta], but those organizations profit from this, and they’re going to keep pushing that issue. And that’s what helps drive that farm program that way. That’s part of the problem, there’s not a concern, unless some people make awareness to the unhealthiness of what we’re doing.

And it’s happening. Even, like I said before, my wife sells dog food. And this email we got about the dog food associations, they’re concerned about that we need to pass [cool] so we know what the ingredients are in dog food. Well, that could be important for people too. They’re concerned about dog food, and we should be concerned about people, also. But, the corporations, they have the control, and we need clean elections to slow that down, or actually stop it. That would definitely help.

Anything you want to add?

Well, I think we need clean elections, is the big start. Because if we don’t get that, I don’t know how we can change the status quo. Because if they take the same money, they’re not going to listen to us. And you can’t seem to get people to vote them out. Sometimes you think, well, this guy’s been in there a while, he could do some good.

But, I’ve been listening to [Harkin] talk, and he wants to change the program. He wants the Conservation Security Program, more money put in it, but yet, he doesn’t know if he can change too much. Well, then, why are we battling this whole deal if we can’t change anything? What’s the deal, here? We just can’t change anything. Well, yeah, we can. We’ve just got to be willing to step up to the plate and say, “We’ve got to change this thing.” So, I’m a little disappointed in what he said yesterday on NPR.

Sometimes we’re going to have to bite a bullet once in a while to figure out what’s right. Clean elections are a big start.

In other countries, there are a lot of people – like, in France – when they don’t like the way things are going, they have thousands and thousands of people that come out to the streets. We have sometimes a hard time getting as many. I mean, in Des Moines when we have lobby day, we should have 5,000 people come down here. So, we get 200 people in the State of Iowa that care? Is that it? 200 people care? The rest are busy?

I realize that they can be busy and it’s hard for everybody to participate, but it’s just one day. But, people have the power, boy, if they just realize they have the power. If they just go together with all the people together, they could change everything. But, it’s hard for everybody to agree, and that’s part of the problem. But, at the farm program, we wanted it, with Iowa CCI.

We worked with the Minnesota Land Stewardship Project, and the one out of Illinois, and Missouri Rural Crisis Center. And we went together and we had a meeting, and we decided what we’d like and the program we agreed on what we all wanted together. And we took that issue to Washington, D.C., last November. And we all had the same idea. Because you can’t come there with all different ideas. It doesn’t do you any good. So, we came with the same idea. And there’s a bunch of other ideas been brought in there too, by the farm bureau. And I think there’s some things about the program that the farm bureau and I would agree on. But, probably not everything. But, the plan we got right now is not working well. I think it’s working well for some people in large, like Scottie Pippen, probably.

He’s probably happen, and so is Ted Turner, you know? But what do they need all this money for? Well, this is why it’s nuts. There needs to be a cap on this thing. I don’t think anybody should get over $70,000 a year from the government every year, never. Why should you? I went in a meeting up in [Ottoman] County, to meet with Senator Grassland, a couple of months ago. And there was a farmer in there that said, well, Charles, if you don’t – we have this payment limitation of $250,000. How are me and my sons going to make this work? And another guy got up and said, if you need a quarter of a million dollars every year from the government just to keep farming, you need to find another occupation.

Well, it’s true. I mean, golly, sakes, wouldn’t it be great to have somebody give you a quarter of a million dollars? I’ll just keep farming until they quit sending it. I mean, it’s ridiculous. I’ve gotten money from the government before, too. This lady, Hunter, interviewed me on the phone the other day about, she said, well, you got $50,000 back in 2002. Well, I think I did get quite a bit of money, you know? But it was through LDPs, because the grain prices were low. And my government payments, it was a lot of money. I thought, this is really ridiculous. Getting all this money just to keep farming. Well, the price of grain was like, $1.60 a bushel.

There ain’t nobody who could make a living raising corn for that price. So, I think there needs to be a floor in there, a low price of a floor that you can put it back on loan to the government. And that way, the corporations, they’d have to pay it for loan price, like, $2.70. You can just set a figure like that. They had to buy it for $2.70. And the grain companies, like [Cordell], they had to buy it for $2.70.

That’s what the floor is. That’s what you’re protected at. And don’t get any subsidies anymore. You just have a floor on the price of your grain. But, nobody can figure out what they want this price set at. It’s all different. You ever heard of “farm parity” price?

Well, some people say that’s $7. Well, you get it that high, the trouble is that that’s parity back from the ‘teens, you know?

Well, parity might not have to be the same as it was then because you’re talking about the price of land, up to $5,000 an acre. Which is insane. At that rate, I should sell my whole farm. Maybe I should. Just sell my whole farm and leave the State of Iowa. But, with the corporations that can move in within a half a mile of me, and I have no protection, why would I stay in the State of Iowa? And I’ve been firmly planted here because of my ancestry, but I’m almost at the point that I could back up and leave, because I don’t want to live by a hog building and smell this all the time, because it’s terrible.

But I have no rights. I would move to a state, somewhere where I can enjoy nature, like below some big mountain, not in the mountains. The bears live in the mountains. I don’t want to live with a bear. I want to live down where the fires aren’t. When they burn up there I’m going to be down here watching the smoke. But then, if I want to go up there, I can go up in the mountains and then come back down.

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