LaVon Griffeon

Describe the area surrounding your farm.

Not rural enough. Our farm is surrounded on three sides by subdivisions, now. We’re a sixth-generation farm. We really have every intention of remaining a farm. And it’s not that I wouldn’t mind being a part of the city limits if I thought the city would stop there, but they’re on forced march northwards to get next to a new road that hasn’t been built yet, so that they can have some more box stores to enhance their bottom line.

Over there would be some [Garage Mahals] that were built just in the last year, and Ankonee has annexed over 6,000 acres currently, and today’s Saturday. Monday night, they will go and try to annex another 1,867 acres on the other side of our farm.

The city of Ankonee is currently at 3,600, and they see themselves being at 70,000 by the year 2020. Iowa’s only growing by 3%, so where these people are coming from is a little questionable. I don’t think that Iowa is growing. I think that we’re simply moving the furniture, and we’re telling kids when they graduate from high school in small town Iowa, don’t come back here. There’s no future.

And they’re moving to places like Ankonee. This week, Ankonee has 885 houses available on the market. And if you ask them how much land is available for development inside the city, they’ll tell you 2,000 lots, but they’re only telling lots that are [platted]. They’re not counting the available acres, which are now at 6,000 and soon going to be 7,687. That’s a lot of acres. It’s ten sections of land.

What kind of change have you seen?

Well, it is my husband’s family farm, so I can only look at this farm in pictures. But basically I grew up on an 80-acre farm in northwest Iowa, and my father’s idea of weed control was me and a week hook. And until the ‘60s that probably held true.

But since that time, we’ve adopted a lot of chemicals that kill weeds. Now, we’ve developed biotechnology were we build the ability to resist the weed spray right into the plant, when we can just pell-mell run over all the crops. We used to just only spray the weeds. Now, we spray everything, which they say that uses less spray, but I don’t understand how it does.

And I also don’t understand if the gene inside the plant is bad for the bug, is it bad for me, too? That science has only been around for 10 years. And, there’s no way that we have any long-term testing on the safety of genetically modified organisms in our food. What is it doing to our bodies? Or, down the road, to the environment?

So, I wish that our federal government or our colleges were doing some basic research on those kinds of issues, but that seems to be farmed out to chemical companies and seed companies to do that kind of research anymore. Many of the grants our colleges receive that are from large chemical companies or seed companies also. So, it makes me wonder whether the results have been determined before the money is laid on the line to equip the lab for the experiments.

What is the problem with pell-mell being able to use a lot of spray?

Well, I don’t think they’re good for the land or the people, or the fruits and vegetables that we’re eating. The residue stays on there. But, we, the farmer basically have been reduced to where we aren’t raising food for the common good, to nourish people. We’re raising food as a commodity, to be bought and sold.

And our goal is to raise the most of that that we possibly can. That’s what we’re rewarded for. And so, that’s kind of the mindset that’s taken over in the three generations that I’ve been around, and seen pass through as the farmer from grandpa, to dad, to now it’s my turn. And I don’t necessarily think that’s a good thing. I guess the way our farm has changed, is that we’re kind of changing back.

When I married my husband, the only livestock that they raised were cattle, and now our farm has hogs, sheep, cows, a cow [calf] herd, a feeder beef operation, and chickens and turkeys. And we’re actually selling the meat to the public. And we’re not doing anything special. We do have chemical-free. We aren’t feeding our cattle genetically modified corn. We are doing antibiotic-free, no hormones added, so we aren’t using growth hormones in the animals. We’re grinding our own feed.

But, it’s not organic. And it’s just naturally raised on farms and on pastures. And that’s all I really want to do. I was raised that way, and it’s a healthy way to give people food, and it’s good – basically, my marketing isn’t to get rich, it’s basically relationship marketing with people. Because I want my neighbors that live in those subdivisions – it’s not their fault they’re there. That was a poor policy decision that put those houses there. And so, that needs to be changed at a higher level.

But you can’t blame the neighbors. And I think that everybody deserves healthy food that they can afford, and we don’t have that in this country at this point.

What’s going on with this farm policy that favors commodity growing?

Well, it’s been just a set of policies that has favored the production agriculture. And we did have a farm policy that actually we had grain stores, we kept it in reserve, and if we had a poor production year, you brought out those reserves.

And that kept the floor stable. But, we went to Freedom to Farm, where we could pretty much raise fencerow to fencerow. We didn’t have a grain reserve any longer. And so now, we see shortages, and we see gluts in our market. And neither one serve the farmer well. Right now, we created a market for corn in ethanol that is really being subsidized by the federal government, and shot corn prices up to $4.

And that is only hurting the livestock farmer, because he can’t afford to feed his livestock grain, and therefore he’s going to eventually liquidate those livestock sources. That will give big business an opportunity to come in and feed – CAFOs, which are Confined Animal Feed Operations – the distiller grains from the ethanol plants to those animals. And the farmer will no longer be in control of the livestock agriculture, the animal agriculture.

Just as you’ve seen seed companies take over a majority of the seed control of the seed operations, we’re now seeing the same thing happening with livestock. And it’s not a good thing.

Who benefits from this policy?

Well, the farmers that usually benefit are the early innovators, the ones that find out about a program, and just grasp onto it, and they innovate early. But, the guy that stands around to see if his neighbor is successful – which is the majority of the farmers – are not the ones that benefit from those programs. And we have jumped on a treadmill in the past three decades really, that has embraced technology and bigger this and bigger that. And I’m sure you’ll hear [Earl Butts] saying, “Get big or get out.”

And so, farmers that used to have a very small tractor now have one of these behemoth machines. But, when you get one, you have to have another. We have six tractors on our farm. And, you just have to do that to stay on the production treadmill, and to keep the livestock fed while you’re out in the field. And you’re plowing, and you’re harvesting, and you’re grinding feed. You need that many – or, you’re told you need that many – but you actually do it to yourself.

You buy more land to pay for the tractor. Then you have to have a bigger tractor to farm more land. And you’re just on a treadmill you can’t get off of. So, I don’t think the farmer wins in that situation.

How are family farmers doing?

I don’t think they are going. We aren’t really telling our next generation, here, follow this prototype. I’m going to hand this to you, and you can do exactly what I’ve done my entire life and continue on this tradition. We’re really having to evaluate because we just keep getting slighted and slighted every year. Fuel right now is costing more. The chemicals are costing more. The seed is costing more.

And the prices just keep going up. So, there aren’t any bankers lining up asking young people to come in and take out a loan to get started in farming. And I think our federal policies have really kind have prevented young people in getting involved in farming. And they’ve also enabled other families to exit farming. And that’s really a sad thing, because it’s a wonderful place to raise kids. And it’s wonderful to have a work ethic and get up in the morning and know what you’re going to do that day.

And we’ve taken the culture out of agriculture.

What political forces are at play, in your view?

Lots of money. I see the big players in the agribusiness industry are really involved in the politics of how we are going to look at our national food policy. And basically, those large players are also looking at the bottom line, and they want total control of our food. And not just in this nation, but around the globe. And we have some very major players out there that are just large corporations devouring other corporations to get to this goal. And the goal is total control of the food supply from, fork to field.

And some days it seems like they’re almost there. They’ve been very good at what they do. And it’s really time for one thing; we frame it as the “farm bill.” And we need to be framing this policy as our “food policy.” And we can live, but not so well without good food. And we’re a sick nation, as far as what we put into our mouths, and the worst thing is that we’re totally disconnected from our food.

And it’s very important to nourish it. But, it needs to nourish not only our bodies, but it needs to nourish the earth and the way we raise it. And it needs to nourish our souls. And it’s not doing any of the above. So it’s problematic.

Somebody must be profiting?

I don’t have details to share as far as the amount of money, or facts and figures, bottom lines. Who the big players are isn’t too hard to figure out. Monsanto, ADM, then you get into the seed companies, very locally it’s Pioneer, DuPont, they’re all here in Iowa. But what you don’t see is how insidious they are as far as the candidates that get elected that make our policies.

And the amount of money that goes into being sure that they have a place at the table through these people, and their voice is heard. And the thing is with farmers, we get out here in our little microcosm, and we forget it’s very difficult for us; we don’t have a lobbyist that goes and speaks for us. And even when we think we do have a lobbyist – such as a farm organization, like the Farm Bureau, they somehow seem to take the way of the agribusiness also, and not the small, $35 member that pays their membership to Farm Bureau.

Lots of farmers know that, in Iowa. And yet, it’s a time thing, it’s a matter of, no matter how much time you invest in voicing your opinion, you really feel like you aren’t being heeded. And so, it’s just very easy to get caught up in your own little world, and hope that somebody else is taking care of the common good.

It’s pretty defeating. Year after year after year, to go the meetings and voice your opinions, and nothing changes.

How can sustainable and conventional exist together?

Well, we often see commodity agriculture slinging arrows at sustainable agriculture, and vice-versa. And I guess our own household is kind of an example of how conventional agriculture and sustainable agriculture can exist together. And if one is truly sustainable, it will be here, and the other one will disappear.

And we kind of live our lives around that motto on this farm. We have two very different things going on, but it gives me a really broad understanding of how we have almost been victimized as farmers into a certain regimen of how we behave, pouring chemicals on the ground, getting larger equipment, having to get more acres to farm.

And suddenly, your neighbor isn’t your neighbor anymore; it’s your competitor. And that just isn’t the way to have to live your life. But, it’s very interesting to find out I can spend my time marketing chickens that are raised on organic grass, and I can sell those at a good amount of money. And I do that with all of our meat that’s raised on this farm. And my husband has stopped using chemicals, and has stopped feeding antibiotics. We grind our own feed. And that’s the way that you’re going to change things, is by providing you have a way, you can do it differently, and it’s not going to upset the apple cart.

He doesn’t care how the money gets put in the bank; he just wants to be sure there’s money there. And right now, we’ve kind of bitten into a way of life that most Iowa farmers have, and that’s put us on the treadmill. And getting this farm off the treadmill is not going to be an easy thing. We have four kids, and most people with four kids are worrying about where they’re going to get enough acres to sustain four family farms. And my worry is quite the different, it’s are four kids going to be enough to divide 1,100 acres between? And are they going to be able to work that land?

Because if you’re working the soil in a way that you’re keeping it healthy and you’re keeping your lifestyle healthy, you can’t have thousands and thousands of acres. And it’s a whole different way of thinking.

You expend the same amount of hours in a day farming, but you keep the soil healthy and you keep your lifestyle healthy. And the food you raise healthy. So, it’s economically viable, it’s environmentally correct, and it’s health-producing. And that’s what we need for a sustainable system. And the conventional way of farming – pouring the chemicals on the land and having huge amounts of manure – is an asset.

And when it’s no longer an asset, when it becomes a liability, then you’re doing something wrong. Because the manure nourishes the soil.

I really believe that conventional agriculture and sustainable agriculture can coexist. One is not right and one is not wrong. But we have a federal policy that really nurtures conventional agriculture at this point in time. If we could also nurture the sustainable agriculture, our society would be so much better off for it. And when the subsidies do end – and they will have to end some day, we can’t keep this up – for conventional agriculture, the lure to produce mass amounts of commodities will end with that.

And then we’ll be able to get back into a more balanced marketing system that actually nurtures farms and farmers and the soil that we exist upon. Because Iowa is only 0.98% of the world’s landmass, but the NRCS claims that we have between 10 and 20% of the world’s finest soils. And so we really have to start regarding that as a global treasure. And we just have to have some policies in place at a national level, a state level, a county level, right down to the cities, that regards our land as something besides a commodity to be bought and sold, and sees our soils as a living organism.

Sees our water as a finite thing, that when the earth was formed there was so many drops of water. And today, there’s still that same amount of drops of water. But a great majority of that is polluted.  And also, the ownership of those things, who owns it and who owns the rights to it? We need some policies directing us. We can’t have people controlling such things as our food system, our water, and our soils. We the people need to have a say in that, and that’s what a democracy was founded on, yeoman farmers as the building block of society.

And I honestly think that some entities see that, and know that the yeoman farmer with the-the opinion, that owns his own land and is-is beholden to no one is kind of a dangerous thing to have out here speaking out. And, you know, if they can be eliminated it’ll make their job a lot easier, as far as the control of our food system.

What’s your message to people that aren’t in a farming community?

Why should you be concerned about what’s in your food? Why should your food be causing a tumor? And what in the world kind of a federal government would allow such a food to get on the market? Why aren’t we labeling our food so that it’s easy to see where it came from? And those are the secret of all those questions is held in the national farm policy.

But what we need to do is actually start referring to that policy as a food policy, so it personalized it to each and every individual. And I don’t know how you make people understand that the eggs that they’re buying in the supermarket may be six months old, because when we’ve not only lost a link, we’re three generations, at least in Iowa, removed from the farm. And most Iowans have a farmer in their family tree.

But they can’t remember how the food was raised. And it’s not just your nine million in the Valley that you have to worry about; it’s far-reaching across this country that nobody knows what’s going into their food. And we’ve been desensitized by this payment system that subsidies us to produce more and more and more. And we’re selling a commodity, and it’s not food. And the American public is told that genetically modified organisms are kept separate. But, when we dump at the elevator, it all goes into the same pit.

And I know it’s in my cornflakes. I know it’s in my corn syrup. I know it’s in my soda pop. I know that I’m eating that stuff. And I don’t know how you tell the American public that they’re eating it, too. I wish I could, because if people could even taste fresh food, fresh from the farm, instead of driving through the McDonald’s drive through, they would be sensitized to what they’re eating.

And we train our kids to eat “stuff.” I mean, in school, they aren’t eating fresh, healthy foods. And so we train them from the time they’re small, that they’re eating chicken McNuggets and processed foods from the very get-go. You wouldn’t buy a bottle of pulverized chicken McNuggets for your baby, so why would you buy them for your 6-year-old?

Have you noticed that campaigns aren’t special anymore? There’s one campaign after another. They roll right into each other. And the Presidential campaign starts the day after the last one got over. And so people I think get rather numb to who’s running for office now, because they just never end. And you can’t keep up. I mean, you can’t keep up with your daily life and what’s going on in the policy world. It’s very difficult.

And so, when you see things that aren’t going right, or you educate yourself, or something happens in the news, or you look out and your landscape is not the beautiful landscape you remember – it’s trashed up with tope-color homes that look like they were put there by a cookie cutter – it’s past time to start holding people accountable. And we elect these people, but due to a time factor, we just never find out what they’re really all about, and we don’t pay attention while they’re making these policies for us.

And we really need to make the connections, even if we can’t personally keep track of them, find somebody that you can trust, and follow your elected officials, and start holding them accountable. And don’t reward them for bad behavior by electing them again. It’s just amazing. Check into where their money’s coming from. And check into how much money is poured into their campaigns, whether it’s private citizens, whether they put a cap on their donations from private citizens and corporate citizens, whether they take PAC money – all those things are important things to find out. Because you will find that a few entities – and they are individuals, usually – are dumping cash into our campaigns.

And the best way to control what goes into your mouth in this country, and the quality of life, is to be aware of who is controlling your legislature or your congressman or the people that are making those policies, and hold them accountable. If they can’t do the job that you want them to do, if they aren’t putting the kind of food in your kids’ mouths that you want, then get the bums out of there and get somebody that can.

And that’s just how simple it is. But you’ve got to pay attention. And if you can’t pay attention, find out somebody or some group that can pay attention for you. And you have to look at what’s good for the country, and what’s bad. And you have to know what behaviors are good and bad. And a lot of us are so divested from what’s going on underneath the table, that we can’t even do that.

People wonder why Iowa farmers are so addicted to subsidies, but policy can be part of the addiction. And one of the policies is that the California and Florida fruit growers got it established that if you have a corn base in Iowa, you can’t grow over two acres of vegetables.

So, that lends to us not being diversified.

It’s the things that creep in in the night, you know? The policy. They can change overnight, and little clauses creep into the policy that you aren’t even aware of. And one that we weren’t aware of in Iowa was my friend got charged a $6,000 fine for growing six acres of beets, because the California and Florida fruit growers got injected into the farm bill that if you have a corn base, which is what we have in Iowa that established how much our subsidies are, then we can’t grow over two acres of vegetables or fruits on our farm.

And so that doesn’t lend us to having a more diverse crop base than corn and soy beans, when you’re going to be fined.

Why do you have hay in the trailer?

Well, we have a pretty diverse livestock and grain farm. We raise corn, soybeans, oats, and alfalfa. And this, actually, happens to be grass hay that some families have problems with generations, and the use of weed and grass. And in our family, we also have that problem, but it’s quite different from other families. Our son and son-in-law went out this year in a major coup, and ordered sixteen acres of grass seed, and seeded down 16 acres that had been in corn and soybeans.

They felt that we could be marketing our hay for equally as much as the corn and soybeans. And so, we are going to be doing that this year, and that’s just the way that changes get made, you institute them, I guess.

How do young people getting into farming and subsidies connect?

Lots of farmers that rent their ground are very dependent on the subsidies. Luckily, this is a sixth-generation family. The land is paid for, and we’ve been able to not be dependent on the subsidies. We’ve also always made it our personal policy not to milk the subsidy program. We do get subsidies, but we could get a lot more if we wanted to apply efforts and be a little less than honest about what we’re doing. So, there’s different ways to milk the system, which are allowable, too, and that needs to be addressed.

No banker in their right mind is going to lend a young man or woman the kind of money they need to get started in conventional farming. The tractor I’m leaning against is about $175,000, and you would need more than one. So, there’s just no getting started in farming, unless you have somebody that’s helping you.

How about other kinds of farming?

Well, yeah, there are different kinds of farming that don’t rely on subsides, at this point. And if we actually reward good behavior in this country, we would find a lot more young people willing to live on the land and farm. But we aren’t rewarding good behavior. We’re rewarding bad behavior. And it is going to end up costing this country a great deal in our natural resources, because we just aren’t prizing our soil and giving back to it the way we need to be.

How about, in terms of the farm bill, the money that’s available for conservation?

We could be doing so much better in conservation. Every county in the United States has a soil and water conservation district, and I believe for the national program, more money is spent on NFL – the Super Bowl advertisements – than goes into the entire federal program. In that one afternoon, on a Sunday afternoon in January, we spend more money on advertisements than we do on a federal program that projects our soil and our water.

And that is a sad statement for America. We really need to be looking at regarding famers who are doing a good job nurturing wildlife, which has no lobbyist, and nurturing the soil, which most people think that’s soil is dirt. But, soil is a living organism that needs to be fed, it needs to be cared for. And nobody is even cognizant of that fact.

Is the government giving you any support?

They cut the programs. It’s so wishy-washy. It’s not a standard thing that you can be assured of year after year. The programs are so morphed that the people that implement don’t even know where they’re at nationally or at a local level. They can’t even tell you whether there’s going to be CRP funds next year, – that’s Conservation Reserve Program – whether they’re buffer strip funds, or whether HEL acres are going to be kept – Highly Erodible Lands – in grass and not put into row crop.

And people rely on that income, and it’s a real dicey thing, as to whether you can rely on that. Especially when a lot of our landowners in Iowa are elderly women who don’t have another income. And we would like to do the right thing, but we’re certainly not subsidized to do the right thing.

Does the government know the soil is a living thing?

Well, I haven’t seen any federal policy telling me that I should be nurturing this living thing that I’m standing on. And I haven’t seen any local policy telling me that I need to nurture this. Basically, in the county that I live in, topsoil is rich, and thick, and stripped off, and sold for development purposes. So, I really don’t see that anyone is saying that the soil is here, not only to nurture us, but for us to nurture it.

Are your neighbors aware of the big dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico?

I’ve actually sat through a program that the Iowa Farm Bureau has put on, that explains to farms what the dead zone is, what hypoxia is, and how it doesn’t have a thing to do with runoff from their fields. And that it’s just something environmentalists are saying.

I’ll try to tell you how I ended up with the mindset that I am in. I was doing a program for elementary schools. And telling them what a wonderful job we were doing raising our commodity agriculture, how we treated the land, and how farms were a wonderful thing. And then one day I had a field trip out here, and a little boy knelt down by a stream and started to put his hand in to get a drink.

And I said, “Don’t drink that.” And that was kind of a moment of truth for me, that I was basically lying to these kids. Because if I was farming my land the way it should be farmed, the water wouldn’t be polluted, and we wouldn’t have to worry about little kids drinking water. My grandma drank the water that came out of the ground, and I grew up drinking the water that came out of the ground.

But I wouldn’t want my kids down drinking out of the stream.

If I could tell my grandma that we’re selling rocks and buying water, what would she think about that? The fact that we sell rocks to people for landscaping purposes, and we have to buy our water. We really have our priorities mixed up.

Yeah, the Farm Bureau has just been a real education.

Have you seen their water commercial? The Farm Bureau puts these things on TV about how wonderful they are, you know? And how farmers are doing such a great job. And one of them is, it’s a water shed thing. And they talk about, you know, the water shed, and how pure the water is, and stuff. And, yeah, it’s just like . . . You do need to find those.

And then [Lori Groves] talks about how wonderful ethanol is, and people trust her. Well, she’s been in your living room for years, and then she quits that job, and she comes back, and she’s everybody’s sweetheart. Yeah, she’s everybody’s sweetheart. She’s a simple, little Iowa girl. She’s not your glitzy glamour queen. She’s Lori Groves, “This is Lori Groves.”

I’ve always said that I wanted to establish PUKE – Pigs United to Kill Encroachment – but I’d want to do it in a hoop house, but people are so out of touch with agriculture, that I could put one pig down on the corner and I could spread my neighbors hog manure and absolutely blast those people right of their subdivisions, and they would think that one pig caused the smell, because they’re so out of touch with what’s really going on.

So, my goal was to establish PUKE. Sometimes you have to sit and make things up. It keeps your mind active. Rick Robinson is the environmental director for the Farm Bureau. And this is a smart growth plan. And it obviously, anybody that knows about the 11 principles of smart growth knows that we’re not looking at a smart growth plan.

It’s always named after some natural area. We pave over the habitat, and then we call it “Pheasant Run,” or “Deer Flats,” or “Prairie Acres,” and you can’t say, the only prairie plant is one that’s potted and brought in. It’s just asinine.

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