Bleeding Heartland - Francis Thicke

Voluntary Nutrient Reduction Strategy Will Not Work

Francis Thicke — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 02:30:15 GMT

We have been hearing a lot of hype from Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey about how the voluntary approach to changing agricultural practices to improve water quality -- as proposed in the Nutrient Reduction Strategy (NRS) -- will be effective. However, my experience in over 25 years of work on water quality tells me that this is very naive thinking at best, and deceptive to the public at worst. Below are the comments on the NRS that I submitted a few days ago.

The science assessment of nonpoint source practices in the Nutrient Reduction Strategy (NRS) is comprehensive. However, it reveals that major changes in Iowa’s agricultural practices will be required to achieve the goals of the NRS. What is lacking in the NRS is a plausible strategy for how farmers will become motivated to make those changes.

The practices listed in the NRS are not new. Farmers have had the opportunity to adopt them for years, but for the most part they have not. The reason they haven’t is that the practices cost money and/or time to implement. Farmers, individually, have no economic motivation to adopt them, and the public cannot afford to pay for them.

In 2012 USDA provided Iowa landowners $33 million in conservation funding, the latest of decades of annual conservation funding that has not shown real gains in water quality. To the contrary, the Hypoxia Zone in the Gulf of Mexico has grown larger over the decades of state and federal funding of water quality programs and projects. Moreover, anyone driving around Iowa in recent years has seen firsthand that a lot of new tile drainage has been installed across Iowa, which will likely increase the loss of nitrogen to the Gulf faster than water quality projects can make gains. The proposed $2.4 million state allocation to implement the NRS may sound like a lot to legislators and the public, but it is a drop in the bucket of funding that would be required if the public were to fund the NRS to a level that would have a chance of achieving its goals.

A water quality strategy that could work would be to require every farm to develop and implement a farm conservation plan which would include a combination of practices from the science assessment of the NRS, which together would meet the water quality goals for that farm, and which on the aggregate would meet the water quality goals for the State of Iowa. Motivation for farmers to develop and implement their conservation plans could be through coupling conservation plans to federal subsidy programs (obviously the state cannot control that) or through direct regulatory requirements at the state or federal level.

The voluntary strategy put forth in the NRS simply defies the odds of working. As one ISU scientist -- who contributed to the science assessment of the NRS – recently told me, “There is no scientific evidence that the NRS strategy will work.”

At best, the proposed voluntary approach espoused in the NRS represents a naïve belief that farmers will now suddenly make major changes in their farming practices – which will cost them money – in the face of decades of evidence to the contrary. At worst, the NRS strategy could be seen to be a calculated ploy to try to buy another five years of business-as-usual agriculture under the guise of a new strategy.

Lean finely textured beef/"pink slime" linkfest

desmoinesdem — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:24:22 GMT

Competing rallies about lean finely textured beef took place on the Iowa State University campus yesterday. Governor Terry Branstad, Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds, and Representative Steve King were among the speakers at a rally supporting continued use of the additive used in some ground beef. Before that event, some family farmers joined activists at a rally to "to protest the collusion between industrial meat production and our political system."

It's time for a new Bleeding Heartland thread about lean finely textured beef, known to detractors as "pink slime." A dozen links to news and commentary about this controversy are after the jump.
First, I recommend reading the timeline of events in the life of Beef Products Inc and "pink slime," which James Andrews compiled for Food Safety News.

Governor Branstad has been on the warpath about what he calls the "smear campaign" against lean finely textured beef, and he beat that drum again yesterday.

"It's your future that is threatened if campaigns of distortion and smear are successful against safe, wholesome food products," Branstad said. [...]
"We need your help to combat this information and smears and replace it with accurate, scientific information that consumers can rely on," Branstad told the I.S.U. students. Outside the lecture hall, the animal science students grilled hamburgers containing the beef product.

The groups that helped organize the competing rally, including Food Democracy Now!, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Occupy Ames, and Occupy ISU, see the issue very differently. From a press release announcing the protest of "collusion between industrial meat production and our political system":

The rally organized by family farmers and advocacy organizations was put together in an effort to correct the misleading propaganda being put forward by the meat industry and politicians.
The recent controversy surrounding ground beef has brought to the public's attention that an estimated 70 percent of ground beef in the U.S. contains an inferior grade beef parts mixture known as pink slime, which the industry calls "lean, finely textured beef". While the issue has been around for several years, the controversy reached a boiling point when the USDA announced that it planned to order more than 7 million pounds for the National School Lunch Program, which according to federal regulations allows ground beef to contain up to 15 percent of the substance by weight.
The recent controversy has once again laid bare the continued problems that industrial agriculture has in hiding their worst practices from the American public and brought to light the negative consequence that industrial meat production has on family farmers and consumer confidence.
"Transparency, knowledge and choice - that is what consumers need in their spending decisions," said Chris Petersen, a farmer from Clear Lake, Iowa and president of Iowa Farmers Union. "The facts are now coming in and once again people are questioning our food system blessed by the FDA and USDA and a lot of politicians influenced by processors, industrial agriculture, lobbyists and campaign contributions."
Petersen's comment about transparency in food choice and undue political influence is especially important considering the revelation that Eldon and Regina Roth, the owners of Beef Products Inc., the world's largest producer of pink slime, have contributed an estimated $800,000 to local, state and federal elected officials, including more than $150,000 to Governor Branstad.
With the recent loss of livestock reforms in Washington DC, known as GIPSA, which were required market protections won during the 2007 Farm Bill and were gutted last winter under meat industry pressure, farmers and ranchers are outraged over the continued political influence of the meat industry, which has driven more than 80,000 beef cattle producers out of business in the past decade with little response from Congress or USDA officials.
"Family farmers and ranchers are being used again by giant agribusiness and their pet policies to gain the public's support for one of their most unethical practices that actually cuts the demand for beef cattle," said George Naylor, a farmer near Churdan, Iowa and the past president of the National Family Farm Coalition. "Farmers, ranchers, and the public should not want 'cheap' food, but food of good quality that's affordable," Naylor continued.
Farmers and ranchers are so outraged over the obvious political favors and deliberate PR spin being waged by the meat industry and political supporters that cattle producer and independent meat processor Mike Callicrate travelled from as far as Colorado to make sure that America heard the message loud and clear.
"The use of pink slime is a grave betrayal of trust to our beef eating customers. Selling adulterated, otherwise inedible tissue, to uninformed people is wrong. These irresponsible practices by USDA and our short-sighted, greed driven meat industry are ruinous to our reputation, our financial future and America's food system," said Callicrate.

Food Democracy Now! sent out an e-mail blast on April 10 challenging the safety of "pink slime." Excerpt:

The sad truth is, despite what a number of politicians and the Industrial Meat propagandists would have you believe, before Beef Products Inc. (BPI) invented Pink Slime in the 1990s, this meat by-product would have been used for dog food. [3] Sadly, now it's ending up in our hamburgers and our children's school lunches.
What do USDA scientists say about Pink Slime?
Gerald Zirnstein, a retired USDA microbiologist who worked at the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service, first coined the phrase "pink slime" in 2002 after touring a BPI plant and has recently told the media, "I have a 2-year-old son, and you better believe I don't want him eating pink slime when he starts going to school." [4]
According to The Daily, retired USDA microbiologist Carl Custer, a 35-year veteran of the Food Safety Inspection Service said, "the idea of mixing in BPI's Lean Beef Trimmings into more nutritious, pure ground beef was itself problematic." He also told The Daily, "My main objection was that it was not meat". In addition, a study conducted by Zirstein and Custer classified the trimmings as a "high risk product."5
Why then did three governors recently rush to the Midwest to defend Pink Slime and help promote a food adulteration practice that should never have been allowed in our food supply? Perhaps it is because the owners of Beef Products Inc. have donated nearly $800,000 to political candidates in the past 10 years, including more than $150,000 to Governor Terry Branstad of Iowa, where BPI operates a plant in Waterloo.
Even worse, Secretary Vilsack and a top USDA food safety official joined this misguided effort to defend Pink Slime.[6][7]
Click here to tell Secretary Vilsack "No Pink Slime in Our Children's School Lunches - not now, not ever!"
http://action.fooddemocracynow...
Pink Slime and The New York Times exposé
The process of creating "lean, finely textured beef" aka Pink Slime allows meat processors to take leftover beef scraps, connective tissue, ligaments and other inedible beef parts, spin them in a centrifuge, heating the "parts" until they liquefy and treating the resulting substance with a blast of ammonia. While the use of ammonium hydroxide is used to kill deadly diseases such as E. coli and salmonella, Beef Products Inc. has said that its product is absolutely safe. The original exposé of Pink Slime in a 2009 New York Times article proves otherwise.8
According to the original 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times investigative report, "Government and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment". As a result of the New York Times investigation and numerous recalls of meat containing BPI's pink slime, the USDA revoked 'Beef Products' exemption from routine testing and conducting a review of the company's operations and research."
Despite the propaganda that BPI and Industrial Meat's PR spin team keep repeating, BPI and their "barely meat" by-products have been found in violation of basic food safety standards and have had higher positive test counts for foodborne disease multiple times.

Branstad has emphasized the economic importance of lean finely textured beef production to food workers and cattle producers. Others counter that small cattle producers have been hurt by widespread use of the product. At the competing rally, some farmers told Radio Iowa that lean finely textured beef "has eliminated the need for more than a million cows mostly from independent farms since the 1990s."

Representative Steve King has been among the vocal defenders of lean finely textured beef. He took up Branstad's call for a Congressional investigation into critics of the product.

King has asked Frank Lucas (R-OK), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee to host a hearing that would bring in witnesses to testify on the media firestorm and consumer backlash over the product, which has led to three plant suspensions and sidelined 650 workers in Texas, Kansas, and Iowa -- including some 200 workers in King's district.
"Witnesses would be under oath and they're of course obligated by law to tell the truth, those who have been the ones who have perpetrated this smear campaign against one of the stellar companies in the country," King recently told an Iowa radio station. "I think they'll have an obligation then to explain themselves why they could not base their allegations on facts and what they've done to damage an industry."
The congressman said he believes the campaign is also an "assault" on meat. "I'd like to look at that further," he said. "Right now, I'm focused on helping BPI get their brand back and their market share back."
Tamara Hinton, communications director for the ag committee, told Food Safety News that, though they are monitoring the issue "closely," a hearing has not been scheduled.
King said he was not considering legislation or any type of "punishment" to address the issue, but is focused on getting the truth out. "Once we get the truth out, then we might look at what we might provide for solutions."

Adam Ozimek examined the potential economic and environmental impact of not using lean finely textured beef in an interesting post called "Why You Should Learn to Love Pink Slime."

In this case the joint products are the various beef cuts of beef and pink slime, and the shared costs include things like the price of raising the cow. In these cases profit maximization means considering the total marginal revenue of each unit, which in this case is each cow. A decrease in the demand for the pink slime will drive down the marginal revenue of a cow, which will lower the profit maximizing number of cows produced.
However, that is not the end of the story, because pink slime is also a substitute for other parts of the cow, namely ground beef. Schools that are replacing pink slime seem to be doing so with ground beef rather than, say, vegetables. This means that a lot of the decline in the demand for pink slime will be offset by an increase in demand for normal ground beef, which will mean more cows will be slaughtered.
So will the number of cows produced and slaughtered increase or decrease? In the end, the cattle industry reports that this filler saves about 10 to 12 pounds of edible meat from every cow, and this is the equivalent of 1.5 million heads of cattle. Despite the lower revenues from each cow discussed above, the demand shift effect will likely outweigh the lower profit effect so that the net impact will be a significant increase in the number of cattle that will be raised and slaughtered every year.
You are probably wondering why we should even care how many cows are produced? After all, if a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about. But in his forthcoming book, An Economist Gets Lunch, Tyler Cowen argues that less cows are a good thing given the polluting methane that they produce (cow farts). So we should worry about the negative environmental externalities that this increased production of cows lead to. In addition, [Marion] Nestle reports that half of weight of the 34 million cattle slaughtered each year goes to human consumption, and some of what doesn't get eaten goes into landfills or gets burned up, which could also create environmental costs.
While the environmental impacts of getting rid of pink slime aren't certain, intuitively we should not find it too surprising if it turns out getting less food out of each cow is bad for the environment.

Just last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved labeling of the percentage of lean finely textured beef from BPI. Speaking to Radio Iowa,

BPI'S Rich Jochum says while ground beef is a single ingredient product and that LTFB is not required to be listed separately on any label, the company believes the voluntary labeling is an important first step to restore consumer confidence in their ground beef.
Jochum says based on the number of taste panel studies conduction using BPI'S lean beef and strong consumer preference for ground beef containing LFTB, the company feels this will allow their customers to provide more options to consumers and pave the way for BPI'S lean beef to re-establish its place in the market.

But many consumers don't want anything to do with this product. That's why the fast food chain Wendy's has been advertising, "We've never used 'pink slime' and we never will. That's our promise to you. That's Wendy's Way." That ad got the public relations firm that created it in trouble with BPI, which was another client of the same firm. Dave Dreeszen reported for the Sioux City Journal, "The conflict forced Ketchum to turn over the BPI work to another firm in its Omnicom network."

Finally, Mark Bittman wrote a good piece about "The Pink Menace for the New York Times opinion page.

A little review: Lean Finely Textured Beef was born about 10 years ago, as an attempt to eliminate E. coli from ground beef. Using fatty beef trimmings, which are especially susceptible to E. coli and salmonella contamination, B.P.I. created a product that could be sprayed with ammonia (yes, that stuff, referred to by B.P.I.'s former quality assurance manager as "Mr. Clean," in this dramatic piece by Michele Simon) to kill the bacteria. It was then mixed with "normal" ground beef. Voilà: safe hamburgers.
Except that despite B.P.I.'s claim that the ammonia treatment killed E. coli and salmonella, and despite the U.S.D.A.'s support for this process, those pathogens have been found in B.P.I. meat.[1] Oops.
But there's an irony: the stuff is gross, for sure, but it's far from the most disgusting meat product out there, and at least its origins reflect an attempt to make meat safer. Some argue, correctly, that other processed meats are much worse, and that ammonia isn't nearly the most egregious chemical that's approved for use on meat without your knowing it.[2]
Besides, pink slime could conceivably even be helping: According to the Centers for Disease Control, E. coli O157:H7 illnesses are down 48 percent over the last decade. (And, as my colleague Andy Revkin points out, some 1.5 million additional cattle will need to be raised and slaughtered to fill the "pink slime gap.")

I recommend clicking through to read Bittman's whole piece.

The floor is yours, Bleeding Heartland readers.

UPDATE: Lena Groeger at ProPublic posted a useful guide to the differences between lean finely textured beef ("pink slime"), mechanically separated meat ("white slime"), and advanced meat recovery (no catchy shorthand reference).

Nuclear power in Iowa links and discussion thread

desmoinesdem — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:01:08 GMT

Expanding nuclear power is again a hot topic at the Iowa statehouse. It's not clear whether Iowa Senate Commerce Committee Chair Matt McCoy can find the votes he needs to advance House File 561. McCoy announced last week that new language in the bill would protect consumers and satisfy a majority of his committee members. However, opponents say the changes address only one of many problems in a bill that would primarily benefit MidAmerican Energy at the expense of its ratepayers. McCoy was forced to delay consideration of House File 561 on March 8, but he is expected to bring up the bill before his committee sometime this week--if he has the votes.

Follow me after the jump for analysis on the prospects for passing House File 561 and the merits of the bill.
Political problems for House File 561

McCoy is under pressure to move this bill quickly, because March 16 is the second "funnel" deadline of the legislative session. After that date, most non-appropriations bills that have not passed one chamber of the legislature and at least one committee in the other chamber will be considered dead for the session. Leadership can make exceptions to this rule, but Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal has said he's unsure whether Senate Democrats will want to pass the pro-nuclear bill. MidAmerican is a big employer in Gronstal's district, and he personally supports the legislation if consumers can be protected.

The Iowa House approved House File 561 last year, but the bill stalled in the Iowa Senate, partly because of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima and partly because of a strong lobbying effort by the American Association for Retired Persons. The AARP has made stopping this "raw deal for Iowa consumers" one of its legislative priorities for 2012.

McCoy became chair of the Senate Commerce Committee after Swati Dandekar stepped down to take a job on the Iowa Utilities Board. Nine Democrats and six Republicans now serve on the committee. The Democrats are McCoy, Tom Rielly, Daryl Beall, Joe Bolkcom, Tom Courtney, Brian Schoenjahn, Mary Jo Wilhelm, and Liz Mathis (who won the special election to replace Dandekar). The Republicans are Bill Anderson, Rick Bertrand, Randy Feenstra, Steve Kettering, Pat Ward, and Brad Zaun.

McCoy delayed one committee vote on House file 561 in late January after the AARP mobilized approximately 1,500 phone calls to the Senate switchboard opposing the bill. Many Iowa environmental organizations have also urged members to contact their lawmakers, but there's no doubt that the AARP has generated far more contacts to grab the senators' attention.

On March 6, McCoy announced that he had the votes to move House File 561, thanks to "a consumer-friendly amendment."

The compromise would require that MidAmerican, Iowa's largest utility, have financing in place before beginning construction of a nuclear power plant. Once state regulators approve a new plant, the utility would have to carry out construction.
Some legislators had worried earlier versions of the measure would allow the utility to raise rates to pay for the plant, without being committed to actually building the facility. They said consumers could end up with higher rates and no new power plant to show for it.

McCoy scheduled a Commerce Committee meeting to consider the bill on March 8. But he had to postpone that meeting when two members could't be there. He told the Des Moines Register that he expected his bill to clear the committee "by a razor thin margin" of a vote or two.

Let's back up for a moment to March 2011, when the Iowa Senate Commerce Committee approved Senate File 390, a bill very similar to House File 561, by 13 votes to 2 (pdf). Only Bolkcom and Wilhelm voted no. Eleven members who voted for the pro-nuclear legislation last year still serve on the Commerce Committee (Mathis has replaced Dandekar, and Bertrand has replaced Jerry Behn).

Why is McCoy having so much trouble finding the eighth vote he needs to move House File 561 now? Apparently he can no longer count on help from the Republicans on his committee.

The Des Moines rumor mill has been saying for weeks that Iowa Senate Republicans are backing away from the nuclear bill. The supposed thinking is, why help Democrats pass something a powerful corporation wants this year? Republicans may win a Senate majority this November, pass something similar to House File 561 next year, and take the political credit for themselves.

The latest statewide poll for the Des Moines Register found 77 of respondents opposed "rules allowing a utility to charge its customers up front for the costs to plan and build a nuclear power plant." Only 18 percent of the Iowans surveyed supported the idea. This poll gives Republicans another good reason not to associate themselves with House File 561 during an election year.

Incidentally, I can't recall any GOP state senators criticizing this legislation during 2011. Only two of the 60 Iowa House Republicans voted against House File 561.

If my analysis is correct and Republicans won't help McCoy move House File 561 through his committee, then he can't afford to lose more than one of the nine committee Democrats. Joe Bolkcom remains solidly opposed to this legislation; he was part of a group calling on Democratic Senate colleagues to shelve the bill last March.

My guess is that the weakest links for McCoy are Wilhelm, Mathis, and Schoenjahn. Wilhelm already voted against this concept in committee last year, and she is facing a tough re-election battle in Iowa Senate district 26.

Schoenjahn is up for re-election this year in Iowa Senate district 32. I got a kick out of this photo of him late last week holding 97 requests from AARP members wanting to meet regarding House File 561. Each slip of paper corresponds to someone who came to the state capitol in person. I can only imagine how many phone messages Schoenjahn received from AARP members last week.

Mathis is in a tough spot, because Iowa's only existing nuclear power plant is a major employer in her district. Blog for Iowa posted an excerpt from her recent newsletter, which discussed House File 561.

"Please know this: I'm doing my homework on this topic, asking a lot of questions, and paying attention to what you are saying. There are multiple facets to this bill and the arguments surrounding nuclear power and how it should be funded. I have a nuclear power plant in my district that employs 600 people and works with the REC's [rural electric cooperatives] to provide power to our residents. HF 561 has generated many phone calls and emails. I have seen several of you here at the State Capitol."

My money is on Mathis supporting the bill because of local interests, but we may never find out if McCoy never brings it up for a committee vote.

The AARP had "a full contingent of members" at the capitol on March 8, waiting for the Commerce Committee meeting McCoy canceled. They'll be back if the bill comes up this week. Environmental groups are also sending out action alerts to members regarding House file 561, and Friends of the Earth is running this television commercial against the bill in the Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Sioux City markets.

Last note on political prospects: moving House File 561 through the Commerce Committee before the funnel deadline does not guarantee final passage of the bill. Similar legislation cleared that committee in 2011 but never came up for a floor vote. As I mentioned above, nine Democratic senators are on record opposing this bill, not counting Wilhelm, who voted against similar legislation in committee a year ago. House File 561 would need substantial support from Republicans to reach 26 votes on the floor.

Substantive problems with House File 561

McCoy's "consumer-friendly" amendment addresses only one of many concerns for Iowa consumers: the possibility that MidAmerican could keep extra money charged to ratepayers even if the company didn't pursue construction of a nuclear reactor. Anthony Carroll, AARP Iowa Associate State Director for Advocacy, responded in this press release on March 7:

While it is being reported that a "deal" has been reached to improve House File 561 to better protect consumers from higher utility rates to pay upfront for new nuclear power, Iowans need to know that even with proposed changes, this legislation is still a bad deal for Iowa consumers.
AARP welcomes Senate interest in adopting true consumer protections, but our analysis of new provisions touted as bill "improvements" finds this legislation still neglects to address basic safeguards for protecting consumers from runaway costs and risk shifting. In the amended version, there are still no caps on costs to consumers, and the utility company can still recover all accumulated costs even if a potential plant is not completed.
This is the third time it's been promised that consumers would be protected by this legislation. The Iowa Utility Board staff analysis warned of the lack of consumer protections in the proposal after the first two versions of "consumer protections." With the exception of giving the Iowa Utility Board more time to staff up, this new amended bill fails to address the many red flags raised by Iowa Utility Board staff memo analysis, such as decreased ability to protect ratepayers from a higher return structure of financing between the parent company (Berkshire Hathaway) and the subsidiary (MidAmerican).
AARP remains opposed to HF 561 as the amended version continues to shift the high costs and cancellation risks for new nuclear power onto ratepayers rather than the utility companies and their shareholders.

The Iowa Utilities Board is neutral on House File 561, but Carroll is correct to point out that the seven-page analysis IUB staff prepared in December 2011 raised many possible concerns about the impact of this legislation on ratepayers. You can read that memo here (pdf).

Mark Cooper of Vermont Law School's Institute for Energy and the Environment also commented on March 7 that McCoy's proposed improvements "do nothing to fix the underlying flaws in the legislation."

The recent amendments proposed in the Senate Commerce Committee do nothing to fix the underlying flaws in the legislation. Mid-American would still collects from ratepayers for years, or even decades before the reactor is used and useful at an excessive rate of return. And all of the risk of nuclear cost and cost overruns would fall on ratepayers. The harmful effects of these perverse incentives are still in place.
• By conferring a special advantage on nuclear, it threatens to distort the utility and regulatory decision making process and gives utilities an incentive to choose investments and make construction decisions that harm ratepayers.
• Beyond the initial choice of projects, shifting the risk of nuclear reactor construction onto the backs of ratepayers creates an ongoing problem because diminishes the incentive to drive a hard bargain with vendors that protects ratepayers or recover costs from joint owners.
• By excusing nuclear reactors from rigorous comparative analysis of alternatives, it all but guarantees less costly alternatives will be passed over.
• Because nuclear reactors are so risky and impossible to finance in normal capital market, the utilities are pushing for advanced and guaranteed recovery of all costs, but certainty denies regulators the flexibility that is needed in an uncertain and rapidly changing environment and ties the hands of the IUB in its efforts to balance the interest of ratepayers and utility shareholders.
• The need to accelerate cost recovery creates severe intergenerational inequities in cost recovery, violating the fundamental principle that those who consume the output of a plant should bear its costs.
• Having guaranteed utilities cost recovery on an annual basis, the IUB will be under greater pressure to approve "incremental" additions to cost even when those costs are the result of utility error.

Last year, Cooper wrote a lengthy report about House File 561, highlighting many problems with the advanced cost recovery model.

The bills moving through the Iowa legislature are among the most aggressive in removing consumer protection as any in the nation.
• The rolling review applies to all costs associated with development and construction,
• with annual true ups that appear to escape prudence review.
• The return on equity cannot be adjusted for the shifting of risk to ratepayers.
• There is guaranteed recovery of all costs of an abandoned plant and stranded costs for facilities displaced by the nuclear reactor at a full rate of return.
• All advanced costs recovered from ratepayers are excluded from the possibility of refunds that might result from a court case.
• It excuses the utility from showing that it "has considered other source for long-term electricity supply," of that the nuclear reactor is "reasonable when compared to other feasible alternative sources of supply," While it applies such language to all other feasible alternative sources of supply.
• Language that would have allowed alternatives other than nuclear to be selected on the basis of competitive bidding was stricken from the Senate versions.
Nuclear reactors would be excused from the used and useful standard and the least cost principle, while prudence reviews will be rolling and partial at best because they are based on rolling, forward looking analysis and preclude or discourage backward looking examination of actual utility behavior. The approach is an open invitation to cost overruns and the utility is on record as opposing mechanisms that would protect ratepayers from overruns.
Between the relaxed regulation of nuclear costs, the guaranteed recovery of abandonment and stranded costs, and the disadvantage at which alternative resources are placed, ratepayers in Iowa are certain to have higher electricity bills as a result of this legislation that they would have if it is not enacted.

The Florida legislature passed a similar law in 2006, and now some analysts worry that the electricity rate hikes may hurt economic growth. Florida Republican State Senator Mike Fasano published an op-ed in the Iowa City Press Citizen on February 14 urging Iowa lawmakers not to repeat Florida's mistake.

In 2006, the Florida Legislature passed a bill that included a provision allowing investor-owned utilities to charge ratepayers for construction costs for new nuclear reactors - even before the reactors are built and delivering power. We thought this was a good way to spur new electricity generation in our state.
I voted for the legislation based on the information and analysis of costs provided at that time. But the cost estimates we were provided weren't accurate, and costs have escalated three to four times. The reactors still aren't built, and just this week we learned that the utility that pledged to build them is canceling its construction contract. That means Floridians are left footing the bill - an increase of as much as $50 per month or more per family - for reactors that may never exist. [...]
As I have seen the Florida law's consequences to our state's families and businesses, I've changed my mind about the wisdom of such a policy. It is bad for consumers and bad for our state. That is why I am now sponsoring a bill that would prevent advanced cost recovery for nuclear reactors.

The consumer protection problems alone are grounds to scrap House File 561. There are also solid environmental reasons to oppose this bill. The Iowa Environmental Council pointed out last week that even as amended, House File 561 "gives nuclear power in Iowa special advantages that will make developing wind, solar, and other renewables more difficult for years to come."

It's also worth remembering that part of Iowa lies in an active seismic zone. The last major earthquake in the Midwest was two hundred years ago, but something on a similar scale could happen again. On March 11, the first anniversary of last year's disaster at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant, Dr. Arjun Makhijani spoke in Des Moines and Iowa City about the dangers of nuclear power. Makhijani is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Maryland. He described nuclear reactors as "risky and expensive" and "expressed a strong opinion that the United States is not putting enough emphasis on testing our own reactors against similar situations." The environmental groups Friends of the Earth, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Sierra Club Iowa Chapter supported Makhijani's Iowa visit and presentations.

On March 9, organic farmer and former Secretary of Agriculture candidate Francis Thicke published an op-ed in the Des Moines Register and Iowa City Press-Citizen about the risks nuclear power poses to Iowa farmers. Excerpt:

Fukushima was one of the primary agricultural areas in Japan. After radiation spread from the failed nuclear reactors to surrounding land, sales collapsed for beef, rice, fruit and other agricultural products from the area. Since the disaster began, the Japanese government has banned the sale of milk and produce from a large region including Fukushima and three other prefectures.
Unable to sell their contaminated products on the market, farmers dumped millions of gallons of milk into rivers and tons of vegetables into pits. Twenty thousand cattle farmers were asked to stop grazing their cattle, costing them $600 million in feed silage. The total costs to Japanese farmers from the Fukushima disaster will not be known for years, but they almost certainly will be in the billions of dollars. [...]
The Fukushima disaster covered an area equivalent to 20 percent of Iowa with radiation. Were that to happen in Iowa, it would be disastrous for our people and our agriculture. [...]
Rather than giving preferential treatment to MidAmerican so that it can build nuclear reactors that put us all in danger, our government should support polices to develop a wide array of energy solutions that will help farmers become more energy self-sufficient with wind, solar and other safe and truly renewable energy systems. This would give us distributed electricity production and the wealth created would stay in local communities.

MidAmerican CEO Bill Fehrman said last month that if the Iowa legislature doesn't approve something like House File 561, his company will move toward building a new natural gas-fired power plant to replace some of the electricity generated by aging coal-fired plants. That sounds like a good plan to me. Renewables International magazine discussed Germany's shift away from nuclear power toward natural gas and renewable energy here.

Before I open the floor for comments, here's the television commercial Friends of the Earth launched last week in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Sioux City.

MidAmerican responded with its own YouTube video (not running on television). Paul Deaton responded at Blog for Iowa:

Bill Fehrman, MidAmerican Energy CEO, said the legislation was needed to help MidAmerican Energy continue to investigate nuclear power as a possible source of electricity generation in Iowa. What he fails to mention is there is nothing stopping his company from doing this without HF 561. What MidAmerican needs and does not have is enough investor support to enable a new nuclear reactor to be built without the concessions and financial protections for investors inherent in the bill. For example, HF 561 would enable MidAmerican Energy's parent company, Berkshire Hathaway to collect the full rate of return on investment, something they are restricted from doing under current Iowa law. There is a reason MidAmerican needs the bill, and it is to shift financial risks to rate payers.
The other fallacy in the video pertains to advanced cost recovery. Fehrman says "there are no pre-payments" and that is simply inaccurate. He explained that MidAmerican would develop a financial plan before beginning construction and that once construction began, rate payers would start the payment process. What is disingenuous about this is that without HF 561, any new power plant would not be eligible for billing customers until it came on line and started generating electricity. While there is a case to be made that this process would save rate payers interest charges, MidAmerican is not making that argument, but is using deception to persuade viewers of the video of something that is not true.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread.

P.S.- No matter what happens with House File 561, Matt McCoy has damaged his chances of winning a Democratic primary if ever he runs for higher office in the future.

UPDATE: The Center for Investigative Reporting recently produced a report on potential dangers with aging nuclear reactors in the U.S. Many nuclear reactors, including the one in Iowa, were originally built to last for 40 years but have been relicensed for an additional 20 years.

More understanding, less mystery: milkers get it

Christy Ann Welty — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 04:20:11 GMT

Iowa may soon have as many milking coaches as lactation consultants.   After a lapse of about four decades, human breastfeeding has secured its place once again in our culture as the premiere way to nourish an infant. In a parallel narrative, fresh wholesome milk from cows, sheep, and goats is regaining its reputation as a premiere health food.   To boost that growing reputation, milking coaches are pulling up another milking stool to help people learn more about the realities of milk fresh from the udder.

"We've only used manmade milk (formula and pasteurized milk) for around 60 to 70 years but we've used breast milk and raw milk for 6000 years.   If it wasn't for breast milk and raw milk, we wouldn't be here!" says Brad Hopp, a milking coach near Lawton in northwestern Iowa .   "Learning more about milking helps people understand it better, and I'm all for that."

Although mothers' milk retains some of its mystery in the face of scientific inquiry, mothers these days know how precious it is to their babies' health and growth.   A little mystery in the food supply passes when it's balanced by strong instincts and a solid record of success.   But mystery can feel uncomfortable when it strays too far from knowledge and experience.

"The idea of raw milk feels exotic and mysterious to many people in Iowa ," says Christy Ann Welty, homeschooling mother of two who helps milking coaches and new milkers find each other.   "More understanding and less fear will help everyone as they make decisions about the best ways to feed their families."

More understanding and less mystery: that's the meaning of "Milkers get it."

A second meaning of the phrase relates to Iowa state law.

Drinking wholesome, fresh milk -- fresh from a healthy, grass-fed cow, sheep, or goat without processing through a pasteurization vat -- has been illegal since 1968 for most people living in Iowa .   The privilege of choosing whether to drink milk fresh or pasteurized is reserved to the few who control livestock, land, and have mastered the skill of milking; everyone else is restricted to only Grade A pasteurized milk, except for those who are willing to operate in the gray areas of the law.   "Giving away milk is not covered by our rules," says Dustin VandeHoef, communications director for the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS), "but all sales are illegal."

Passages from Chapter 192 of the Iowa Code (state law) say, "Only grade 'A' pasteurized milk and milk products shall be sold to the final consumer, or to restaurants, soda fountains, grocery stores, or similar establishments;" and later, "No person shall within the state produce, provide, sell, offer, or expose for sale, or have in possession with intent to sell, any milk or milk product which is adulterated or misbranded;"

VandeHoef says, "We interpret the words 'adulterated' and 'misbranded' to include raw milk, and this is also the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] interpretation which is adopted into the Code."

The IDALS interprets "sales" to mean "exchanges of value."   During a phone call to his office, VanderHoef was reluctant to specify which circumstances would be considered prosecutable and which would be outside IDALS's rules.

A broad interpretation of the meaning of "sales" puts giving away raw milk, and even drinking raw milk from one's own animal, into the gray area between legal and illegal: renting a stall in a farmer's barn to shelter your cow if you do not have a barn; bringing a sandwich to the person milking your goat for you; bringing a bottle of wine to a dinner party where the hostess serves raw milk.   Membership in a private kitchen club could be interpreted as a "sale" if one of the members gives away samples of raw milk.

To steer clear of potential gray market entanglement, all milking lessons from "milkers get it" coaches are free, and no donations are accepted.   "We're not trying to get around the law," says Welty.   "Our purpose is to pass along a valuable skill to people who want to be self-sufficient or live a sustainable lifestyle or simply exercise choice about the food they eat."

In order to exercise the simple choice of "Fresh or Pasteurized" without engaging black markets or gray markets, a person has to learn how to milk and has to control livestock plus enough land to support it.   One mission of "Milkers get it" is to help people overcome barriers that state law and bureaucracy have erected.   Another mission is to assist efforts to change the state law.

Challenging the statute with a court case is lengthy and expensive.   One current lawsuit disputes one circumstance in the gray area of the law: Freitag v Secretary of Agriculture was filed in January 2010 and litigation continues in Linn County 's district court.   Representing two milkers who boarded their cow with a Linn County farmer, the Farmer-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund "is acting in the capacity of a public interest law firm to protect the fundamental rights of the public at large ...."

Changing the statute directly with new legislation is another option.   Small-scale dairy farmers, health food customers, legislators, and many others worked together during Iowa 's 2011 legislative session to lift restrictions against consumers buying raw milk directly from farmers.   "We made progress," says Francis Thicke, organic dairy operator and former candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, "but not enough to pass it this year.   We'll try again next year."

Meanwhile, you can pull up a three-legged stool and try a free milking lesson for yourself, and encourage your state legislators to get some hands-on experience, too.   Accurate information and authentic experience are often the best tools for changing engrained habits of mind and for updating rules and procedures.   Milking coaches are ready to introduce all comers to the wholesome experience of squirting fresh milk from the udder of a healthy animal into a warm, foamy pail of milk.   When you feel the rush from a satisfying squeeze, you'll understand.   Milkers get it.

# # #

Hired Gun for Big Ag Endorses Francis Thicke's Opponent

2laneIA — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 18:23:52 GMT

Yesterday the Iowa Agriculture Secretary, Republican Bill Northey, got an endorsement from a Democrat in his effort to get rehired by Iowans. Jerry Crawford is not just any Democrat. He is a close friend of Hillary Clinton, and Tom Vilsack, and has donated thousands of dollars to Democratic campaigns. So what is he doing on WHO TV talking about Bill Northey, instead of the Democratic candidate, Francis Thicke?

If blood is thicker than water, money in politics is thicker than that. When it comes to agricultural issues in Iowa, politics is a blood sport, played for keeps. If you think this is inside Iowa baseball, you should know that Iowa agriculture is the engine that brings GMO foods to your table, that is killing the Gulf of Mexico, and that can send contaminated eggs across the country and as far away as Guam.

Crawford has donated thousands of dollars to Iowa Democrats. That is why the only sound you hear this morning regarding the endorsement of Northey from the Iowa Democratic Party is crickets. This is not a surprise unless you think that principles are more important in politics than money.

At the grassroots many people advocate giving directly to candidates who share your views, and not to party institutions like the IDP, DCCC, DSCC, or the DNC. Here's why. They take your dollars and do some good things with them, but they also take dollars from people like Jerry Crawford. And if you think that they will help a candidate that Jerry Crawford doesn't like, you aren't paying attention.

When former Governor now US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack ran in 2001, Crawford was his top donor, giving $31,000. He was Hillary Clinton's Midwest campaign chairman and "good friend." He also chaired the Iowa campaigns of Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, and Michael Dukakis. After Barack Obama beat Clinton for the nomination, Crawford stepped up and donated $10,000 to the Obama Victory Fund. So his Democratic roots in Iowa run deep, and he has supplied both national and Iowa Democrats with liberal amounts of cash.

In addition to supplying the Vilsack campaigns (1998 to 2002) and Heartland 527-PAC with more than $150,000 in donations, Crawford was listed as the Heartland PAC treasurer on documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service. He also served on the board of directors for the Democratic Governors Association, and has been called “one of the leading Democratic strategists in Iowa.” Crawford has been chairman of the Polk County Democratic Party, and has served as state chairman or legal counsel for presidential campaigns in Iowa for nearly as long as the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses have held influence.

In December of last year, as the Department of Justice was preparing to come to Iowa with hearings on antitrust issues in the agriculture industry, Crawford signed up as a lobbyist for Monsanto, which holds patents on most of the corn and soybeans grown in Iowa. The hearings were jointly sponsored by the USDA and the DoJ. USDA is led by Crawford's friend, Tom Vilsack.

Because of its market dominance, it is impossible to imagine a discussion on crop seeds that does not include both criticism and applause for the work of Monsanto and, by that same token, impossible to imagine a discussion that does not also include criticism and applause for U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

When he was nominated to President Obama’s Cabinet, many of Vilsack’s critics pointed to the fact that he was named Governor of the Year by the Biotechnology Industry Organization for his “support of the industry’s economic growth and agriculture biotechnology research.” The former Iowa governor’s critics have long argued that he gave too much preference to agribusiness in general — and to Monsanto in particular.

Although any investigation stemming from the planned workshops will be initiated and managed by the Department of Justice, the fact that they are being jointly sponsored by the USDA is raising some flags simply due to Vilsack’s connection to agribusiness and biotechnology.

Crawford is not just a registered lobbyist for Monsanto. He is Jack DeCoster's lawyer. DeCoster is the poster boy for the perils of poorly-regulated factory farming, whose farms supplied the salmonella-contaminated eggs that made people sick in August.

Jack DeCoster and his various family enterprises own factory farms that have had more regulatory attention than any others in several states, including Iowa, which named him a "habitual violator" in 2000. But all has been forgiven. The Iowa Independent tallies $572,100 in donations from various DeCoster family members to Democrats between 1999 and 2010. DeCoster also benefited from lax oversight by the Republican in charge of Iowa Agriculture, Bill Northey, seen here extolling the glories of factory farms that supply eggs to all the McDonalds west of the Mississippi:

This is one farm, that has two and a half million layers, that produce a million eggs a day, for the egg mcmuffins, the breakfast burritos, and a million eggs a day for the liquid eggs. And that one farm produces all the eggs. We have two and a half million layers at that farm, we have 57 and a half million other layers in this state.

Last week Northey appeared on Iowa Public Radio and was asked whether he would support local control over factory farms. He unequivocally rejected the idea (MP3 file in link). Regulation at the state level is friendlier to factory farming than regulation by local boards of supervisors who have to live in the communities where these industrial operations are constructed. Francis Thicke followed Northey in the IPR interview, and just as unequivocally stated he is for local control over where these fetid polluting blights on the landscape are sited.

Thicke, a 27-year dairy farmer hoping to unseat incumbent Republican Bill Northey, said the issue is of vital importance to rural Iowa and simply an example of “democracy in action.”

“Iowans know what works best in their communities, and politicians who favor taking away this right are serving corporate interests, not the citizens of Iowa,” he said. “It is important to protect Iowa citizens from the impacts of CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) on neighbors’ quality of life, health and property rights.”

In 1995, the legislature passed, and then-Gov. Branstad signed, House File 519, a bill that stripped all local authority from regulating factory farms. Since 1994, the year before the bill was signed, the number of hog farmers in Iowa has dropped from 29,000 to 8,300 as the industry continues to consolidate.

With clients like Monsanto and DeCoster, Crawford could hardly be expected to support the Democrat who wants to decrease their influence and give more power to citizens. That is why he appeared on WHO, a station with wide reach in Iowa and friendly to Republicans, touting Northey as his candidate.

Francis Thicke wants to change Big Agribusiness As Usual. That is why he has been endorsed by writer Michael Pollan, 350.org's Bill McKibben, former Texas Ag Commissioner and populist Jim Hightower, Fred Kirschenmann of the Leoppold Institute and others. Polling shows that he could beat Northey, and that is why Big Ag has been pulling out all the stops, going so far as to send a lont-time Democratic activist to the airwaves to praise his opponent. The conflict Crawford's endorsement represents can be summed up by the ad Francis is running on TV right now:

You can help Francis Thicke get elected tomorrow. Go to his campaign website and sign up to make calls from wherever you are. If you are in Iowa and you have not showed up at your local Democratic HQ and volunteered, it is not too late to call and doorknock. And if you want to help Francis get some more radio time:

Disclosure: I am a volunteer, a donor, and a believer in the value of having a consumer and farmer advocate like Francis Thicke in public office. I do not work for the campaign. I just took time away from GOTV to write this diary because I think Crawford's endorsement is an outrage and Iowa Democrats should call him out for the industry shill that he is.

Des Moines Register punts on down-ballot statewide offices

desmoinesdem — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 11:56:25 GMT

The "newspaper Iowa depends upon" won't endorse a candidate in this year's races for attorney general, state treasurer, secretary of state, secretary of agriculture or state auditor, Des Moines Register editorial page editor Linda Fandel confirmed to me this week. Fandel told me the newspaper has been inconsistent about endorsing candidates for those offices in the past. She said limited staff time and resources lay behind the decision not to endorse this year. The Register did endorse candidates in the races for governor, U.S. Senate and all five U.S. House seats, as well as the Iowa Supreme Court retention vote, which the editors called the most important election in the state this year.

I understand limits on resources. Compared to previous election cycles, the Register's newsroom staff is smaller, and its editorial pages contain less content. However, a newspaper that claims to have a statewide profile shouldn't punt on elections offering such significant contrasts to voters. More thoughts on these campaigns are after the jump.

In 2006, the Register endorsed candidates in the secretary of state and agriculture races, where incumbents were not running for re-election. Editors supported Democrat Michael Mauro for secretary of state, saying he "has the superior breadth of experience and passion for the job," having served "competently, with openness and high ethical standards" as Polk County auditor for more than 20 years. They saw Republican Mary Ann Hanusa as "credible" but with "too-brief exposure to the issues" handled by the Secretary of State's Office. The contrast is sharper this year, as Mauro has an impressive record of management while his opponent doesn't know basic facts about how Iowa voter rolls are maintained. It's telling that a bunch of Republican county auditors are backing Mauro.

The Register's editors favored Republican Bill Northey for secretary of agriculture in 2006. Although they viewed both Northey and Denise O'Brien as "intelligent, highly accomplished leaders who each could make outstanding contributions to the office," they gave the edge to Northey because of his experience with "the growing role of Iowa agriculture in producing renewable energy." This year Francis Thicke has offered a comprehensive plan for producing more renewable energy on Iowa farms and growing farmers' incomes while reducing their reliance on fossil fuels, yet the Register's editorial board refused Thicke's requests for a meeting. (Fandel told me that was because they had already decided not to endorse anyone in the race.) Adding insult to injury, the Register's editors recently declared Thicke was wrong to say state inspectors should do more to ensure egg producers are following safety rules. They didn't even hear him out on his reading of the Iowa Code.

Regarding the attorney general's race, the Register's editorial board did criticize Brenna Findley for making a legal challenge to health care reform a centerpiece of her campaign. The Register described her planned lawsuit as "redundant, frivolous" and a "political stunt." Given the massive resources Republicans and outside groups are putting into this campaign, and the contrasts between Findley's and Miller's backgrounds and philosophies, I would have expected the Register to weigh in.

The state auditor and treasurer races both feature candidates who have exaggerated Iowa's fiscal difficulties in order to boost Republican political prospects. On September 12, the Register's editors chided Terry Branstad for not telling "the whole story" about Iowa's economy and fiscal condition. Apparently they're content to give State Auditor David Vaudt a pass for a year's worth of "sky is falling" warnings. Many of Vaudt's claims have been featured in Branstad television commercials.

Any comments about newspaper endorsements or statewide Iowa races are welcome in this thread.

Thicke on tv and other news from the secretary of agriculture race

desmoinesdem — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 19:37:46 GMT

Despite the salmonella outbreak and egg recall that made national news two months ago, Iowa's secretary of agriculture race has been overshadowed this fall by campaigns for other offices and the unprecedented drive to remove three Iowa Supreme Court justices. In fact, Democrat Francis Thicke's campaign has attracted more interest from nationally-known sustainable food advocates than from many Iowa news organizations. Peter Rothberg wrote in The Nation, "there may not be a more important contest this year for farmers and food activists nationwide."

Republican Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey has been running television commercials for several weeks, but Thicke starts running his own campaign ad in the Des Moines market today. His campaign has an opportunity to increase the ad buy, and due to an unusual situation I'll cover below, any additional air time Thicke reserves will reduce Northey's television exposure during the final days of the campaign.

Commercials for Northey and Thicke are after the jump.
Bleeding Heartland covered Northey's first two television ads here. Since mid-October, he has been running two new commercials. This one is called "Jobs":

My transcript:

Northey speaks to camera: As your secretary of agriculture, my priorities have been opening markets for farmers and creating jobs for Iowans. [words near bottom of screen: "Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey Opening Markets Creating Jobs for Iowans"]
Male voice-over: Bill Northey. Not a politician, but a family farmer focused on expanding alternative energy and creating value-added jobs for Iowa. [scenes of Northey talking with different people, driving farm equipment, words near bottom of screen: "Bill Northey Alternative Energy Value Added Jobs"]
Northey: I'm Bill Northey. I'd be honored to have your support. [Northey speaks to camera, "Bill Northey" on screen]
Male voice-over: Bill Northey. Carrying the tradition of family farmers serving Iowa. [scenes of Northey with people of different ages, including small child]
Female voice-over: Making a difference for today, making a difference for tomorrow. Bill Northey for secretary of agriculture. [more scenes of Northey with people, his name stays on screen; at end of ad his campaign logo appears along with "Paid for by Northey for Iowa Agriculture"]

It looks like a solid ad to me. Viewers see and hear Northey's name several times in connection with uncontroversial ideas. No one's against alternative energy or more jobs. Thicke has better ideas about promoting alternative energy while boosting farm income, but it's probably smarter for Northey to ignore that rather than engage in a policy debate. The other Northey ad currently in rotation is called "Strong":

There is no voice-over in the ad, but here's my description of the visuals:

Scene of country road with fields of corn on each side. Movie-style music plays in background. Words on screen: "He visits Every Iowa County Every Year"
Photo of Northey standing on farm equipment. "Bill Northey" on screen.
Gorgeous Iowa sunset with farm buildings in silhouette. Words on screen: "He's no politician. 4th generation Iowa family farmer."
Boy looking at about a dozen wind turbines in a farm field; light bulb superimposed on picture. Words on screen: "In the face of massive deficits Bill Northey cut his own pay."
Photo of Northey against plain black backdrop. Words on screen: "Our Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey"

The wordless soundtrack presents a nice contrast to all the political commercials with their scary-sounding voice-overs ("Flowerpots in Des Moines. Trolleys in Des Moines!", "voted to spend thousands on heated sidewalks while teachers were getting laid off!") Iowa has never run "massive deficits," but Northey did reduce his own pay after revenue shortfalls prompted Governor Culver to cut the budget across the board in October 2009.

Here's the Thicke campaign ad, a 60-second spot called "Francis Thicke vs Big Ag".

For about the first 20 seconds, suspenseful music plays in the background as Thicke does farm chores. The words "Francis Thicke Dairy Farmer" appear on screen. The viewer sees him tying his boots, patting cows hooked up to milking machines, loading a truck with a "Buy Fresh Buy Local" label and waving as it drives off his farm. Thicke begins loading hay onto a trailer.
Five men and one woman dressed in black business suits approach. They put down their briefcases in unison. At about the 30-second mark, the first businessman speaks.
First man in suit: Excuse us, Mr. Thicke. We've been hearing some interesting things coming from your farm. Do you really plan to help grow local economies?
Thicke continues loading hay but answers, "Yep."
Second man in suit: Do you really want to take control away from us and give it to--people?
Thicke (still loading hay): I do.
Third man in suit: Are you serious about breaking up monopolies and restoring competitive markets?
Thicke: I am.
Woman in suit: Mr. Thicke, we can't support that.
Fourth man in suit: For that matter, who does?
Camera pulls back to reveal crowd of ordinary people on farm, standing behind the people in suits, with huge "Francis Thicke Secretary of Agriculture" sign. The crowd shouts, "We do!"
People in suits turn around, looking surprised and concerned. Thicke walks in front of the crowd, smiles, and says, "I'm Francis Thicke, and I approve this message."

I don't know of any other Iowa candidate running a 60-second ad now, but the length allows a narrative to develop. The absurd scene of corporate tools arriving on Thicke's farm is more eye-catching than a standard ad with an announcer saying, "He wants to help grow local economies, he is serious about breaking up monopolies" and so on. Instead of having a voice-over say Thicke will stand up to corporate interests, we see that play out in a humorous way.

Another unusual feature of this commercial is that it was produced entirely by volunteers, according to the Thicke campaign. I like it better than many spots the usual consultants have made for other Democratic candidates.

CORRECTION: I don't know whether the 60-second version of this ad is on the air. I saw a 30-second version (basically the second half) during a 10 pm newscast on October 28.

Thicke is massively outgunned on the financial front. His latest disclosure form showed about $30,479 cash on hand as of October 14. Northey had nearly $250,000 cash on hand even after running television commercials for weeks.

The Thicke campaign was able to reserve some air time and received a $25,000 matching gift pledge toward more advertising. Contributions up to $25,000 will be doubled. As of this morning, the campaign needed to raise about $15,000 more to fully capitalize on the matching gift. Not only that, Thicke's ad buy is coming directly out of Northey's because of an unusual rule I hadn't heard of before. It comes into play when television stations have no further time to sell political candidates. Except from a Thicke campaign e-mail blast yesterday:

* #527 political pacs ($3mln+ spent in Iowa by two PACs alone) along with other candidates have bought all the significant Iowa TV time for the rest of the campaign. There is nothing left. This means there won't be any last minute smear campaign on the air - the television time has been bought.
* However, being well-funded, Bill Northey, the incumbent Secretary of Agriculture, has bought substantial TV time in the key markets of Des Moines and Cedar Rapids with lesser amounts in Davenport, Dubuque etc.
* Francis recently attempted to buy $40K in Des Moines from a key station and due to an equal-time rule they had to sell Francis half of Bill Northey's time. Now both candidates have $40K of TV. Bill Northey has had money returned, and there is no other TV inventory for him to purchase.
* With another $50K, Francis could take away $50K more from Northey's TV time in key markets ($20K Des Moines, $20K and possibly $10 K in Davenport).
* This means contributions to Francis do double duty - they get Francis on the air and get Northey irrevocably off the air.
* Further, there is a $25K matching promise which is ready to go to Francis. This means whether you contribute $10 or $10,000, your contribution will be matched!
* Finally, according to the polls, Francis does an excellent job of converting independents and taking them away from Northey when these folks are exposed to even a simple presentation of his platform - TV.
* This is not going to happen again! The great irony is that this unique opportunity for leverage has been created for Francis by the massive influx of Republican and PAC money!

Thicke has been campaigning around the state for months with his message of building farm incomes, reducing the use of fossil fuels, and restoring zoning for CAFOs at the county level. Thicke's economic development ideas would benefit conventional farmers as well as organic farmers like himself:

If we can begin producing more food locally, we can create more jobs and help rebuild our local populations. In Iowa, studies show that we import about 90 percent of the food we eat. And Iowa calls itself the food capital of the world! We should become the food capital of Iowa.
I'm certainly not opposed to commodity farming. We have a lot of production capacity and so commodity production will be a force in Iowa's future. But being No. 1 in all these commodities doesn't mean that farmers are making profits, except with the help of commodity subsidies and off-farm income. We need to diversify and produce more value-added products, both for the sake of jobs and our soil.

Thicke has articulated a stronger vision for the future of Iowa farming than Northey, as this clip from the candidates' October 7 debate in Centerville shows. However, the sad reality is that television commercials have the potential to reach many more Iowans than what Thicke has said so far on the campaign trail. I made an additional campaign donation last night.

Share any thoughts about the secretary of agriculture race in this thread.

IA Sec Ag-Jim Hightower Picks Francis Thicke

2laneIA — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 10:57:49 GMT

Jim Hightower is an outspoken advocate for the Powers That Ought To Be, not The Powers That Be. He is a populist progressive, and a funny, irreverent thorn in the side of the powerful. He says that the real political spectrum isn't right to left; it's top to bottom. A former Agriculture Commissioner who served two terms in Texas, he knows how important this job is for safe food, clean air and water, and a future in which farmers can afford to farm.

“In Iowa’s election for Secretary of Agriculture, the choice couldn’t be clearer. On one hand you’ve got Francis Thicke, who has worked as a dairy farmer for 27 years, selling his products locally and actually building the economy. On the other hand, you’ve got Bill Northey who has led a team that invested nearly $1 million in Brazil’s ethanol production. In a world where money talks, maybe Bill Northey should be running for Secretary of Agriculture in Brazil.”

Thank you, Mr. Hightower. Well said.

The reason for this criticism is that Northey is on the board of a company that invested in Brazilian ethanol, claiming that somehow it would not compete with ethanol made in Iowa. In Iowa, ethanol is a sacrament, so it seems like an odd choice for an Iowa Agriculture Secretary to invest in Brazil, but what do I know? Thicke would maintain the investment of public funds already made in Iowa ethanol, but wants future public investment to go to next-generation biofuels, not more publicly-subsidized ethanol plants. If private investors want to spend their money on corn ethanol, that is their prerogative, but taxpayer money should help bring on new technology if it does anything.

If Iowans elect Francis Thicke as their next Secretary of Agriculture they will elect a real visionary, and replace a corporate Republican whose bread is liberally buttered on both sides by Big Ag. Thicke is an organic dairy farmer with a PhD in Agronomy, and undergraduate degrees in music (trumpet performance) and philosophy. He was the USDA's National Program Leader for Soil Science in Washington, DC before buying his dairy farm. He and his wife, Susan, sell all their milk, yogurt and cheese locally, and grow everything their cows eat. His farm attracts visitors from all over the world, to learn from the innovative things he is doing. Francis with one of the Jersey Girls, at right.

Francis is not just an expert in sustainable farming practices, but also in alternative energy technologies. Iowa has a big investment in wind already, but Francis wants to enable every farm in Iowa to have a small wind turbine, and use the wind that blows over the farm to power the farm. He also talks about on-farm generation of biofuels to power tractors.

He has testified on the need for trust-busting in agricultural markets before the recent DoJ hearings and can tell you exactly how many major players there are in every agricultural market. From his DoJ comments last January:

A good current example of the farm-level effects of market concentration is the milk market. Recently, dairy farmers have been experiencing record losses due to low farm-gate milk prices. At the same time, the largest dairy processor, Dean Foods—that is purported to control 40% of U.S. dairy processing—has posted record profits over the past two quarters. Clearly, Dean Foods has found a modus operandi that enables it to isolate itself from the market forces bearing on dairy farmers.

Of course, there aren't very many players in any agricultural market, so they are easy to keep track of.

Northey gets all the help he needs keeping track of them from the Big Ag checks he gets. His contributors include Monsanto, the Koch brothers, DuPont, and other entities that our current Supreme Court would describe as people, but Jim Hightower would describe in less complimentary terms. If Northey is re-elected, Big Ag can continue business as usual, which means transferring money from farmers into their own pockets, and letting consumers fend for themselves. His hands-off approach to the presence of salmonella in Iowa eggs shows his perspective. Northey's the one in the middle, with the middle.

Any progressive candidate this great has to be hopeless, right? Not at all. Thicke's campaign polled 1002 likely voters and discovered that he is closing in on Northey, within the margin of error (38% Northey/35% Thicke). When respondents heard a few words about each candidate's views, the gap widened from three points to 14 (Northey 24%/Thicke 38%). There are more independents in Iowa than are in either party. During the initial questioning they favored Northey by nearly 20%, and after hearing the campaign messages favored Thicke by 15%. The more they know, the better they like him. They are persuadable. He can win.

Francis is putting this message up on TV right now. More money, more TV. Simple.

I know the pleas for cash are coming from everywhere now. But I hope you will consider this one. This is an extraordinary man. I have come to know him personally through this campaign and he has all the brains, integrity, and passion you could ask for. I am a City Person, but this race is my own passion this year. If you care about safe and healthy food, conserving the land, clean energy, and competition in markets, then Francis Thicke is part of the answer. Iowa is THE farming state, and what happens here on the land does not stay here. It goes everywhere. That is why Big Ag is here trying to win for their interests. That is why it will be in all our interests if Francis Thicke wins.

In this picture, Francis is holding his book. You can buy it for $20 on his website, or you can just read it for free on line.

An end note. This is what public service looks like (from a campaign bio):

He has served on the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission, the Iowa Food Policy Council, and the Iowa Organic Standards Boards. Other positions he has served in include the USDA State Technical Committee, the Scientific Congress on Organic Agriculture Research, the Iowa State University Extension Advisory Committee, the Organic Farming Research Foundation Board of Directors, the Governing Council of the Consortium for Sustainable Agriculture Research, the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service Board of Directors, and the Search Committee for ISU Dean of College of Agriculture. On two occasions Francis has been invited to Washington, D.C. to testify before the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee to represent the interests of farmers.
Francis has received many awards and honors over the years, including:
* The 2009 Spencer Award for Sustainable Agriculture from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture
* 2007 Sustainable Agriculture Achievement Award from the Practical Farmers of Iowa
* Friend of Extension Award from Iowa State University Extension Service
* Outstanding Pasture Management Award from the Jefferson County Soil and Water Conservation District
* Steward of the Land Award from the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club

Disclosure: I am a volunteer, a donor, and a believer in the value of Francis Thicke's campaign. I do not work for the campaign.

Michael Pollan: "The Most Important Election This Year"

2laneIA — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 15:24:17 GMT

That assessment of Francis Thicke’s incredible grassroots campaign for Iowa Agriculture Secretary came from food writer Michael Pollan via Twitter. Another assessment, via a pollster, is that it’s winnable, but more about that below.

For people who care about what they eat and how much they pay for it, Pollan’s tweet is not hyperbole. It is a tribute to an organic dairy farmer with no prior political experience who has put together a professional statewide campaign, and is now within three percentage points of a well-financed Republican. Francis Thicke (pronounced Tickee) does have experience in government. He worked for the USDA after getting his PhD in Agronomy, and he has been advocating policies like reducing the concentration of market power in agriculture for years. But with this campaign, he is trying to get his hands on the government machinery and change what it does.
(con't)
Iowa is the 500-lb. gorilla of American agriculture, producing more corn, soybeans, hogs and chickens than any other state, and it has tremendous influence on national agricultural policy. Pollan explained to Grist why this election is so important:

To the extent that the 'farm bloc' is shown to be much less unified in its resistance to change, the more likely that change is to come in Washington....As the scandal over Jack DeCoster's egg 'farm' demonstrated, Iowans are deeply divided over the industrialization of their agriculture....The triumph of a reform candidate like Francis Thicke would demonstrate to Washington that a change in agricultural policy would in fact be welcome in much of the farm belt, and that legislators who purport to represent farm states by simply blocking reform more closely reflect the interests of agribusiness than that of their own constituents.

Francis Thicke’s message is simple.

Produce more food locally to create more jobs, and grow healthy food that consumers can afford.

Support sustainable farming methods, to keep soils and nutrients on the farm instead of wasting them on killing the Gulf of Mexico.

Power the farm with biofuels produced on the farm from sustainably produced crops, and with the wind that blows over it.

Bust up agricultural monopolies that keep prices high, take profits away from farmers, and keep consumers in the dark about what they are eating.

He even wrote a book about his vision for agriculture.

Along with this simple and powerful vision, Francis Thicke has a diverse and creative campaign team, many committed volunteers, and has received support from all over the country, thanks to attention from Thom Hartmann, Grist, and other outlets with audiences outside of Iowa. I have met Francis several times through this campaign, and he is the real deal---brilliant, passionate about his belief in a new vision for agriculture, unpretentious, funny and kind. Like Tom Harkin, his friends love him, and everyone who gets to know him becomes his friend. If he sits down with a table full of strangers, they all want to know how they can help before dinner is over.

His opponent, Bill Northey, has friends too. He is well-funded by Monsanto, the Koch brothers, Syngenta, DuPont and their allies in Big Ag. But it turns out that all that money can’t buy him love.

The Thicke campaign conducted a poll recently that shows Francis only three points behind Mr. Factory Eggs ‘R Us. The spread of 38% to 35% is within the margin of error of 3.9%. The poll of 1002 likely voters shows that the race is very competitive, with 71% saying they would vote to replace Northey or would consider someone else. Why they would feel that way about the guy who said there really wasn’t much he could do about salmonella in eggs? Of the people who knew who Francis is, 82% had a favorable impression.

Better yet, after people were read a few sentences about each candidate’s background and platform, the independents wanted to be Francis’ friend, too. They shifted from favoring Northey by 20% to favoring Francis by 15%, and Northey dropped to 24% support overall. The race can be won, and turnout for Francis will only help Roxanne Conlin and Chet Culver, who are not doing as well in recent polling.

To repeat the shift in the poll in the electorate at large, Francis needs to get this commercial on the air.

I know there are a lot of "asks" out there, but a few dollars for TV could help to win a close election. Please help if you can. This is an extraordinary man running for an office that could affect all of our lives in the years to come.

Disclaimer: I am an enthusiastic volunteer, donor and fan, but I do not work for the Thicke campaign. I believe in Francis, and I know that he is one of the best candidates running this year. When I listen to him talk about his vision for sustainable agriculture powered by renewable energy and producing safe and healthy food, I have hope for the future.

Seven quick hits on Iowa energy policy

desmoinesdem — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 04:41:27 GMT

Election news is keeping me busy, but several reports related to energy policy in Iowa caught my eye during the last week.

Links and excerpts are after the jump.
Last week the Environmental Protection Agency approved the use of the E-15 blend, consisting of 15 percent ethanol, in model 2007 and newer vehicles. Iowans who promote ethanol subsidies generally welcomed the decision, though some including Senator Chuck Grassley felt the EPA should not have excluded older vehicles.

"While I'm glad to see that at long last the EPA has finally made a decision, I am frustrated that the EPA is approving E15 only for vehicles that are model year 2007 and newer," Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said. "The announcement unnecessarily complicates the fuel-supply chain and undermines real progress that a waiver for all vehicles would have provided to America's domestic renewable fuel producers."

Democratic candidate for Iowa secretary of agriculture Francis Thicke accused incumbent Bill Northey of misrepresenting his views on government support for ethanol:

"My opponent for secretary of agriculture distorts my position on corn ethanol when he says I want to 'abandon' corn ethanol," Thicke says.
"I have stated repeatedly and emphatically that I want to protect the large investment Iowa already has in the corn ethanol industry by making sure it survives, and that we do not have more bankruptcies."
Thicke says he supports the federal volumetric ethanol excise tax credit (VEETC) and the import tariff on foreign ethanol but favors ending state tax credits for building new ethanol-production facilities.
Instead, he wants to put some of those efforts into developing next-generation energy systems.

Speaking of transitions, the non-profit organization Plains Justice published a report last Friday saying

that much of the coal currently burned in Iowa power plants and industrial boilers could be replaced with agriculture products and by-products that are currently unused or underused. Corn stalks, corn leaves, by-products from agricultural processing and even perennial grasses could be the clean and homegrown fuel for the future.
"Burning corn stover in power plants would give farmers an income boost while helping to keep Iowa's air clean by reducing the amount of coal burned to produce electricity," said Nicole Shalla, a Plains Justice attorney, referring to the corn stalks and leaves which are often considered a waste product of corn fields.
The report, which was written by author and Iowa State University researcher Mark Mba Wright for the environmental group, compares emissions from coal and various ag-based biomass, provides a discussion of biomass ash and discusses the technical aspects of using biomass as a replacement for fossil fuels.
"Iowa produces 68.3 million tons per year of corn stover, which could be made available to energy facilities," Wright notes in the report. "Growth, harvest and conversion are the key stages in the biomass supply chain. Although there is a mature supply chain established for corn grain, there is still a lot of work needed to develop an industrial supply chain for biomass to energy applications."
Even the state's ethanol plants could reduce their use of fossil fuels and improve their environmental profile by replacing coal or natural gas with renewable biomass. In essence, ethanol production could further utilize the whole of the corn plant, in lieu of just portions of the kernel. They could also utilize the roughly 20.4 million tons of soybean residue that estimated to exist annually in the state. By doing so, they could open up a new economic opportunity for Iowa producers.

The sooner we start phasing out coal combustion in Iowa, the better. Iowa Physicians for Social Responsibility just published "a study of the impact reliance on coal has on health outcomes in the state."

From the executive summary:
"This report represents a preliminary effort to correlate the known disease burden and costs to Iowans of relying on coal to produce energy. Information was drawn for correlation and analysis from a variety of publicly available scientific resources, databases, and recently published research pertinent to Iowa. Geographical mapping techniques were utilized to synthesize graphical views comparing the distributions of a group of index diseases with a variety of environmental pollution sources to facilitate visualization of these complex data sets. Qualitatively, results are provocative and strongly suggest correlations between coal combustion and health in Iowa."
The report makes specific policy recommendations including:
Support funding to more comprehensively track and monitor adverse health events.
Tightened standards for energy efficiency and their enforcement.
A moratorium on new coal plants in Iowa & shuttering of the oldest burners.
Tightened standards for PM2.5.
Systematized clean-up and containment of coal ash waste at the state & federal level.
Elimination of coal subsidies and tax and financial incentives.

Blog for Iowa posted links to the full report and the executive summary.

Ramping up energy-efficiency programs would be the fastest and cheapest way to make sure Iowa can meet its baseload needs for electricity. The last few years, bills containing more aggressive efficiency targets have languished in the Iowa legislature. Despite lawmakers' lack of vision (or political will), Iowa has made progress in this area:

A scorecard just released by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy's (ACEEE) now ranks Iowa 12th in the nation on its efforts to promote energy efficiency in the state. This is an improvement from 18th a year ago. The fourth-annual ACEEE report benchmarks the progress of states, through their policies and programs, in improving energy efficiency for homes, businesses, industry, and transportation. [...]
Two categories which contributed significantly to Iowa's improved ranking are "State Government Initiatives," which includes the governor's Green Government Initiative and the "Lead by Example" subcategory. In the "State Government Initiatives Iowa ranked eighth-best in the country and in "Lead by Example" subcategory Iowa was one of only 15 states having both energy efficiency standards for state buildings and energy efficiency monitoring of those state buildings. Iowa also scored high in the category of building energy codes as one of only 17 states with a statewide code that meets or exceeds the latest International Energy Conservation Code standards for both residential and commercial buildings.
Another ranking category in which Iowa excelled is "Utility and Public Benefits Programs and Policies." These include the energy efficiency programs overseen by the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB). Iowa is one of just six states that scored the maximum number of points for its Energy Savings Targets, which are quantitative and long-term energy savings achieved primarily through utilities' effective customer-use energy efficiency programs. These programs typically enable utilities to meet a portion of their electricity and natural gas needs through efficiency savings, while also lowering costs for consumers. A majority of Iowa electric and natural gas customers are served by investor-owned utilities that are rate-regulated by the IUB and must follow policies and programs contained in IUB approved energy efficiency plans.

Iowa imports 100 percent of the coal used to produce electricity in this state, but boosting renewable production could make our state a major electricity exporter. On October 21, Senator Tom Harkin and Office of Energy Independence Director Roya Stanley will headline a forum on "Expanding and Modernizing the Electrical Grid: Essential Infrastructure for the Midwest's Clean Energy Future." Details are in IowaEnvironmentalCouncil's diary.

Improving the electrical grid is a worthwhile long-term investment, but the up-front costs will be significant. At the Des Moines Register blog, Dan Piller reported yesterday,

A study commissioned by MidAmerican Energy of Des Moines and its partner in a proposed transmission line to ship wind energy from Iowa eastward says that an 8,000 mile line could be built between central North Dakota into Ohio at a cost between $20 billion and $25 billion.
When completed by the year 2025, the transmission line would be able to ship up to 56.8 gigawatts (1 gigawatt equals 1 billion watts) of wind generation within the study area that includes Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, Missouri, Michigan and Ohio.
This translates into enough energy to power more than 15 million households.

A final note on the intersection of politics and energy policy: a representative for Iowa ethanol baron Bruce Rastetter finally confirmed that Rastetter provided the "seed money" for the American Future Fund in 2008. In their must-read New York Times article on the 510(c)4 group, Jim Rutenberg, Don Van Natta Jr and Mike McIntire noticed a common thread in the organization's political agenda:

At its formation, the American Future Fund proclaimed a broad mission "to provide Americans with a conservative and free market viewpoint."
At times, its activities also seemed to dovetail with the interests of the ethanol industry.
Among the first politicians it supported with advertising was Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota and a co-chairman of the Senate Biofuels Caucus, during his losing 2008 re-election campaign.
Later that November, it focused on an unexpected target: the Indy Racing League.
In a radio advertisement, the fund attacked a deal the racing association struck to power Indy cars with sugar-based ethanol from Brazil, portraying it as a slight to American producers.
The campaign may have seemed odd for a group promoting free-market principles. But days earlier, ethanol executives, including Mr. Rastetter, had met with racing officials to unsuccessfully demand that they abandon the Brazilian deal.

"Free markets" is good for a sound bite, but as they say, business is business.

The New York Times article also noted,

Most of [the American Future Fund's] advertisements this year have focused on generic fare like stimulus spending and health care. But suggestions of an energy-related agenda have peeked through.
Of the 14 "liberal" politicians singled out in a list it released last month, nearly every incumbent sits on a panel with a say over energy or agriculture policy. Five sit on the Agriculture Committee; four others are on related committees with say. One candidate was a staff member on a related panel.

The American Future Fund is spending up to $1 million to defeat Representative Bruce Braley in Iowa's first Congressional district. I think this spending is primarily designed to damage Braley ahead of a future run for statewide office, but reading the New York Times piece, it occurred to me that Braley serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Share any thoughts about energy policy or politics in this thread.

Bill Northey's dishonest campaign message (updated)

desmoinesdem — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:31:53 GMT

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey has run a low-key campaign for re-election so far this year. Democratic challenger Francis Thicke has faulted Northey for not doing enough to ensure food safety, proposed stronger regulations for Iowa egg producers and an energy policy that would increase farm incomes. I expected Northey to respond by telling voters how he has protected the food supply or helped farmers improve their bottom lines.

Instead, Northey's opening television commercials have spread the usual Republican lies about Iowa's "budget deficit" in order to depict Northey as a leader in keeping down his department's exPenses.

UPDATE: Northey is also distorting Thicke's stance on ethanol plants in Iowa. For more, scroll to the bottom of this post.

SECOND UPDATE: Another central claim from Northey's ads turns out to be false. As Thicke points out in the comments, Northey didn't "work with the legislature" to reduce his department's budget.
Here's Northey's 60-second ad called "Trust":

My transcript:

Male voice-over: At a time when government spending by politicians is out of control, there's one leader in state government known not for how much he spends, but instead for how much he doesn't spend. You see, Bill Northey is no politician. Bill Northey is a farmer from northwest Iowa, who has served Iowa as secretary of agriculture for the last four years. And when the state ran short of money, Bill Northey worked with the legislature to reduce his budget by 23 percent. And while other statewide elected officials refused to help out, Bill Northey took a pay cut to show leadership in the face of massive budget deficits.
Northey: I'm Bill Northey. In tough times, government must do what it can to protect the family budget. With your support, I'll continue to do my part.
Voice-over: We can trust Bill Northey to be a leader in state government for taxpayers and common-sense budgeting. Let's keep Bill working for us. Bill Northey for secretary of agriculture.
Northey: Paid for by Northey for Iowa Agriculture.

Northey's 30-second commercial is called "Challenging Times":

My transcript:

Male voice-over: Deficits, borrowing, out-of-control spending.
Northey: We need to get our spending under control. I'm Bill Northey, Iowa secretary of agriculture.
Voice-over: Bill Northey worked with the legislature to reduce his budget by 23 percent.
Northey: In fact, last year we spent less money than we did in 1995. No one likes budget cuts, but in these challenging times, we must lead by example.
Voice-over: And while other statewide elected officials refused to cut their own pay, Bill Northey voluntarily took a pay cut. Let's keep Bill Northey working for us.

I am so tired of Iowa Republicans lying about "budget deficits" that don't exist. Iowa has had a balanced budget every year and finished fiscal year 2010 with a larger than expected surplus.

Northey's commercials went on the air about a week ago. I haven't seen any news report question his false claims about the state budget, but then, fact-checking hasn't been the Iowa media's strong suit this election cycle.

Thicke doesn't have the budget to match Northey's spending on television commercials, and even if he did, he would need to spend it publicizing his own vision for Iowa agriculture, not debating Northey on budget policy.

The pay cut mentioned in both Northey ads relates to Governor Chet Culver's 10 percent across the board budget cut in October 2009.

Almost all of Iowa's top executive branch officials took a pay cut last year, including some statewide elected officials, with three notable exceptions: Lt. Gov. Patty Judge, Secretary of State Michael Mauro and Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald. [...]
Culver in October said he would cut his own pay by 10 percent and would ask all state department directors to do the same.
Culver doesn't have authority to cut the pay of statewide elected officials, and he said in October that he wouldn't ask them to take a cut. In fact, he said he was adamant that Judge and other statewide elected officials not take a cut.
"Iowa's statewide elected officials make less than nearly all department directors, and considering the effort each of them will make serving our state during this difficult time, I insist that they not reduce their salaries," he wrote.
However, Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey and Auditor David Vaudt, both Republicans, chose to take the 10 percent cut, their staffs said Wednesday, and have reimbursed the state.
Twenty-eight of 35 state directors are paid more than the $103,000 received by Iowa's lieutenant governor, secretary, treasurer, auditor and ag secretary.

In retrospect, it would have been more politically savvy for all the elected officials to take a pay cut along with the department directors. But I do find it amusing to see Northey bragging about his "leadership" in reducing his pay. Iowa Republicans didn't give Culver credit for "leadership" when falling revenue projections prompted the budget cut last fall.

Any thoughts about the secretary of agriculture's race are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: Thicke's campaign released this statement on September 30:

Ag secretary candidate Thicke:
Opponent distorting position on ethanol
Thicke says incumbent's lack of leadership
contributed to financial distress of ethanol industry
FAIRFIELD, Iowa, September 30, 2010 - Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Candidate Francis Thicke (pronounced TICK-ee) said today his opponent, incumbent Bill Northey, is distorting Thicke's call for developing the next generation of biofuel systems.
Thicke, who rolled out his agriculture energy policy during a three-day, eight-city tour across Iowa last week, is calling for developing the next generation of biofuel systems that 1) produce fuel to power agriculture; 2) are at a scale that can be farmer-owned or farmer-controlled, so the profits go into the pockets of farmers; and 3) are truly sustainable and renewable.
Northey responded with a statement that it's wrong to abandon corn ethanol. Thicke answered "Clearly, that is a distortion of my position," In his news conferences, Thicke was emphatic that while it is time to develop the next generation of biofuel systems, it is important that Iowa protects its past investments in the corn ethanol infrastructure, which has resulted in economic development and expanded markets for crop producers. Thicke said, "We should not abandon our extensive public investment in the corn ethanol industry, and we certainly do not want more ethanol plants to go bankrupt."
Thicke further pointed out that it was the over-exuberance of ethanol advocates like Northey that encouraged the ethanol industry to overbuild, which contributed to the industry's financial distress when the ethanol market contracted. "Economists had warned that the ethanol industry was being over-built, but we did not hear that caution from Mr. Northey," Thicke said.
In his Iowa State Fair speech last month, the media reported that Northey said "maybe Iowa built a few too many ethanol plants."
In response to that statement, Thicke said: "Certainly, it would have been much better for the ethanol industry if Mr. Northey had listened to economists' warnings and provided leadership for a more balanced growth, rather than lament his lack of foresight after the fact."
Thicke also reiterated his position that he supports renewal of the federal Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) and the import tariff on foreign ethanol. "We certainly do not want to see the ethanol industry shut down because of an abrupt ending of the subsidies the industry depends on, as happened with the biodiesel tax credit. It makes no sense to invest public money to grow an industry and then pull the rug out from under it and cause it to go bankrupt."
Thicke agreed that he supports the goal of phasing out tax credits in the future as the biofuels industry becomes self-sufficient.
Thicke said he is proposing a moratorium on state subsidies and tax credits for building new ethanol plants for two reasons: 1) It will reduce the chances that the ethanol industry will go into another round of overbuilding the next time oil and ethanol prices spike. 2) It will allow the state to invest those resources in developing the next generation of biofuels that power agriculture, are farmer-owned, and are sustainable.

Thicke unveils forward-looking energy policy for agriculture

desmoinesdem — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:13:54 GMT

Francis Thicke, the Democratic candidate for secretary of agriculture, announced a "comprehensive energy policy for agriculture" that would increase the use of renewable energy in the agriculture sector, with a focus on systems that "put profits in farmers' pockets." Corporate agriculture interests have often demonized environmentally friendly energy policies as bad for farmers, but Thicke points out that farmers are currently vulnerable to volatile energy costs. I've posted his full statement on the energy policy after the jump, but I want to highlight a few parts:

As a state, we currently have no plans for how to power agriculture beyond fossil fuels, leaving us vulnerable to the effects of escalating and widely fluctuating energy prices. In 2008, oil prices rose to $147 per barrel, but within seven months fell to less than $34. This wild fluctuation whipsawed agriculture. Fertilizer and fuel prices tripled; corn prices spiked and fell sharply; ethanol plants went bankrupt.
Oil economists tell us that repeated cycles of price spikes followed by precipitous price falls are the future for energy costs as long as we are dependent on fossil fuels.ii Even the U.S. military warns that oil prices will rise greatly, and we should expect oil shortages in the near future.iii
Our current biofuel production is not targeted to secure the energy future for agriculture. We use about a third of our corn crop to produce ethanol, but use it for cars driving on highways, not to power agriculture. Iowa farmers are selling corn as an energy crop at cheap commodity prices while paying high retail prices for the fuel needed to power their farms. Biofuels today make only a dent in total U.S. fuel needs,iv but could go a long way toward making agriculture energy self-sufficient.

Thicke also advocates stronger policies to encourage wind energy production, not only looking at the total megawatts generated, but at wind energy systems that would create wealth for farmers and rural communities:

Today, 20 percent of the electricity generated in Iowa comes from wind power. That is good. However, the next generation of distributed wind systems holds promise to put more of the wealth created into the pockets of farmers and increase the amount of wind energy that can be distributed through the existing electrical grid.
When farmers lease out land to put corporate-owned wind turbines on their farms, they still pay retail rates for the electricity they use to power their farms. In other words - like with biofuels - farmers sell cheap and buy high.
The next generation of wind power should be mid-sized wind turbines on farms all across Iowa, so the wind that blows over the farm will power the farm, and the wealth created will be retained on the farm. This kind of distributed wind power has several advantages:
1. The wealth created by the wind turbines is retained by the landowner and stays in the local community,
2. The electricity generated is used locally, avoiding the need to build new transmission lines, and
3. Distributed wind turbines will more fully utilize wind fronts as they move across the state, compared to when most wind farms are located in a few places in the state.
Policies the Legislature could enact to hasten the development of mid-sized wind turbines on farm across Iowa include mandatory net metering for all Iowa electrical utilities and feed-in tariff (FIT) policies. FIT policies have been used successfully in Europe to encourage the rapid expansion of solar-powered systems.
I urge the Iowa Legislature to adopt a FIT policy targeted to small and mid-sized wind turbines that are owned by Iowa farmers and landowners. The FIT policy would require electrical companies to pay a high rate of return per kWh for the initial years of the lifetime of targeted wind systems. That will allow farmers and landowners to pay for the wind systems during those initial years. After the specified initial time period, the rate of pay will drop to wholesale rates. That will allow the power company to buy cheap, green energy for the remainder of the lifetime of the turbine, and allow the farm wind turbine to continue to generate electricity to power the farm and to serve as a profit center for the farm.

Feed-in tariffs have been successful in many other places, and there's no reason not to use them in Iowa. Getting the policy through the Iowa legislature would be an uphill climb no matter which party was in control, however.

Thicke rolled out his energy policy this morning in Des Moines. He has public events scheduled later today in Cedar Rapids and Waterloo, September 23 in Dubuque, Davenport and Iowa City, and September 24 in Council Bluffs and Sioux City. I hope the media will cover his ideas, because they have potential to make farming more profitable while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It's too bad that neither the current Secretary of Agriculture, Republican Bill Northey, nor his predecessor, Democrat Patty Judge, took the initiative on reducing our agriculture sector's reliance on fossil fuels.
Statement of September 22, 2010

Thicke: Iowa agriculture vulnerable to volatile
oil market, must begin orderly transition now
Iowa Secretary of Agriculture candidate Francis Thicke (pronounced TICK-ee) today announced comprehensive energy policy for agriculture that shifts new public incentives to wind and biofuel systems that 1) Produce energy to power agriculture, 2) Are farmer-scale and farmer-owned, and put profits in farmers' pockets, and 3) are truly sustainable and renewable. His statement follows:
Iowa agriculture is highly dependent on fossil fuels. Oil prices - which set the pace for other fossil-fuels - will rise sharply as world oil production peaks.i Our agriculture is vulnerable because it is dependent on cheap oil, and we are at the end of the cheap-oil era. That is a prescription for disaster for Iowa agriculture.
As a state, we currently have no plans for how to power agriculture beyond fossil fuels, leaving us vulnerable to the effects of escalating and widely fluctuating energy prices. In 2008, oil prices rose to $147 per barrel, but within seven months fell to less than $34. This wild fluctuation whipsawed agriculture. Fertilizer and fuel prices tripled; corn prices spiked and fell sharply; ethanol plants went bankrupt.
Oil economists tell us that repeated cycles of price spikes followed by precipitous price falls are the future for energy costs as long as we are dependent on fossil fuels.ii Even the U.S. military warns that oil prices will rise greatly, and we should expect oil shortages in the near future.iii
Our current biofuel production is not targeted to secure the energy future for agriculture. We use about a third of our corn crop to produce ethanol, but use it for cars driving on highways, not to power agriculture. Iowa farmers are selling corn as an energy crop at cheap commodity prices while paying high retail prices for the fuel needed to power their farms. Biofuels today make only a dent in total U.S. fuel needs,iv but could go a long way toward making agriculture energy self-sufficient.
Producing Energy for Agriculture
Exciting biofuel technology is developing rapidly today to make bio-oil from plant biomass. Bio-oil can be turned into diesel fuel and gasoline, which can be used to power agriculture. One promising feature of bio-oil production is that it can be done on a much smaller scale than today's predominant model for biofuel production, which is the large-scale corn ethanol plant.
Purdue University researchers (and others) are working on mobile bio-oil production facilities in which bio-oil production systems can be taken to locally stockpiled biomass, instead of having to haul large volumes of low-density biomass to central processing facilities. Small-scale production of bio-oil, and mobile bio-oil production facilities, mean that bio-oil production can be done at a scale that can be owned or controlled by farmers, so the profits of bio-oil production will go into the pockets of farmers.
Another advantage of the technology of bio-oil production is that any biomass material can be used as a feedstock. The ideal biomass source will be prairie plants or other high yielding perennial crops which - compared to annual row crops - provide greater protection of the soil from erosion and from leaching of nutrients to water resources. Also, using perennial crops for biomass avoids the energy costs of planting crops annually, and minimizes or eliminates pesticide and fertilizer needs. As a result, net energy production from perennials is greater.
How to Get There from Here
Iowa has invested a lot of public money in subsidies and tax credits for building corn ethanol plants, which has resulted in some economic development and expanded markets for corn. However, the ethanol industry expanded to the point that now the livestock industry feels threatened by how much corn is being diverted to ethanol production. Livestock commodity organizations have taken a stand against renewal of the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) and the import tariff on foreign ethanol.v Overbuilding of the ethanol industry also contributed to bankruptcy of many ethanol plants when market conditions became unfavorable. In short, the biofuels industry has gotten out of balance.
I do not support the abrupt ending of ethanol subsidies, as the livestock industry has proposed, because that will jeopardize both the markets for Iowa crop producers and the extensive investment of public money that went into building the ethanol industry. If the rug were suddenly pulled out from under the ethanol industry, it could implode. Rather, I think we should look for middle ground that serves the interests of both the livestock and ethanol industries. I would urge the U.S. Congress to renew the tax credits for ethanol production, but look to phase them out over time, as the ethanol industry becomes self-sufficient.
Developing the Next Generation of Biofuels in Iowa
I propose that the Iowa Legislature end subsidies and tax credits for building new corn ethanol plants in Iowa so that when the next cycle of high oil prices comes, the ethanol industry has less incentive to go into another round of overbuilding. Instead, I urge the Legislature to redirect whatever public funds can be made available to the Iowa Power Fund for rapid development of the next generation of biofuel systems in Iowa that: 1) Produce fuel to power agriculture, 2) Are designed to be built at a scale that can be farmer-owned or farmer-controlled, so the profits go into the pockets of farmers, and 3) Are truly sustainable and renewable.
Developing the Next Generation of Wind Systems in Iowa
Today, 20 percent of the electricity generated in Iowa comes from wind power. That is good. However, the next generation of distributed wind systems holds promise to put more of the wealth created into the pockets of farmers and increase the amount of wind energy that can be distributed through the existing electrical grid.
When farmers lease out land to put corporate-owned wind turbines on their farms, they still pay retail rates for the electricity they use to power their farms. In other words - like with biofuels - farmers sell cheap and buy high.
The next generation of wind power should be mid-sized wind turbines on farms all across Iowa, so the wind that blows over the farm will power the farm, and the wealth created will be retained on the farm. This kind of distributed wind power has several advantages: 1) The wealth created by the wind turbines is retained by the landowner and stays in the local community, 2) The electricity generated is used locally, avoiding the need to build new transmission lines, and 3) Distributed wind turbines will more fully utilize wind fronts as they move across the state, compared to when most wind farms are located in a few places in the state.
Policies the Legislature could enact to hasten the development of mid-sized wind turbines on farm across Iowa include mandatory net metering for all Iowa electrical utilities and feed-in tariff (FIT) policies. FIT policies have been used successfully in Europe to encourage the rapid expansion of solar-powered systems.
I urge the Iowa Legislature to adopt a FIT policy targeted to small and mid-sized wind turbines that are owned by Iowa farmers and landowners. The FIT policy would require electrical companies to pay a high rate of return per kWh for the initial years of the lifetime of targeted wind systems. That will allow farmers and landowners to pay for the wind systems during those initial years. After the specified initial time period, the rate of pay will drop to wholesale rates. That will allow the power company to buy cheap, green energy for the remainder of the lifetime of the turbine, and allow the farm wind turbine to continue to generate electricity to power the farm and to serve as a profit center for the farm.
Act Now to Avoid Crises
Energy costs will be a game-changer for Iowa agriculture. It is not a matter of whether energy prices will increase. It is a matter of whether we will have the foresight to plan ahead and create an orderly transition to less reliance on fossil fuels - or if we will be thrown into chaos, fuel shortages, and possible food shortages because we waited too long to make the transition.
FRANCIS THICKE BACKGROUND:
Francis Thicke has been a full-time farmer for 27 years, is a scientist with a Ph.D. in agronomy/soil fertility, and has worked in the past at the USDA in Washington, D.C., where he served as National Program Leader for Soil Science. A frequently consulted national expert on agricultural sustainability, Thicke and his wife, Susan, own and operate an 80-cow organic, grass-based dairy near Fairfield, where they process milk on the farm into bottled milk, yogurt and cheese marketed locally through Fairfield grocery stores and restaurants. For additional information on his campaign for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, go to www.ThickeForAgriculture.com.

Thicke backs Maine model for egg safety rules

desmoinesdem — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 15:09:51 GMT

Democratic candidate for Secretary of Agriculture Francis Thicke is calling for regulations "modeled after a program that has been used successfully in Maine for more than 22 years to return integrity to Iowa-produced eggs." Thicke introduced the proposal during his September 11 debate with Republican incumbent Bill Northey. Excerpt from his opening statement:

The State of Maine's egg safety program complements the new [Food and Drug Administration] egg rule and shores up weaknesses in the federal rule. Specifically, the Maine program has three features that go beyond the requirements of the new FDA egg rule: 1) An effective program for vaccination of laying hens; 2) Monthly inspection of laying facilities for sanitation, and testing for Salmonella within the building; and 3) Egg testing when Salmonella is found in the building.

I've posted the full text of Thicke's opening statement after the jump. Gabe Licht covered the debate for the Spencer Daily Reporter, and Lynda Waddington was there for Iowa Independent. Northey defended his record on egg safety, denying his department had the authority to inspect the feed mill suspected in the salmonella outbreak:

Thicke reiterated the secretary of agriculture should inspect feed mills, noting the [Jack] DeCoster feed mill filled 12,500 semi loads annually.
"First of all, there is a distinct word in there," Northey fired back. "... Commercial feed mills that sell feed. The reason that we do that is to actually protect the consumer of those that are buying feed from others. Our regulations are actually not for food safety, but are for protection of consumers... We have been told ... this mill does not sell feed -- that birds at the other facility are owned by DeCoster as well... Just as we don't go to a farmer mixing his own feed, we do not go to those mills that are producing feed for private facilities or on their own facilities."
"The secretary of agriculture has the authority to make rules to cover loopholes and this is a DeCoster loophole playing a shell game and we should not play that game with him," Thicke said.
The incumbent had pointed words for his rival.
"Unless you know something we need to know more about the situation ..., it would be important to ... wait for the information and be able to find out whether they were actually in violation of that or not," Northey said. "... We don't just make decisions on large facilities different than others because our rule says we are to inspect commercial facilities selling feed to others, not facilities of a certain size."

Thicke has said Iowa Department of Agriculture rule-making could have closed the loopholes that allowed DeCoster's feed mill to avoid state inspections.

The secretary of agriculture candidates also clashed over agricultural zoning:

Although both candidates were clear that there is enough room in Iowa for all types of sizes of agriculture, and that they would support all aspects of the industry, a major difference between them was exposed while answering a question regarding local control of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) placement.
"Absolutely," said Thicke, who argued that allowing local government to decide the site of CAFOs would not add additional regulations for owners, who already must follow county building policies, but would allow local residents control over their environment.
Northey disagreed and stated that agribusinesses "need one set of rules," otherwise there would be "a real challenge" in getting any new developments approved.
Thicke, who formerly served on the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission, sympathized with country residents who had to live near "toxic fumes," while Northey sympathized with producers "who have been demonized."

Speaking of local control, last week Dave Murphy of Food Democracy Now wrote about the connection between DeCoster's operations and Iowa's 1995 law protecting CAFOs from zoning at the county level:

After initially rising from poverty in Maine with a small chicken operation, DeCoster's run-ins with New England legal authorities led him to flee to Iowa, where he ventured into building hog confinements and factory farm egg facilities just in time to coincide with that state's loosening of the environmental regulations in 1995, with the passing of House File 519, which stripped all local authority from regulating factory farms.
The passage of this piece of legislation single-handedly pushed more independent hog farmers out of farming in Iowa, the nation's number one hog and egg producer, than any other law in the state's history. Since 1994, the year prior to the passage of H.F. 519, Iowa has lost nearly 72% of the state's hog farmers, as the number has dropped from 29,000 to 8,300 today. As part of the industry trend, hogs moved off pasture into massive warehouse-style confinements, hundreds of which Jack DeCoster built across much of central Iowa, laying the foundation for a "protein" producing empire that included pork, eggs and a steady stream of state and federal violations.

That would be a great issue to use against Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad, in an alternate world where the Culver-Judge administration and the Democratic-controlled Iowa legislature had done something to advance local control during the past four years.
Press release from Francis Thicke's campaign:

SPENCER, Iowa, September 11, 2010 - Iowa Secretary of Agriculture candidate Francis Thicke (pronounced TICK-ee) today proposed regulatory framework modeled after a program that has been used successfully in Maine for more than 22 years to return integrity to Iowa-produced eggs. Thicke, a southeast Iowa dairy farmer, soil scientist and national expert on sustainable agriculture, called for overhaul of the egg industry oversight system when he met one-term Republican Bill Northey in a debate at the Clay County Fair in Spencer.
Following is the text of Thicke's opening statement:
"Normally in a debate I would begin by laying out my vision for Iowa agriculture and food production. However, Iowa is under a national microscope. The egg recall and nationwide Salmonella food poisoning from Iowa eggs have damaged Iowa's reputation. The Iowa Secretary of Agriculture should, above all, be the spokesperson for Iowa's agriculture and food system and should be taking action to assure Iowans and the nation that this problem is being addressed.
"I don't see that happening. It's not enough for the Iowa Secretary of Agriculture to say that this is a federal problem and that he is going to wait for an FDA report to see what the problem is. That does nothing to restore confidence in the integrity and reputation of Iowa's food and agriculture system.
"Preliminary indications are that the Salmonella contamination came from a commercial feed mill, owned by Jack DeCoster, which delivered feed to two Iowa egg-laying facilities. We know from Iowa Code, Chapter 198, that the Secretary of Agriculture has the authority and responsibility to inspect and ensure the integrity of feed mills that produce commercial feed. But the secretary denies his authority to inspect the DeCoster feed mill, even though the law explicitly states that feed mills that sell feed or distribute feed to contract feeders should be licensed and inspected. Mr. Northey contends that DeCoster has a loophole exemption. What he does not say is that the law also says that the secretary has the authority to adopt rules to carry out the purpose and intent of Chapter 198. In other words, he has the authority to close loopholes in the law through rule-making.
"As Secretary of Agriculture, I would not only fulfill my responsibility to inspect commercial feed mills, I would also lay out a regulatory framework to ensure food safety in the egg industry. After reviewing the new FDA egg rule and consulting with scientists working in this arena, I propose that the Iowa Legislature should adopt the model used by the State of Maine, which has been in place for 22 years and has been effective in protecting Maine's eggs from Salmonella enteritidis.
"The State of Maine's egg safety program complements the new FDA egg rule and shores up weaknesses in the federal rule. Specifically, the Maine program has three features that go beyond the requirements of the new FDA egg rule: 1) An effective program for vaccination of laying hens; 2) Monthly inspection of laying facilities for sanitation, and testing for Salmonella within the building; and 3) Egg testing when Salmonella is found in the building.
"These measures have worked well to protect the safety of Maine's egg industry and would work well here in Iowa as well. As the No. 1producer of eggs, Iowa should also be No. 1 in egg safety."

Egg recall news: Northey and Thicke to debate, Sierra Club wants broad investigation

desmoinesdem — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:22:35 GMT

Republican Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey will debate his Democratic challenger Francis Thicke on September 11, the Thicke campaign announced today. The Spencer Daily Reporter is sponsoring the debate, which will take place from 11 am to 12:30 pm at the Clay County Fairgrounds, during this weekend's county fair. The Thicke campaign's press release states that the Spencer public access cable channel will broadcast the debate, but I hope Iowa Public Television and other media organizations will bring the exchange to a wider audience. Thicke argues,

Iowa voters deserve a full discussion of the issues that are important in this campaign - protecting water and air quality; local food production; local control over - and reducing the impacts of - concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs); more diversity on the landscape, including more use of cover and perennial crops; and truly sustainable, renewable, farmer-owned energy systems for agriculture.

Thicke is seeking five debates with Northey, one in each of Iowa's Congressional districts, but details about other possible meetings have not been finalized. The candidates clashed last week over the Iowa secretary of agriculture's responsibility to inspect feed mills like the one where a recent salmonella outbreak seems to have originated.

Northey has won the endorsement of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation and the Iowa Association of Business and Industry, while Thicke has the Iowa Farmers Union's endorsement. Last month Thicke published the questionnaire he completed for the Farm Bureau Federation and called on Northey to do the same, so that "so that Iowa voters can determine for themselves where each candidate stands on critical farm issues."

In related news, today the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club sent an open letter to Attorney General Tom Miller requesting a "thorough investigation of the circumstances surrounding the egg recall for shell eggs produced by Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms Inc for violations of state law. This investigation should also include Quality Egg LLC Feed Mill, the supplier of the feed to both egg producers." I've posted the full text of the letter after the jump. It includes a detailed list of facts supporting the Sierra Club's view that the egg producers showed "reckless disregard for the health and well-being of the public." To prevent similar violations in the future, the Sierra Club is also asking the Attorney General's Office to consider possible "internal policy changes, legislative needs, and administrative rule changes."

Miller recently returned a $10,000 campaign donation that Peter DeCoster made in 2005. DeCoster's father owns the company at the center of the egg recall.

September 7, 2010
Tom Miller Iowa Attorney General 1305 E. Walnut Street Des Moines IA 50319
RE: Wright County Egg, Hillandale Farms of Iowa Inc., and Quality Egg LLC Feed Mill
Dear Mr. Miller:
The Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club encourages you to perform a thorough investigation of the circumstances surrounding the egg recall for shell eggs produced by Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms Inc for violations of state law. This investigation should also include Quality Egg LLC Feed Mill, the supplier of the feed to both egg producers. Additionally, we encourage you to review the operations at the two farms responsible for the egg recall and the feed mill with an eye toward internal policy changes, legislative needs, and administrative rule changes.
Investigation of violations
We encourage you to do a thorough investigation of the operations at these two egg producers and the feed mill with an eye toward penalties, fines, and criminal prosecution for violations of the state laws. We believe enough information has been published in the press and on the Food and Drug Administration web site to warrant serious penalties against Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms Inc.
The recall for Hillandale extends to April 9 while the recall for Wright County Egg extends to May 15. It is not clear when the egg producers first knew about the salmonella enteritidis contamination of the eggs. The recall began in late August 2010. In an August 31, 2010, article, USA Today reported that salmonella had sickened at least 1,470 people. People exposed to salmonella can suffer serious health effects. The people who eat the eggs are victims of the owners and operators of the egg production businesses; the consumers are innocent of any malfeasance.
The Food and Drug Administration conducted inspections of the Quality Egg LLC Feed Mill and related business entities facilities at Wright County Egg, and Hillandale Farms of Iowa, Inc. in August 2010. The inspections show a pattern of filthy facilities, poorly maintained buildings, and pest-infested facilities.
The egg producers showed a reckless disregard for the health and well-being of the public by failing to recall the eggs in a timely manner.
Likewise operation of the egg farms show a reckless disregard for the health and well- being of the public by failing to safely operate the farms, based on the Food and Drug Administration 483 report. Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms were filthy and infested with flies and rodents.
The 483 report indicated problems at Wright County Egg that included:
1. A dark liquid that appeared to be manure was seeping though the concrete foundation to the outside of the laying houses in several locations.
2. Standing water, three-inches high, was observed in one manure pit.
3. There were signs of structural damage to a number of the barns, including missing siding, missing air vent screens, and gaps at the bottoms of the doors. Additionally, the concrete foundations in several barns had holes and gaps.
4. There were signs of rodents and birds entering the buildings at the damage sites.
5. Access doors to manure pits were pushed out and provided openings to wild animals. Piles of manure, four to eight feet high, pushed the doors outward.
6. Practices were not implemented to prevent the transfer of salmonella between poultry houses.
7. Employees were not sanitizing equipment before they moved between poultry houses.
8. Manure was stacked so high in a manure pit that the door was blocked and could not be opened.
9. Chickens were able to use the manure as a bridge to free themselves of their confinement. They were able to access the egg-laying areas and tracking manure into those areas.
10. Maggots were observed in the manure pit.
11. Large quantities of flies were found around egg belts and walkways.
12. The company-maintained records do not show that the company was conducting inspections for rodents. Likewise, the company is not keeping records of disinfecting the dead hen truck and disinfecting the trailer used to move pullets to laying houses.
Additionally the 483 report indicated problems at Hillandale Farms of Iowa that included:
1. No seal was found on the manure door on one building.
2. There was standing water next to the manure pits.
3. The inspector found liquid manure leaking into the first floor from the manure pit. An employee reported that several weeks before the inspection the water line had leaked and caused the manure pit to flood.
4. Leaking manure was flowing out of a gap in the door of the manure pit.
5. The producer did not bait and seal rodent burrow holes in the egg production facilities.
6. There were signs of structural damage to a number of the barns, including holes and missing siding. One building was missing a 15-foot by 3-foot section of siding, leaving a hole in the side of the building. A 2-foot by-2-foot hole was found in the side of another building and a 5-inch by 3-inch hole in the siding of yet another building. Several doors had significant gaps, including one door with a 12-inch-wide gap, one with a 6-inch-wide gap.
7. Uncaged hens had freed themselves of the confinement, had walked on piles of manure in the manure pit, and were tracking manure from the manure pits into the caged houses.
See http://www.fda.gov/Food/NewsEv... - The Food and Drug Administration web site has numerous pages concerning the inspection reports and the egg recall. The 483 reports can be found on the FDA web pages.
Furthermore, the Food and Drug Administration has determined that the same strain of salmonella contaminated the feed for both egg producers as Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms. The feed producer was Quality LLC Feed Mill, a sister company to Wright County Egg.
Wright County Egg and Quality LLC Feed Mill are part of the Austin "Jack" DeCoster conglomeration of business entities. Hillandale Farms purchased the feed and hens from the DeCoster companies.
From all accounts, Jack DeCoster has had a troubled history with respect to following the law concerning his animal operations both in Iowa and out of state. Federal authorities fined him for health and safety violations in Maine. In Iowa, he was named an habitual violator of environmental laws, fined $150,000, and banned from establishing additional livestock operations for several years.
Over a long period of time, Mr. DeCoster has shown a wanton disregard for the law with respect to his businesses; the situation surrounding the egg recall is more of the same behavior. Because past punishment has not resolved the health, safety, and environmental issues surrounding Mr. DeCoster's behavior, it is time to increase the penalties assessed against him.
Legislative and administrative rule changes
As state agencies undertake an investigation of the egg recall, we also believe that a review of existing policy and legislation needs to be undertaken. Among the items that need to be reviewed are:
1. Requiring mandatory vaccinations of chickens against salmonella
2. Mandatory recall of eggs and other food products when it is determined that they have become contaminated. Voluntary compliance in recalls does not work in a way that is consistent with protecting the public health.
3. Funding for regulatory staff to monitor concentrated animal feeding operations so that problems like these egg producers are not allowed to fester for years needs to be significantly increased.
4. Monitoring of the feed mills producing feed for concentrated animal feeding operations needs to be implemented and enforced. Industrial-sized feed mills should require extra inspection due to the large numbers of animals eating the food.
Summary
The behavior of these two egg producers is clearly a public health issue based on how many people have been sickened prior to the recall and based on the poorly managed operations of the facilities.
The egg recall and the obvious flaunting of the public health, safety, and environmental laws is an embarrassment to all Iowans. It could have long-lasting effects on our ability to sell all of our agricultural products outside of the state, which would affect the well- being of Iowans and businesses operating in Iowa.
Iowa needs to send a strong message that Iowa is not open to businesses who flaunt the health, safety, and environmental laws of the state and country. By enforcing our existing laws and regulations and by strengthening the ones that currently are in effect, Iowa will not be in a race to the bottom by our country's companies that are the most polluting, most unhealthy, and least protecting of human health. The bad apples, including the companies involved in the egg recall, must be stopped.
It is also time to put some teeth in Iowa's laws with respect to how concentrated animal feeding operations respond to the laws and regulations of the state. Voluntary compliance does not work for business entities who flagrantly violate the laws as the DeCoster conglomeration of companies has been doing.
On behalf of over 5,000 Iowans who are members of the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club, we appreciate your pursuing violations against the egg producers and recommending strong rules and legislation so that similar problems never reoccur.
Sincerely,
Wallace L. Taylor Legal Chair Sierra Club, Iowa Chapter
References
http://www.fda.gov/Food/NewsEv... - The Food and Drug Administration web site has numerous pages concerning the inspection reports and the egg recall. The 483 reports can be found on the FDA web pages.
Elizabeth Weise and Phil Brasher, "Filth found at 2 Iowa egg farms", USA Today, August 31, 2010
"Rodents, filth found at Iowa egg farms," Cedar Rapids Gazette, August 31, 2010 "Answers about the giant egg recall", DesMoinesRegister.com, August 24, 2010
Perry Beeman, "DeCoster took control of egg operation after state ban," DesMoinesRegister.com, August 28, 2010

Northey ignorant about Iowa Code and other egg recall news

desmoinesdem — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 20:38:07 GMT

Following up on yesterday's post, the recall of half a billion Iowa-produced eggs continues to reverberate in Iowa politics.

Republican Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey still denies that he could have done more to ensure food safety regulations were followed at the DeCoster facilities. Northey's opponent, Francis Thicke, has said feed mill inspections "could have identified a strain of Salmonella Enteritidis before 1,470 Americans were sickened and a half billion eggs were recalled."

Meanwhile, the non-profit Food Democracy Now announced that two major supermarket chains have agreed to stop selling eggs produced by Jack DeCoster's operations.

Details and more links are after the jump.
Northey has said little in public since the salmonella outbreak became national news, and he didn't respond directly to the charges Thicke made yesterday. Northey sent a campaign staffer to speak to Rod Boshart:

Dustin Vande Hoef, Northey's campaign spokesman, said the Iowa code authorizes the state agriculture department to license and inspect commercial feed mills that sell or distribute feed, but it does not apply to private individuals that mix feed for their own animals.
"The law makes no distinction based on size and gives no authority for the Iowa Secretary of Agriculture to pick-and-choose private feed mills to inspect," he said.
"It is very disconcerting that a candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture would advocate stepping beyond the department's legal authority and violating private property rights," Vande Hoef said. "In Mr. Thicke's statement, he expresses a desire to target private farmer feed mills based on size, and the definition of what constitutes 'large' would rest with him alone and have nothing to do with what the law actually says."

Thicke reacted with a new statement today:

"Mr. Northey should reread Iowa Code Chapter 198 which specifies that a mill that sells feed or provides feed to a contract feeder is subject to licensing and inspection. The mill in question is owned by Wright County Egg, but that mill also provided feed to Hillandale Farms. Whether Wright County Egg sold the feed to Hillandale Farms, or Hillandale Farms served as a contract feeder for Wright County Egg, by Iowa law, the mill should have been licensed and inspected.
"It is very disconcerting that the Iowa Secretary of Agriculture would ignore his statutory responsibilities to the favor of 'habitual violator' Jack DeCoster, who has a long history of illicit practices. This is particularly alarming because the scale of the operations in question makes the food-safety implications so severe. If Salmonella contamination of the feed supply is found to be the cause of food poisoning for 1,500 people across the nation - as preliminary reports indicate - this national crisis could have been averted if the secretary had tested the feed and issued a 'withdrawal from distribution' order for the contaminated feed, as the law specifies he should have.
"As a dairy farmer and on-farm dairy processor, my dairy is inspected regularly, and the dairy products I produce are tested routinely to ensure food safety. But the egg industry is 50 years behind the times in its regulatory framework to secure food safety. For the Secretary of Agriculture to argue that he should err on the side of not enforcing the minimal regulations in place for egg production is unconscionable.
"Rather than making excuses for his past failure - which allowed the egg industry to fall into a colossal food-safety crisis - the Iowa Secretary of Agriculture should be leading the charge to create a regulatory framework that will ensure the safety of eggs produced in Iowa."

Two former employees of Wright County Egg told the Associated Press that they mentioned problems causing unsanitary conditions to various federal inspectors, but each time the inspectors ignored them. The Des Moines Register's Philip Brasher reported on other problems with the federal inspection system:

U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors also missed the problems at Hillandale as well as at Wright County Egg, a producer that recalled 380 million eggs and supplied Hillandale with hens and feed.
The USDA employees, whose main job is to grade eggs on their condition and catch defects, don't check henhouses or look into farms' salmonella-prevention programs, a job the USDA leaves to the Food and Drug Administration.
The USDA employees do inspect conditions in packing facilities for companies that request and pay for the service. The packing facilities at Hillandale in West Union and at four more farms operated by Wright County Egg had all been audited by the USDA in 2009 or this year and received stellar marks - grades of 97 to 99 percent.
It's not the inspectors' job to go in henhouses and see whether a farm is guarding against salmonella contamination, said Sam Jones-Ellard, a spokesman for the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service.

As a result, some retailers, including Costco, are considering "setting or tightening their own safety standards for buying eggs," Brasher reported.

DeCoster's operation has supplied eggs to many companies under different brand names. Food Democracy Now has been collecting signatures urging grocery stores to stop buying eggs linked to DeCoster. On September 2 the non-profit organization announced that two companies have responded favorably to the request:

CLEAR LAKE, Iowa - Two major retail supermarket chains, Trader Joe's and Fareway Stores Inc., have agreed to pull DeCoster-affiliated brands of eggs from the shelves of their combined 442 stores nationwide. The news comes as a result from pressure from Food Democracy Now!, a grassroots community of over 150,000 Americans, after it was announced that the recent salmonella outbreak, which affected thousands, stemmed from two Iowa facilities owned by Austin "Jack" DeCoster.
Earlier this week, Food Democracy Now! began calling on its members to send messages to supermarkets nationwide to stop selling egg brands that come from DeCoster's facilities after it became known that Wright County and Hillandale Farms - both owned by Jack DeCoster - were the source of the latest salmonella outbreak in eggs that sickened thousands of Americans and caused a nationwide recall of over 550 million eggs. To date, the petition has over 31,000 signatures and has been Food Democracy Now!'s source of support in calling on supermarket chains affiliated with DeCoster and asking them to make their customers' safety a top priority.
"While Americans wait for the federal government to take action against DeCoster and his business, it is imperative that we take action to make sure that the American consumer continues to purchase food items without the fear of falling ill from manufacturer negligence," said Dave Murphy, founder and Executive Director of Food Democracy Now!. "Trader Joe's and Fareway Stores, Inc. have done the right thing and helped prevent any further endangerment to their customers - we hope that other grocery stores will do the right thing and follow in their footsteps."
This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a damning report, detailing filthy conditions at Wright County Egg, Hillandale Farms and Quality Egg LLC, the DeCoster-owned feed mill that supplied both facilities with the salmonella tainted feed. The FDA reported the existence of live rodents in laying houses, overflowing piles of manure up to eight feet high, and an exorbitant amount of flies and maggots throughout the facilities.

Today the Des Moines Register's Tony Leys covered DeCoster family members' generous political giving over the years, a topic first reported by Lynda Waddington at Iowa Independent last week. DeCoster family donations to the Democratic Governors Association totaled $375,000 in the past four years, and the DGA has been the largest financial supporter of Culver's re-election campaign. Adam Mason of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement called on the DGA to return the donations. DGA spokeswoman Emily Bittner said the organization "complies fully with campaign finance law. We do not earmark or funnel contributions."

Culver campaign manager Donn Stanley said Thursday that the governor had been unaware of the DeCosters' contributions to the national association. Stanley said the governor has no control over who donates to the association and would not ask the group to return the DeCosters' donations. [...]
Culver has taken no high-profile stance on the latest DeCoster scandal since it became a national story last month. When pressed by reporters, he first indicated last week that it was a federal matter. He later said he would have his staff look to see if any changes could be made to state regulations to help prevent such problems. He said he would like to see significant increases in fines and penalties for violators.
Stanley said Culver knows Peter DeCoster, who is Jack's son and helps run the family business. Stanley said that's not surprising, because the governor knows many Iowa business people. He said he was unsure if the governor had ever met privately with any of the DeCosters, but he said Culver had never solicited financial contributions from the family.
Stanley said Culver's Republican opponent, former Gov. Terry Branstad, also has received financial support from big agricultural interests. Stanley also noted that Doug Gross, one of Branstad's top advisers, used to represent the DeCosters as a lawyer.
Branstad's campaign declined to comment for this article.
Stanley said Culver has worked hard for the Democratic Governors Association. "It's not surprising that the Democratic Governors Association would support an incumbent Democratic governor, especially one who has been so supportive of the DGA," he said.

Culver has done a lot of fundraisers for the DGA around the country, and they clearly would have gotten involved in his re-election campaign with or without donations from the DeCoster family. Furthermore, big steps to regulate factory farms were probably off the table the day Culver picked Patty Judge as his running mate in 2006. Still, it doesn't look good for the DGA to raise so much money from one family with a major business interest in Iowa. Until we adopt a clean elections system, this kind of legalized corruption (or at least the appearance of it) will continue to influence our politics.

I'm not surprised the Branstad administration declined to comment for today's story in the Register. The last thing they need is for a reporter to comb through his campaign donations looking for connections to questionable corporate interests. Branstad's current campaign has raised more than $200,000 from people closely linked to the American Future Fund, for example.

Egg recall linkfest: Northey's inaction, Thicke's vision and Branstad's delusion

desmoinesdem — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:51:50 GMT

Democratic Secretary of Agriculture candidate Francis Thicke spoke this morning about the recall of half a billion eggs originating from two Iowa companies. I've been wondering why our current Secretary of Agriculture, Bill Northey, has kept quiet about the salmonella outbreak that prompted the largest food recall in history. Thicke pointed out that Northey had the authority to license and inspect feed mills like the one that served "habitual violator" Jack DeCoster's operations, but instead Northey did nothing.

More details on the perspectives of Northey and Thicke are after the jump, along with many other links on the egg recall story.

If you think Northey's failure to prevent or adequately respond to this disaster is outrageous, wait till you hear the agriculture policy Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad rolled out this week.
Thicke has been a voice for sustainable farming practices for decades. His comments this morning are worth posting in full.

Democrat Francis Thicke says Iowa Ag Secretary should step up, take responsibility
Iowa code gives Agriculture Secretary authority to ensure safety of poultry feed
DES MOINES, Iowa, September 2, 2010 - Iowa Secretary of Agriculture candidate Francis Thicke (pronounced TICK-ee) today called on his opponent to explain why "habitual violator" Austin "Jack" DeCoster was allowed to avoid feed mill inspections that could have identified a strain of Salmonella Enteritidis before 1,470 Americans were sickened and a half billion eggs were recalled.
In a statement to reporters, Thicke said:
The egg recall is a national embarrassment to the state of Iowa that threatens consumer confidence in the foods that we produce. For my opponent to defer all responsibility to federal authorities, when Iowa law clearly gave him authority to ensure the safety of the feed thought to be the cause of the Salmonella contamination, calls into question his leadership and commitment to the integrity of Iowa's food and agriculture.
The egg recall scandal is damaging the image of Iowa agriculture, and the Iowa Ag Secretary should be front and center on this issue. Instead Bill Northey has issued no official statements and has not even acknowledged the recall on either his department or his campaign web site. He did tell KAAL-TV in Austin, Minn., that "I think we do take for granted food safety and we take for granted the fact that most people do do things right."
An agriculture secretary who takes food safety for granted is taking for granted that operators like Jack DeCoster will do the right thing, even though history has shown that time and again that he will pursue profit over worker safety, public health and environmental protection.
Iowa code gives responsibility for the safety of commercial feed to the Secretary of Agriculture. The Secretary is charged with licensing and inspecting feed mills. However, the department exempted the feed mill which supplied feed for both Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms from licensing and inspection.
Bill Northey's answer for not licensing and regulating that mill is that the department has exempted farmers who grind their own feed from licensure and inspection. But, the mill in question provides feed for two huge egg-laying facilities and produces about 300,000 tons of feed a year, enough to fill about 12,500 semi trucks. This is certainly not what I would consider a farmer feed mill.
Clearly, this kind of exemption is appropriate to allow family farmers to feed their own livestock without burdening them with a lot of government red tape and bureaucracy. However, it is ludicrous to extend that exemption to the mill providing feed to these two industrial-scale operations responsible for the Salmonella food poisoning. Did Secretary Northey exempt that mill by design, or is he just being derelict in his responsibilities?
Bill Northey denies that he has any authority related to the contaminated eggs, and he has given no indication that he wants authority in this arena. If I were Secretary of Agriculture, I would use the authority already present in Iowa code, and if there were still holes in the federal regulatory process, I would request the Iowa Legislature to take action to ensure food safety. Iowa deserves a Secretary of Agriculture who is willing to step forward to provide leadership and take the actions necessary to resolve this issue and avoid future problems.

The Associated Press had previously reported on the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship's failure to inspect conditions at the huge feed mill. Thicke is right that this exemption should be applied to family farmers growing their own feed, not an enormous factory producing millions of eggs every week. Given DeCoster's long list of violations related to food and worker safety as well as environmental pollution, the Iowa secretary of agriculture should not have taken the safety of his current operations "for granted."

Thicke didn't mention that Northey's predecessor also did nothing to monitor conditions at the facilities in question. Democrat Patty Judge served two terms as secretary of agriculture before being elected lieutenant governor in 2006. She was on the job when Wright County Egg was founded and clearly could have done more to make sure the feed and production methods were safe. But Judge was an enthusiastic advocate of factory farms and isn't known for seeking to regulate them, even those with a record of violations.

Food Democracy Now is urging consumers to sign a letter that will go to their local grocery store, with this message: "I refuse to consume any eggs from [DeCoster's] facility or others closely associated with it and ask that you immediately purchase your eggs from a company that is safe and respects the laws of our country." Although I purchase eggs produced at several small Iowa farms, I signed Food Democracy Now's letter and hope the Windsor Heights Hy-Vee will get the message.

Unfortunately, food safety problems aren't rare and isolated cases, as Thicke noted last week:

"The current Iowa Secretary of Agriculture consistently conveys a message that we should increase the scale of industrial livestock production in Iowa," Thicke said. "But, he avoids addressing the health, environmental and social costs of the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) the animals are housed in."
In a statement last week, a high-ranking U.S. Food and Drug Administration official said the salmonella outbreak shouldn't be viewed as an isolated incident in today's industrialized food system.
"It's not all that surprising," said Sherri McGarry, emergency coordinator for the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. "We are seeing much more centralized production and distribution nationwide - and that's not restricted to egg production."
The USDA currently has more than three dozen open cases related to meat recalls alone.
"With the sheer size of our food-processing and distribution systems and the amount of aggregation and co-mingling of food products occurring today - particularly with meat products - conditions are ideal for an isolated contamination incident to become exponentially multiplied and to cause food-borne illnesses all across the nation," Thicke said. "When food travels thousands of miles and changes hands multiple times, there are many more opportunities for contamination. By contrast, an isolated food contamination incident in a local or small-scale food processing system will be much smaller scale and will more likely be contained to or near the source of the problem."

I was amused to see Republican attorney general candidate Brenna Findley seize on DeCoster's misdeeds as an issue to use against Tom Miller. The Attorney General's Office labeled Jack DeCoster a "habitual violator" in 2000, and the designation expired in 2004. In 2005, DeCoster's son Peter made a $10,000 donation to Miller's re-election campaign. (Iowa Independent's Lynda Waddington reported on August 27 that DeCoster and his immediate family have made more than $500,000 in political contributions to Democratic organizations and candidates since 1999.)

Findley called on Miller to return that donation, and Miller is rightly doing so. At the same time, Findley has some nerve to say "habitual violators should not be allowed pollute our politics" when her whole campaign narrative against Miller is that he's too tough on corporate violators, whereas she would take a more business-friendly approach to the job. Miller has done a lot of work on consumer protection and making businesses comply with the law. Specifically, Miller's office did lots of work during the 1990s to enforce laws DeCoster was breaking:

"In this state, no one was stronger on DeCoster than our office," Miller said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "We were the ones on the front lines prosecuting him."
Miller said his office effectively prosecuted DeCoster, making him the first and only person to be deemed a "habitual violator" in Iowa.
"We had a huge battle with Jack DeCoster in the '90s over the pollution issue at the hog lots," Miller said. "We got enough violations prosecuted that he saw it would be inevitable that we would get habitual violators status, so he agreed to that."

Findley's opportunism is laughable, but the agriculture policy Findley's big fan Terry Branstad just announced is mind-boggling. In the middle of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds or even thousands of people, Branstad's answer is less regulation of agribusiness and specifically fewer environmental lawsuits against producers. As with most Branstad campaign promises, this one "included few specifics," but you can download the pdf file here. Branstad views DeCoster as "one bad egg," as if Republican proposals wouldn't make it easier for other large producers that skirt the rules. Hardly a week goes by that I don't read a report on manure spilling into some creek or river, and Iowa's water quality is poor. But Branstad's sympathies are with business owners who tell him anti-pollution rules imposed by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources cost too much.

Culver's campaign slammed Branstad's proposal:

Branstad's Agriculture policy is more of the same failed idea: removing oversight.
Branstad proposes that government should " ...get out of the way..."
Branstad's approach of putting all of these jobs at risk by offering regulatory short cuts to a few is just as reckless as his widely criticized proposal to cut the oversight abilities at the Department of Economic Development.
Every time there is a problem with the food coming from Iowa, it affects the livelihood of all farmers and processors, most of who play by the rules and produce high quality products.
There is already a balance between regulation and jobs. However, protecting the public health and the integrity and reputation of food produced in Iowa must continue to be a top priority. Branstad encouraged and promoted the growth of factory farms when he was governor. Now, he wants to cut down on the regulation and oversight of these operations.
"It is shocking that during the egg recall, Branstad says that he believes there should be less oversight. It's clear that Branstad is out of touch with the current issues facing Iowa's farmers. Removing oversight isn't going to help create new farms, it's going to put into jeopardy Iowa's food supply," said Culver/Judge Communications Director Ali Glisson.
Governor Culver has called for a review of state and federal laws overseeing factory farms. He has also called for significant increases in fines and penalties for violators.

Culver's late to this party. He was slow to comment on the egg recall, and his administration hasn't done nearly enough to regulate factory farm pollution. He hasn't even tried to give country governments zoning authority over agricultural operations. (Many Democrats believe Patty Judge has influenced Culver on this score.) But at least Culver seems to recognize that our food safety is at risk if we do nothing, which broadly threatens Iowa agriculture as well as public health.

Republicans complain that regulations are too costly for business, but they ignore the hidden costs of not safeguarding our food supply. On that note, I recommend Dave Swenson's latest commentary at Insider Iowa. Excerpt:

Dense farming operations with thousands, even millions, of animals are by their very nature biologically hazardous and require high operational and environmental standards of care. Agricultural economists will argue these are the modern norms, whether in hog, poultry, dairy, or beef enterprises, and if we want to keep food costs low, these are the production systems that assure those efficiencies. But those efficiencies are phony when they do not include the horrific costs of episodically sickening society in the process.
This doesn't mean that the solution to all of our food production problems is a reordering of our systems so that critters run loose as some immediately argued -- there is simply no way to satisfy current demands for meat and poultry products using yester-year methods. Instead it demands that food regulations evolve to include a priori the risks inherent in modern animal production systems. Even though these modern systems achieve production efficiencies necessary to assure adequate supplies of farm commodities, those systems are inherently environmentally and biologically hazardous and compel higher regulatory standards, which most farmers will fight viciously. [...]
Whether it is recalled ground beef, peanut butter, or now eggs, modern society must be on guard against risks of widespread man-made food-sourced epidemics. They are a function of our agricultural systems, our manufacturing processes, distribution networks, and our own lack of understanding of current risks and emerging risks.
There is also an important and pre-emptive role that federal agriculture and food safety regulators must play in preventing such outbreaks in the future. Keeping us safe is government's number one job. Business, however, howls at the mere thought of increased regulation or, more appropriately in this case, merely adequate regulation, and we currently have a wave of ill-thought libertarian sentiment demanding less government and more market freedom.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

UPDATE: Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement executive director Hugh Espey issued this statement on September 1:

"Gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad must be tone deaf to be calling for a deregulated agribusiness industry in Iowa the same week that more details about how the lack of robust factory farm regulations led to the largest salmonella outbreak and egg recall in U.S. history continue to be released. We don't need streamlined regulations, we need stronger regulations. The people of Iowa don't want a government that kowtows to corporate ag. We want a government that will put people before profits, stand up for clean air and clean water, and crack down on factory farm polluters."

Iowa statewide candidate fundraising roundup

desmoinesdem — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:54:47 GMT

The latest round of statewide and state legislative candidate financial reports are available on the website of the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board. For most candidates, these reports cover money raised and spent between June 2 and July 14. Some of the candidates didn't file a June 4 disclosure report, and in those cases the latest filing covers the period from May 15 to July 14.

Fundraising numbers for Democratic and Republican candidates for statewide offices are after the jump. In addition to money raised and spent and cash on hand figures, I've listed the largest donors for each candidate. I am working on a post about the noteworthy fundraising figures from Iowa House and Senate candidates. John Deeth hit some highlights at the Des Moines Register blog. It's important to remember that leadership committees for both parties will also spend a lot of money in the battleground legislative districts.
Republican Terry Branstad brought in big money after winning the gubernatorial primary. His July 19 filing shows $2,147,342.35 in contributions since June 1, $1,020,069.49 in expenditures and $1,576,255.44 cash on hand as of July 14. Advertising took up the largest share of Branstad's expenses in the last six weeks; he has continued to run misleading television commercials statewide since his primary victory. Salaries, consulting fees and mail expenses also account for quite a bit of the campaign's spending.

About half of what Branstad raised since the beginning of June came from the Republican Governors Association in four installments: $500,000 on June 10, $10,000 on July 2, $250,000 on July 9 and $250,000 on July 14, the last day of the reporting period.

Branstad also took in $50,000 from Eldon and Regina Roth of South Dakota, $25,000 from Nick Ryan of Des Moines, Toby Shine of Milford, Gary Kirke of West Des Moines, Mark Falb of Dubuque, Edward Babka of Dubuque, Denny and Candy Elwell of Ankeny, Mr. and Mrs. James Kent of Muscatine, William Metz of Sioux City, and Dale and Marilyn Howard of Iowa Falls; $20,000 from John Butler of Dubuque, Bruce Rastetter of Alden, and Henry Tippie of Texas; $15,000 from Peter and Betty De Yager of Hull, Donald Lamberti of Ankeny, and the Deere & Company PAC; $10,000 from Donald Tietz of Algona, Mike Peterson of Cedar Falls, Tim and Jane McMahon of Fairfield, Thomas Tauke of Virginia, Todd Vershaw of Davenport, John Gleeson of Sioux City, Myron and Connie Gordin of Oskaloosa, Roger Underwood of Ames, Dale and Mary Andringa of Mitchellville, Daniel Ruprecht of West Des Moines, David and Jean Stanley of Muscatine, John Forsyth of West Des Moines, Peter Brownell of Grinnell, Frank Brownell of Montezuma, Carl Dallmeyer of Washington (IA), Jim Theisen of Dubuque, Diane Crookham-Johnson of Oskaloosa, Frank and Margaret Severino of Des Moines, and Mitt Romney's Free and Strong America PAC (Romney's PAC also gave Branstad $10,000 in May). The $5,000 donors were too numerous to list here.

A press release from the Branstad campaign noted that since its inception the campaign has had 11,700 individual donors and raised $5,558,260. Since he has about $1.5 million left on hand and has spent about $1 million since early June, we can conclude that Branstad spent approximately $3 million before the Republican primary. That's easily three times what his opponents spent on the race. With 16 years of experience as governor and that kind of financial advantage, Branstad should have crushed Bob Vander Plaats by a much wider margin than 50 percent to 41 percent.

Governor Chet Culver's fundraising continues to lag behind Branstad's. Culver's July 19 filing reported raising $765,755.00 since June 2 and spending $1,097,512.44 to leave $2,853,814.65 on hand as of July 14. Advertising, salaries and consultant fees were the most significant Culver campaign expenses during the past six weeks.

Major donations reported on latest Culver filing include $250,000 from the Democratic Governors Association; $80,000 from William Knapp of West Des Moines; $50,000 from the Midwest Region Laborers Political Education League; $25,000 from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Fred Hubbell of Des Moines, Fred Eychaner of Illinois and the United Association Political Education Committee; $20,000 from the Iowa State Education Association PAC; $15,000 from Greg Abel of Des Moines, Owen Newlin of Des Moines, and the MidAmerican Energy Company Executive PAC; and $10,000 from the Iowa State Building & Trades Council PAC, the Justice For All Political Action Committee, the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters PAC, the International Union of Painters & Allied Trades PAC, the Machinists Non-Partisan Political League of Maryland, the International Association of Fire Fighters. There were also quite a few $5,000 donors to Culver's re-election effort, but not as many as Branstad listed on his filing.

The Culver campaign's press release emphasized its strong cash on hand number:

"Despite our own campaign having to spend more than $1 million to fight back against Branstad's false and misleading campaign commercials attacking Governor Culver's record, we have nearly $3 million on hand.
"In 2002, at the same point in the race, Governor Vilsack had nearly $1.65 million on hand. Today, the Culver/Judge Campaign has $2.8 million on hand - with more than one million more on hand than Vilsack had in 2002 when he was successfully re-elected.
"With more than $6.6 million raised, we are on pace for a record-setting fundraising total for an Iowa governor's race."

That's true, but the Democratic Governor's Association has now contributed $1.5 million to Culver's campaign. In addition, the DGA spent $782,000 this spring to fund the 527 organization Iowans for Responsible Government, which attacked Branstad from the right. The DGA's executive director Nathan Daschle bragged that the primary left Branstad "wounded," because "He defined himself outside of the moderate space he used to occupy." I lean toward Todd Dorman's view that this whole exercise was not the best use of the DGA's money. I liked the group's television commercials, which showed Branstad taking Iowa backwards (driving his campaign bus in reverse), but I don't like Democrats pretending to believe Branstad is a "liberal." There are plenty of real cases to make against Branstad and his record as governor, but we who can remember him know he wasn't standing with the people against the powerful. From my bleeding-heart liberal perspective, I also am annoyed to see corporate-friendly Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama portrayed as "liberals."

Sure, the Branstad campaign had to spend money defending itself against Iowans for Responsible Government's attacks, but it was and remains proud to have been targeted by a "Democratic front group." Giving Branstad a chance to denounce "smear tactics" from a "shadowy, out-of-state-funded group" allows him to keep changing the subject away from his weak record as governor and failure to back up his campaign promises with any substance.

Bob Vander Plaats reported raising $43,060 and spending $95,503.99 since June 2, leaving just $1,527.46 in cash on hand as of July 14. With so little money in his campaign account, he can't be foolish enough to run for governor as a third-party candidate. Jason Hancock reported a few days ago on rumors that Vander Plaats will soon endorse Branstad. As part of the rumored deal, Branstad would promise that if he defeats Culver, he will appoint Vander Plaats to a post in his administration.

Moving to the other statewide races, the Republican candidate for attorney general, Brenna Findley, continues to raise an impressive amount of money, as she did in the early months of her campaign. Findley's June 19 disclosure showed $72,638.01 in donations during the latest period, $18,171.44 in expenditures and $164,330.90 cash on hand as of July 14. Findley's largest donations were $10,000 from J.H. Kent of Muscatine and the Team Iowa PAC (that group is funded mainly by Bruce Rastetter and chaired by Nick Ryan); $5,000 from John Smith of Cedar Rapids; $2,000 from Stephen Kruck of Boone, Arnold Honkamp of Dubuque, the DFL Revocable Trust/Donald Lamberti of Ankeny, and Bruce Cox of Pleasant Hill; and $1,000 from James Tyler of Atlantic, Diane Crookham-Johnson of Oskaloosa, Edward Babka of Dubuque, Larry Arnn of Michigan, Harry Cockrell of Davenport, Scott Doll of Council Bluffs, and Peter Voorhees of Cedar Falls.

Attorney General Tom Miller has kicked his fundraising into gear, reporting $127,165 in donations, $7,790.91 in expenditures and $230,324.70 cash on hand. The largest contributions to Miller's campaign between June 2 and July 14 were $25,000 from the Democratic Attorneys General Association, $5,000 from William Knapp of West Des Moines, Jerry Crawford of Des Moines, the United Food & Commercial Workers Iowa Active Ballot Club, Daniel Berger of Philadelphia, James Tierney of Maine, Kevin Arquit of New York, and the Echostar Corporation and Dish Network Corporation PAC; $2,500 from Fred Hubbell of Des Moines, Robert Baudino of Des Moines, and Dickstein Shapiro, LLP of Washington, DC; $2,000 from Robert Riley of Des Moines, Steven Wandro of Des Moines, James Rill of Maryland, the Western Union Political Action Committee; $1,800 from David Miles of West Des Moines, $1,500 from John Schmidtlein of Washington, DC; $1,000 from Robert Skinner of Altoona, Donald Timmins of Altoona, Ed Skinner of Pleasant Hill, Faegre & Benson, LLP of Minnesota, Tom Urban of Florida, Martin Wong of New York, Nicholas Allard of Washington, DC, Mark Greenwold of Washington, DC; Mike Moore Law Firm, LLC of Mississippi, Bernstein Liebhard, LLP of New York, Elizabeth Greenwold of Washington, DC; Brendan Sullivan of Washington, DC, Bernard Nash of Washington, DC, Gregory Craig of Washington, DC, Mary Jean Moltenbrey of Washington, DC, Kevin Downey of Washington, DC, Kevin Hodges of Washington, DC, George Pappas of Washington, DC, and Mitchell Pettit of California.

The other Republican challengers to Democratic incumbents face much greater financial disadvantages. David Jamison, GOP nominee for state treasurer, reported $15,694 in donations during the recent period, $5,418.72 in expenditures and $12,436.74 cash on hand, but also $11,818.92 in unpaid bills. (Jamison had competition in the Republican primary.) His largest donations were $3,000 from J.H. Kent of Muscatine and $1,000 from Roger Underwood of Ames, Donald Lamberti of Ankeny and the Team Iowa PAC.

Longtime State Treasurer Mike Fitzgerald didn't raise a huge amount during the latest reporting period, but he started with a lot more in his campaign account. Fitzgerald's July 19 disclosure showed $5,287.21 in donations, $316.67 in expenditures and $122,740.11 cash on hand. His largest contribution was $1,000 from the Bank of America Iowa Political Action Committee.

Republican Matt Schultz left everything on the field and then some in order to win the three-way primary for secretary of state. His July 19 disclosure reported $3,025 in donations, $5,854.79 in expenditures and $976.66 cash on hand with $20,999.96 in unpaid bills as of July 14. Maybe Schultz shouldn't have spent so much on television and radio ads before June 8. Schultz's largest contributions since June 2 were $500 from the Team Iowa PAC and John and Anne Nelson of Council Bluffs. UPDATE: In the comments, thomasjschultz informs me that Schultz's debts are owed to himself, because he paid for the pre-primary advertising out of pocket. So those debts aren't as bad as unpaid bills to other vendors, which the campaign would really need to pay. I should have clicked on that part of his filing for details on the unpaid bills.

Secretary of State Michael Mauro reported $12,670 in donations since May 14, $3,720.27 in expenditures and $136,896.58 cash on hand as of July 14. His largest contributions were $2,000 from the Iowa Committee on Political Education AFL-CIO; $1,000 from Don Mauro of Des Moines and Roxanne Conlin of Des Moines; $500 from David Hurd of Des Moines, Michael Gartner of Des Moines, Bonnie Campbell of Des Moines, Ed Skinner of Altoona, Jerry Crawford of Des Moines, Mike Coppola of Des Moines, Richard Margulies of West Des Moines and the AFSCME/Iowa Public Employees Council 61.

The two Republican incumbent statewide office-holders have much more campaign cash than their challengers. Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey reported $83,380 in donations, $34,053.33 in expenditures and $295,853.47 cash on hand as of July 14. His largest contributions were $5,000 from Denny Elwell of Ankeny, Gregory Abel of Des Moines, and Ron Fagen of Minnesota; $2,000 from Gerlad Lynch of Waucona; $1,000 from Kyle Krause of Waukee, the W. A. Krause Revocable Trust of West Des Moines, the DFL Revocable Trust of Ankeny (that's Don Lamberti), Charles Schafer of Adair, Steve Sukup of Clear Lake, Charles Sukup of Dougherty, the O.J Tomson Revocable Trust of Mason City, Michael Bennett of Sioux City, Gary Kirke of West Des Moines, Citizens for the Preservation of Racing, the Credit Union Political Action Committee and the Iowa F.O.R.E. PAC #6064.

Democrat Francis Thicke raised $32,193 during the latest reporting period, spent $18,522.98 and had $21,770.98 on hand as of July 14. All of the grassroots favorite Thicke's contributions were for $250 or less.

Two-term State Auditor David Vaudt ran unopposed for re-election in 2006 and only got a Democratic challenger six weeks ago. He didn't raise much during the latest reporting period but had a healthy bank balance going into this campaign. Vaudt raised just $835, spent $10,280.73 and had $137,745.90 on hand as of July 14. Vaudt's largest contribution was $500 from Edwin Barker of Iowa City.

Democrat Jon Murphy did quite well considering that he's only been a candidate for state auditor for about a month. He reported raising $26,860.00 and spending $1,574.61, leaving $25,285.39 cash on hand. Murphy took in $1,000 contributions from his sister and brother-in-law in Texas, his father-in-law in Wisconsin, Jerry Crawford of Des Moines, Eric Witte of Ottumwa, John Davis of Washington, DC, John and Patty Judge of West Des Moines, Aaron Pickrell of Ohio, and Kathryn Puterman of Nevada.

Share any thoughts about the latest fundraising numbers in this thread.

IA-Sen: Democracy for America endorses Conlin

desmoinesdem — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:00:21 GMT

Democracy for America, the organization Howard Dean created after his unsuccessful presidential bid in 2004, has officially endorsed Democrat Roxanne Conlin in her campaign against U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley. Blog for Iowa's Trish Nelson posted the e-mail blast DFA sent to its supporters. Excerpt:

We need to restore a civil political dialogue in Iowa and Roxanne Conlin is exactly what Iowa needs after 30 years of Chuck Grassley. She's a fighter who will stand up for Iowans, like she did as Assistant Attorney General and U.S. Attorney. When an Iowa teacher was fired for being pregnant, she took that woman's case all the way to the state Supreme Court - and won.
Roxanne will go the extra mile and it's that work ethic that is going to earn her the votes to win in November. Now, we need to provide her with the resources to fight back against one of the Senate's most entrenched Republicans.

Democracy for America has more than a million members, and as of Tuesday morning, the organization had already raised more than $14,000 for Conlin's campaign. She can use the help, because Grassley has a big cash on hand advantage.

While looking around the DFA site I noticed a lot of support for Francis Thicke's campaign for secretary of agriculture among DFA's Iowa members. That network could become an important source of volunteer energy for the Thicke and Conlin campaigns.

Francis Thicke's "New Vision for Food and Agriculture" in Iowa

desmoinesdem — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:33:26 GMT

Democratic candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Francis Thicke is touring the state to talk about his just-published book, "A New Vision for Food and Agriculture." He's scheduled to speak in Oskaloosa on June 29, Marion on June 30, Storm Lake on July 1, Dubuque on July 6 and Mason City on July 13. All events are at 6:30 pm; click here for location details.

Thicke provides a brief outline of his vision on his campaign website:

* Encourage the installation of farmer-owned, mid-size wind turbines on farms all across Iowa, to power farms, and help to power the rest of Iowa. I will lead in advocating feed-in tariffs, which are agreements with power companies that will allow farmers to sell their excess power, finance their turbines, and make a profit from their power generation.
* Make Iowa farms more energy self-sufficient and put more biofuel profits in farmers' pockets by refocusing Iowa's biofuel investment on new technologies that will allow farmers to produce biofuels on the farm to power farm equipment, and sell the excess for consumer use.
* Create more jobs and economic development by supporting local food production. We can grow more of what we eat in Iowa. Locally-grown food can be fresher, safer and healthier for consumers, and will provide jobs to produce it. I will reestablish the Iowa Food Policy Council to provide guidance on how to connect farmers to state institutional food purchases and greater access to consumer demand for fresh, locally-grown produce.
* Expose predatory practices by corporate monopolies. We need Teddy Roosevelt-style trust busting to restore competition to agricultural markets. I will work with Iowa's Attorney General and the Justice Department to ensure fair treatment for farmers.
* Reestablish local control over CAFOs, and regulate them to keep dangerous pollutants out of our air and water, and protect the health, quality of life, and property values of our citizens.
* Promote wider use of perennial and cover crops to keep Iowa's rich soils and fertilizer nutrients from washing into our rivers.

Not only is Thicke highly qualified to implement this vision, he walks the walk, as you can see from a brief video tour of his dairy farm.

Near the beginning of that clip, Thicke observes, "Energy is a big issue in agriculture. We are highly dependent upon cheap oil if you look at agriculture almost anywhere in this country. And that's one of the big issues in my campaign: how we can make agriculture more energy self-sufficient, make our landscape more resilient, and make our agriculture more efficient as well." It's sad that our current secretary of agriculture has shown no leadership on making this state's farm economy more self-sufficient. Using renewable energy to power Iowa farm operations isn't pie in the sky stuff: it's technologically feasible and is a "common-sense way" to cut input costs.

I highly recommend going to hear Thicke speak in person, but you can listen online in some of the videos available on Thicke's YouTube channel. The campaign is on Facebook here and on the web at Thickeforagriculture.com. If you want to volunteer for or help his campaign in any way, e-mail Thicketeam AT gmail.com. Here's his ActBlue page for those who can make a financial contribution.

Iowa, Oil and Agriculture-- Meet Francis Thicke, Candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture

2laneIA — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 21:07:32 GMT

Who is the Iowa Secretary of Agriculture? The answer to that question is, and has always been: whichever faithful servant of Big Agriculture was keeping the chair warm and keeping Monsanto, Koch and Cargill happy, Democrat or Republican. (Currently, it's a guy who loves chicken factories.) An urban dweller, I didn't think that the Ag Secretary had anything to do with me.

A few months ago, I met Francis Thicke, an organic dairy farmer who is running for Secretary of Agriculture, and he changed my mind about that. I have begun to grasp how this official affects the food I eat, the quality of the air and rivers where I live, and waters far downstream from Iowa. I have even begun to hope for change in the way we produce food and use energy in Iowa, where we often set the example for farming practices across the country.

Francis Thicke (pronounced "tickee") has an organic dairy farm near Fairfield, Iowa, a small community best known as the home of Maharishi University. Francis and his wife, Susan, make milk, yogurt and cheese with the milk from his 80 cows, and sell all of it locally. Although he grew up on a farm, Francis wanted to be a musician. He studied music and philosophy in college, and plays a mean trumpet. But eventually he got a doctorate in agronomy instead, worked at the USDA, then came back to Iowa to start a dairy farm.

Radiance Dairy is no ordinary farm. Livestock and landscape nourish each other. Everything the cows eat is grown on land they fertilize, and as Francis says, they enjoy their work. He uses solar panels to power pumps for water , to electrify fences, and to heat water for his dairy processing plant. A wind turbine is in the works. His operation is so innovative that he attracts visitors who come to learn, from local schoolchildren to the World Bank, and he travels frequently to teach and give lectures. He has received awards from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, and the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club, which recognized him as a "Steward of the Land," among other awards. People who know him regard him as a national treasure.

more below the fold...

(In this video thanking DK Greenroots, he takes us on a brief tour of the farm.)

Iowa has the most prime farmland of any state, produces the most corn and soybeans, and the most hogs and chickens. As a result, it has a disproportionate influence on federal agricultural policy. It is no coincidence that Tom Vilsack is Secretary of Agriculture in D.C., or that Tom Harkin chaired the Senate Agriculture Committee for years. In Iowa, ethanol is a sacrament, and the farm bill affects thousands of people statewide. The Iowa Secretary of Agriculture is an influential office, and not just for farming. The Secretary also participates in the Iowa Power Fund Board, a board that includes the governor, and which sets policy for energy in the state through grants for innovation. The Secretary of Agriculture influences policy for both energy and agriculture. What difference would it make if the Secretary was committed to sustainable agriculture and renewable energy? Maybe a lot.

Francis believes that if Iowa can help its farmers generate their own power, and farm in a way that washes less silt and fertilizers into our watersheds, it will have an impact on federal policy and on other states. He is committed to sustainable agriculture, and wants to give local communities more control over the hideous warehouses for hogs and chickens, called CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) that blight the Iowa landscape. He has testified before Congress and the Department of Justice on corporate monopolies in agriculture and wants to do more to oppose them from within government. He wants to make locally-grown produce more accessible to consumers. In Iowa, we eat produce shipped in from California at the height of summer, while the fields of corn and soybeans stretch as far as you can see in every direction.

Francis has real expertise in renewable energy, and innovative ideas for generating power on farms with wind turbines and biofuels. As a member of the Iowa Power Fund Board, he could really influence getting beyond corn-based ethanol and toward more renewable sources. Every time I hear some pundit saying that we are going to have to live with Gulf oil spills because we have to have oil, I think of Francis talking about distributed energy, where every farmstead has a wind turbine, instead of being completely vulnerable to increases in fuel prices.

In Francis' vision, the wind turbine powers the farm with wind that blows over the farm, and is a profit center for the farmer who can sell excess power to the local utility. With distributed power, giant transmission lines are unnecessary. To help pay for the initial cost of erecting the turbine, Francis would advocate feed-in tariffs. These require utilities to buy local wind power at higher rates for a period of time sufficient to help the farmer pay off the cost of the turbine, then the rates drop to a level that is attractive to utilities, because wind power is inherently cheaper than fossil fuels or coal. There is a lot of support for wind in the state, which gets 20% of its power from wind now.

If a farmer is using wind power to make electricity, ammonia and hydrogen, and perennial crops to make biofuels, and is running his machinery and backup generator with these fuels, he will be part of transforming agriculture from an oil-gobbling enterprise to a sustainable one. He will be insulated from the shock of $147/barrel oil, which caused chaos in farming two years ago, and which Francis wrote about in Threats to Food--Peak Oil and Agriculture. The expenses of agriculture as it is practiced now are generally more than the income from it, and subsidies are what keep a lot of farms afloat. In Francis' vision, that would change. He talked about it recently on an Iowa radio program:

"If we can find ways we can put more money in the pockets of farmers, instead of farmers being squeezed by the concentrated markets they sell into, like beef, and hogs and corn, and also being squeezed by the concentrated markets they buy from, their seeds and their fertilizers... we can make agriculture more self-sufficient and the value-added can be closer to the farm, and stay on the farm..."

What Francis understands is that we cannot keep doing what we are doing, in agriculture or otherwise. Climate change and peak oil are realities that we will have to deal with whether we want to or not. If he is elected, I expect Iowa to set an example that the rest of the country will be unable to ignore. We can cut our use of fossil fuels, sooner and more dramatically than we think we can, by adopting technologies that are available now, or are being developed for use in the near future, such as ammonia and hydrogen made with wind power. (Engines that can run on these fuels are being made in Iowa today.) Or we can pretend that agriculture and transportation systems based on cheap oil are sustainable, until we face a crisis too big to ignore.

Maybe we are seeing that crisis now, in the Gulf of Mexico. Or maybe the price of oil will soar so far past the 2008 highs that farm combines will stand idle, too costly to run for planting and harvest. We need leaders like Francis, with innovative solutions, and we need to get started on implementing them. That is why I spend my spare time volunteering for his campaign, and donate what I can spare.

2laneIA

cross-posted at DownWithTyranny