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On carbon pipelines

By Staff | Aug 23, 2024

After reading the Farm News Aug. 8th column by David Kruse concerning the controversy over carbon pipelines, eminent domain and water usage, it is kind of like reading about a chicken with its head cut off!

The most revealing statement came from Kruse when he claimed, “Bruce Rastetter is politically connected to the governor and elected officials because they have the same collective vision for economic development of the state.” Carbon pipelines are not visionary; they constitute reckless resource extractionism!

Commenting on Bonnie Ewoldt’s Aug. 8 letter, it is a huge mistake for her, and grassroots organizations like the Sierra Club and Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, failure to emphasize that any carbon capture by ethanol production has been washed out due to the loss of family farm livestock production with all its lost carbon sequestering!

Plowing up of long-established pastures, destruction of small timber areas that protected and shaded cattle herds, the loss of oat, alfalfa and clover production that stored carbon and cleansed the soil had — and has — a huge impact concerning carbon sequestering. Think of more crop production with more fossil fuel, more pollution, more soil loss.

Yep that’s what the loss of family farm livestock accomplished because like Gov. Kim Reynolds, ex-Gov. Branstad had a destructive visionary moment when he signed House File 519 into law that unleashed giant agribusiness CAFO factory farming onto the state.

Bonnie’s other glaring omission is that Summit Farms is getting its grain dirt cheap because there is no parity price floor on corn, and Bruce (Rastetter) is milking that for all its worth plus he is salivating over the potential government cash cow coming from carbon credits.

If the governor, state legislatures, Sens. Grassley and Ernst, and Rastetter are so visionary, why are we selling our collective investment (grain production on the cheap at the farmgate)?

If the price drop holds after this fall, farmers and the whole grain industry will lose billions across the country! I do not see Rastetter rallying for family farmers and railing against below costs of production for corn or beans. Where is his collective vision for family farmers and those laid-off John Deere and Firestone workers? Yeah, where is David Kruse on the subject of cheap grains?

Pardon me for asking the obvious, but is Iowa’s agriculture industry so flush with cash that it can afford to lose billions of dollars on its grain production this fall?

Calculating the $4 drop in corn prices since last year, if Iowa farmers produce 2 billion bushels of corn this year that is an $8 billion loss at the farmgate!

I am afraid those folks who are fighting Summit Farms will continue to lose unless they re-focus on the huge loss of family farm livestock production and the failure of this nation’s leadership to establish the parity formula on cash grains.

If the governor and our state legislature were so visionary, they would abolish agribusiness large scale CAFO factory farming and re-establish the diversified family farm crop and livestock system using the parity formula price floor on grains and supply management. If not, then we can only assume the economic and environmental destruction will continue and Rastetter will happily receive his cash cow (cheap grains), Reynolds will continue to receive her political gifts from Rastetter, and carbon pipelines will be the reality!

Larry Ginter

Rhodes