On our own?
Feeding ourselves and helping the world do the same
Again, I was late planting my raised food garden bed, and now the radish, lettuce, spinach and other plants are just beginning to peek out. Like others, I am starting to rely on myself for growing healthy, whole, fresh (as opposed to processed) food for my table, supplemented by what I can buy at farmers’ markets.
A small farm incubator patch I helped tend for a summer a few years ago. Growing food for people is more labor intensive but requires a lot less capital and fewer expensive inputs. Access to land, market infrastructure and supportive public policy are the missing ingredients.
That just became a greater challenge for some now that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have eliminated whole federal programs that many local food producers have come to rely on to take some of the cost and risk out of growing food for humans.
For decades, commodity farmers growing row crops like corn and soybeans -- mostly to feed your fuel tanks and livestock confined in “animal feeding operations” -- have been the favored beneficiaries of federal subsidies supposedly designed to keep farmers on the land and cheap food on the table. (This is an inevitable side deal that comes with the economic principle of “comparative advantage.” The principle works only when you don’t count all the costs.)
Under U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, President Obama created and President Biden sustained some niche programs: Awkward baby steps to diversify the landscape and enhance economic prospects for real young and beginning farmers, in addition to the sons of aging, property-rich landowners.
Recently, I ran into Luke Elzinga at the Harkin Institute wellness symposium on clean water. (Water quality is closely connected with how we grow things. Many current practices are harsh on Mother Nature compared with “regenerative” practices.)
Elzinga is policy and advocacy manager with the Des Moines Area Religious Council. He is also board chair of the Iowa Hunger Coalition. (The Coalition was established in 2016 after the World Food Prize started the annual Iowa Hunger Summit, at a time when some of us in the Iowa Legislature reminded WFP President Ken Quinn that Iowa is part of the world. Quinn agreed that the group needed to do some things to merit state assistance ranging from $500,000 to $1 million a year.) Vilsack is now president of the World Food Prize.
I asked Elzinga to fill me in on the hits that Iowa food growers, food banks and others have been taking. Here is what he reported:
Local Food Purchasing Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA) cancelled: $2,988,354 for food banks and emergency feeding organizations to buy locally-grown food in Iowa for fiscal years 2025-2027.
Local Food for Schools and Child Care Cooperative Agreement Program (LFSCC) cancelled: $6,112,227 for local food purchases for schools in Iowa and $2,227,871 in funding for local food purchases for child care centers.
A sizable chunk of the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) cancelled: an estimated $3.9 million worth of food for Iowa’s food banks, primarily meat, dairy, eggs, and produce;
Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant Program cancelled: $10 million in funding nationwide, with impact on Iowa not yet known.
Elzinga also noted Congress’ resolution to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by $230 billion. He is going to Washington, D.C., this week to speak for Iowa against these cuts.
In 2024, Iowa SNAP participants received a total of $529 million in benefits, including thousands of rural Iowans. The Iowa Legislature has already been considering a “grocer reinvestment program” to address Iowa food deserts. Here are some pictures of some of the locally-owned, small-town Iowa groceries I passed on a recent tour of Iowa. They are disappearing fast (along with the small-town newspapers that rely on their advertising.) Getting rid of SNAP will not help.
The federal cuts would be on top of changes that Iowa House Republicans have approved to limit the number of people who can access SNAP. Then there is the $29 million in summer food assistance for school kids that Gov. Reynolds has spurned.
As regular readers of this blog know, the governor (administrator of the state Office of State-Federal Relations, an “independent” agency), appears to not be keeping track of how federal program and funding cuts under Trump are hurting Iowa, nor defending the state’s interests. Destruction of food programs are a fraction of the damage being done by this authoritarian derecho.
These particular cuts do not stand out on the Legislature’s radar screen, either. Little if any note was taken by either Republicans or Democrats about this or most other slashed programs as they considered the once-every-two-years federal funds appropriations bill.
That is no surprise, because the “breadbasket” of Iowa that “feeds the world” invests relatively nothing in the production, processing or marketing of human food, whether by large or small farmers, beginning or veteran.
Here is what the State of Iowa does for “local foods” (based on the proposed budget for FY 2026):
1) $500,000 for dairy innovation and revitalization;
2) $813,000 for Choose Iowa promotion of food products grown in the state;
3) $200,000 for an Iowa-grown food purchasing program for food banks and emergency feeding programs (schools are being excluded, though they have become the most connected with local growers);
4) $500,000 for value-added agriculture grants;
5) $249,695 for a butchery innovation and revitalization program
6) $75,000 to support a local farm and food program at Iowa State University;
7) $50,000 to study the ability of Choose Iowa to “serve rural grocers;”
8) $27,157 for the farm-to-food donation tax credit.
Total: $2,414,852
For comparison, here is what Iowa has done to support and promote the production of biofuels (62 percent of the Iowa corn crop is used to make ethanol):
1) $14 million for renewable fuel infrastructure;
2) $4.3 million for biodiesel production tax credit;
3) $3.145 million for E-85 promotion tax credit;
4) $7.93 million for E-15+ fuel promotion tax credit;
5) $23.518 for biodiesel blended fuel tax credit (projected to increase to $33.5 million);
6) $4.096 million for the beginning commodity farmer tax credit;
7) $500,000 for motor fuel inspection;
8) Not included: State expenditures to support concentrated animal feeding operations, such as animal disease spending (15 percent of the corn crop goes to feed animals).
Total: $57,489,000
This does not begin to touch federal subsidies for commodity farmers, nor the $3.9 million that Iowa earmarks for the University of Iowa and Iowa State for the “biosciences innovation ecosystem.” Iowa State alone receives more money for this purpose than all monies dedicated to local foods ($2.9 million). The governor’s office also gets the same amount every year.
The point: Iowa makes few investments in supporting “specialty crops” or their processing and marketing. Quaker Oats sources all of its oats from Canada, now the subject of import tariffs. At one time, Iowa led the nation in small grain production, especially oats, and was the sixth-leading apple-producing state.
Iowa turned the regulation of hemp back over to USDA, and has no program promoting hemp, despite its manifold uses (beyond “consumable hemp”) and manifest conservation benefits. In fact, Iowa spends more than 14 times more money to address water quality problems than we do to promote land uses and specialty crops with far fewer risks to water and soil resources.
Giving credit where credit is due: Some more wobbly baby steps. After many years of advocacy by Senator Sarah Trone-Garriott (now running for Congress) and me, the House Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee on which I served until last year included $1 million in its budget for Double Up Food Bucks, no strings attached. The purpose: To make fresh fruits and vegetables sold at farmers markets, grocery stores, and other participating locations accessible to individuals and families who receive federal supplemental nutrition assistance. The Senate does not have this in its budget, and the governor did not propose it.
Also: Credit to Fayette County State Rep. Chad Ingels and Polk County State Rep. Brian Lohse for proposing a local produce processing program as part of legislation they proposed and that the House passed. This would actually be a huge step forward, but the Senate does not appear to be interested. The retiring governor has one more year to add this to her legacy.
Where do we go from here? When you have a long way to go, begin somewhere. The Iowa Food System Coalition has some ideas. I was on hand last year when they unveiled their blueprint -- Setting the Table for All Iowans: A Plan to Create a Thriving, Sustainable and Equitable Food System in Iowa.
A group I now help direct, Dubuque Area Land and Water Legacy, has become a Coalition partner. We look forward to learning how we can move the needle so more people can make a living with the land, help more people eat good food, and protect our soil and water resources as part of the deal.
If the state and federal governments won’t help in this endeavor, we’re on our own. We can’t feed the world, and we never have, but we can be a model for growing food to feed ourselves and protect our natural resources. Then we can freely teach the world what we have learned so they can feed themselves.
