We’re not buying Iowa Select’s Hogwash

By Julie Duhn, CCI member from Eldora

I had the privilege of kicking off the final stop in Austin Frerick’s book tour with Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement on April 11 in Iowa Falls.  The event was a talk centered on his new book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry.

For me, this is quite personal.  I live in Eldora, county seat of Hardin County.  The bridge over the Iowa River marks the east boundary of Eldora; right at the bottom of the hill is the entrance to Pine Lake State Park, just minutes from our home.  Eldora is lucky in that we have the river and two lakes within the park. It is a beautiful park, sixth on the list of most popular state parks in Iowa. 

But unfortunately, we here in Hardin County are also quite familiar with some of the barons corrupting our food system and our environment.  We’re home to Iowa’s ethanol and CO2 pipeline baron Bruce Rastetter and the hog barons featured in chapter one of Austin’s book – Jeff and Deb Hansen of Iowa Select Farms.

What Austin lays out in his book is a stark reality for me and thousands of Iowans who have seen their communities hollowed out by corporate greed.  The Hansens and Rastetter don’t seem to see the empty beaches and the damage they’ve done.  Would it matter if they did see it?  The Hansens just leave the destruction behind and Rastetter goes to Brazil where he watches further destruction of the Amazon rain forest.  Their view is from the corporate boardroom, a gated community, or some investment banker’s office – our view (along with the smell of hog manure) is from the back porch.  It isn’t rosy.

Iowa is home to well over 700 polluted rivers, lakes, and streams.  We’re home to over 26 million hogs, yet 1 out of every 11 children are food insecure.  But our Governor, bankrolled in part by the Hansens and Rastetter, doesn’t seem to care about that.  And our cancer rates are now the fastest growing in the nation.  Sadly, I along with so many others are victims and witnesses to that.  

The Hansens have over 800 hog factories across 50 of Iowa’s counties.  They make a lot of money from their corporate pig-producing buildings at the expense of our water and air.  Then they spend a tiny portion of it on pork give-aways (think tax deduction and media hype).  But how much do they spend on image-building, advertising, lobbyists, and politicians?  They extract wealth from our communities and damage  our waters and Iowa soil.  It’s hogwashing the truth, plain and simple.  And it’s insulting.

Iowa Select likes to claim their business model and their actions are not responsible for environmental damage; they are rarely held accountable.  This way of doing agriculture is not sustainable – for the environment, for workers, for consumers, for our communities.  Corporate consolidation, especially in our food industry, leads to a concentration of wealth and power for a select few while our local grocers go out of business, our poverty increases, and our water worsens.  And we can’t be sure of what’s in or on the food we buy at the store!!

By the way, there’s a typo in Austin’s “The Hog Barons” chapter that’s pretty illustrative of what’s going on in our smaller towns.  Eldora is misspelled as “Eldorado.”  I laughed at that.  Eldora is not a “lost city of gold.”  But like many rural towns in Iowa, Eldora has LOST so much of its “gold,” its riches – clean water, schools, doctors, job opportunities – so many things that make us feel secure in our surroundings.  When your community, elected officials, and regulatory agencies are owned by barons, we lose a lot, an awful lot.  We lose our power to big money, big ag, and a hog-washed narrative that says “this is just the way it is.”  It feels like they look down on us and say “whatcha gonna do about it?”

But here’s the deal – it doesn’t have to be this way.  By coming together and taking action for the people and places we love, we can change it.  I know the power that an organized group of citizens can bring to the table.  People working together in common cause, people who simply want a better place to live and thrive are a powerful force to be reckoned with.

I see and feel these life-quality and environmental issues; so yes, Austin Frerick’s book talk was personal for me.  I remember what it was like to be able to swim in lower Pine Lake.  But the Hansens and others like them have made it so my grandkids and great-grandkids will not have that chance to swim at the lake if the barons’ power is left unchecked.  That’s what this is all about for me.  My grandkids.  Everyone’s kids, your nieces, nephews, friends, neighbors.  Everybody’s families.  Republican, Democrat, Independent – all of our kids are not and will not be immune to the dangers and consequences of what is going on.

Sometimes I see Iowa as a “wasteland,” but I am always reminded by fearless and committed people standing up to the barons and corporate power that Iowa can also be seen as a Promised Land.  This is what we work toward, and we aren’t stopping.