Categories
Kitchen Garden Living in Society

Farm Bill Forum in Johnson County

Representatives Peterson and Loebsack
Representatives Peterson and Loebsack

On Saturday, July 27, Rep. Dave Loebsack (IA-02) and Rep. Collin Peterson (MN-07), ranking member of the house agriculture committee, held a farm bill forum at the Johnson County Extension Office. Over 40 people attended, and a lot of ground was covered related to the farm bill, how the U.S. Congress works (or doesn’t), and during an open question and answer period with discussion of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), change in the agriculture committee makeup after the 2010 election, crop insurance, conservation, rural development, LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program), the renewable fuel standard and target prices for direct payments for wheat, corn, soybeans, cotton and rice. The forum was a primer for anyone who wanted to learn the recent history of the farm bill.

Rep. Loebsack said, “last year was the time to pass the farm bill.” Congress extended the 2007 farm bill for a year, and that extension expires on Sept. 30. Representatives of the Iowa Farm Bureau and the Iowa Corn Growers Association present at the forum indicated they did not want another extension. One audience member pointed to a $50,000 direct payment he would receive this year he didn’t need and didn’t want. Loebsack attributed the situation to the failure of congress to pass a new farm bill last year.

Rep. Peterson said the agriculture committee members had reached a bipartisan agreement last year, but the problem was (and remains) the Republican leadership. He was more specific, saying “it wasn’t Speaker Boehner… he never got in the way.” He added, Eric Cantor is the problem, “he’s the guy who screwed this thing up in the house.”

Mike Owen, executive director of the Iowa Policy Project, entreated the congressmen to take the political spin out of SNAP because it was destructive to families who depend upon the $1.30 per person per meal the program provides. A food pantry volunteer added, “it’s not just SNAP.” The farm bill impacts food pantries, meals on wheels and other nutrition programs people rely upon. Rep. Peterson was direct, “there will be more SNAP cuts (in order to pass a farm bill).”

The clock is ticking on getting a farm bill passed by Oct. 1. After this week, congress begins the August recess, reconvening on Sept. 8 or 9. The U.S. Senate has formally requested a conference committee, but house members have not been appointed. According to Peterson, they may not be until after the recess. There is time, but not any extra.

The framework for the farm bill has been set by the U.S. Senate version, for which the entire Iowa delegation voted. Passing the farm bill comes down to the U.S. Congress doing their work, something at which they have been less than effective. Also something could go wrong between now and Oct. 1 to stop the farm bill from moving, according to Peterson.

After the farm bill failed last year, Peterson said, speaking of the Republican house majority, “you guys have finally made me a partisan.” If SNAP is cut completely by the conference committee and replaced with block grants, as some conservatives want, the Democratic house delegation is expected to walk away, and the farm bill would expire. Well funded groups like the Heritage Foundation, Club for Growth, the Wall Street Journal and others have lobbied hard to cut SNAP, get rid of conservation and rural development programs, and crop insurance.

If readers are interested in more information about any of these topics, please post a comment below, and I’ll reply with any relevant information from the forum.

Categories
Home Life

A Gift Basket for My Hosts

LAKE MACBRIDE— Hundreds of us are converging upon Chicago for the Climate Reality Leadership Corps training. To avoid the expense of the conference hotel, I will be staying with friends of a friend for the duration. I’m making up a gift basket of produce for them. It’s a showcase of the local, organic produce that is passing through our house this summer.

Included will be a pointed cabbage, green and yellow zucchini, blue lake green beans, market more cucumber, yellow squash, a box of cherry tomatoes,  kohlrabi, daikon radish, broccoli and a jar of home made apple butter. If there’s sunlight in the morning, I’ll add herbs: rosemary, basil, flat leaf parsley, sage and thyme.

To keep the veggies, I’m dumping the freezer’s ice in a cooler, topping it with a water barrier and the veggies. Hopefully it will survive the trip.

It is somewhat ironic that while I am with Al Gore, one of the leaders in the use of technology, and a board member of Apple, I’ll be leaving my laptop at home. I’ll be off the Internet, except to communicate through my mobile device. Regular posting will resume over the weekend, so stay tuned.

Categories
Living in Society

Legislators to Tour Lake Macbride

Lake Macbride
Lake Macbride

LAKE MACBRIDE— UPDATE Aug. 2, 2013. Organizers have delayed this event due to scheduling conflicts. Email me if you want a notification of the new date/time.

Lifting the ban on boat motors larger than ten horsepower on Lake Macbride has been a perennial issue in the Iowa legislature. The issue for opponents, including former Iowa state senator Swati Dandekar, has been Iowans can’t afford to own a second motor for their boats to use the lake. It seems a lame reason when there are so many other boating opportunities in the state, and nearby.

The Lake Macbride Conservancy is a group of area property owners that works to conserve Lake Macbride and environs. They have posted about the horsepower restriction on their web site. A neighbor sent this note from them yesterday.

Dear Lake Macbride Friends and Neighbors,

Our local legislators (Senator Dvorsky and Representative Kaufmann), along with members of the Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee (Senators Dearden, Zumbach and Seng) will be joining us on Sunday, Aug. 4, for a tour of Lake Macbride.

Our plan is to tour the lake on a single pontoon (boat), starting on the North arm and ending on the South at the U of I Sailing Club dock.  We hope to start the lake tour at about 1:15 p.m. and end at about 3:30 p.m. This tour will be a great opportunity to explain the history of Lake Macbride and describe environmental and safety concerns around the park and lake.  We think it will strengthen our message to these legislators when they see, first hand, the number of individuals who use the lake and the number of different types of crafts employed.

Organizers indicated, “it’d be great to have a good showing of association watercraft use during the tour.”

Our family does not include regular boaters, but supports the efforts of the group.

Categories
Home Life Kitchen Garden

Garden Update July 2013

Brussels Sprouts
Brussels Sprouts

LAKE MACBRIDE— The summer weather has been as good as it gets, a reminder of what it was like as a child, with endless days to play in the sunlight, safe and without worry. This summer has been unforgettable. Besides the weather, it has been a different and somewhat tribal life after turning to those with whom we live out our lives in the neighborhood.

A quick garden update. Removing the green caterpillars with a medical grade forceps did the trick of removing the pest, and the new leaves are growing bug free. The white butterflies are around, so there may be more, and I lost one plant, but the new growth looks great.

Cucumber Seedlings
Cucumber Seedlings

Today, I harvested the rest of the green beans, composted the plants, and planted a row of cucumbers from seedlings. I planted the seed in pots on July 13, so they are two weeks from seed to seedling. The benefit of growing them this way is with the wet root ball, they can tolerate diverse conditions better to get off to a good start in the ground. They bring their own moisture with them to the initial planting. I watered them well and mulched. With my newly developed pickle addiction, I may plant more before summer is gone. There were some seedlings leftover from planting a row, so maybe next weekend.

Three Rows of Lettuce
Three Rows of Lettuce

The current crop of lettuce is suffering. Not from the heat, or lack of water, but from disappearing. There used to be three full rows here, and some plants are missing. Not sure what is the pest, but it seems doubtful deer are jumping the fence as there are no deer footprints inside. Perhaps a rabbit, or something else. Whatever is left, will be enjoyed by the humans. The leaves are big enough to pick, so when I return from my trip, we’ll bring some in for a tasting.

Green Tomatoes
Green Tomatoes

Finally, the tomatoes are maturing and three varieties have begun to ripen: two cherry tomatoes and Roma. Tomatoes have been the continuous crop in our garden, since the first duplex where we lived after our wedding ceremony. Perhaps there was a gap in Cedar Rapids, but not much of one. This year’s crop was the first I planted as seeds, and based on the results, I’ll do that next year as well.

Roma Tomatoes
Roma Tomatoes

The primary concern this year is to finish processing tomatoes before the apples come in. There are a lot of apples. I know what I want from the tomatoes: 12 quarts and 12 pints of tomato sauce, the leftover juice, 24 pints of diced tomatoes, and maybe a dozen pints of hot sauce using the cayenne and jalapeno peppers. Knowing how to approach it is half the battle.

Tonight for dinner, I made a pizza. Thin, wheat crust with tomato sauce I canned in 2011 mixed with fresh basil and salt. Toppings were half an onion from the CSA, thinly sliced zucchini, diced green peppers, sliced green olives with pimiento, halved cherry tomatoes and 6 ounces of mozzarella cheese. It is out of the oven, so I had better go sample.

Categories
Home Life

Getting Ready

Farmscape
Farmscape

LAKE MACBRIDE— There’s a lot to get ready before departing Big Grove on Tuesday to attend the Climate Reality Leadership Corps training in Chicago. The week’s posts on Blog for Iowa need to be wrapped up, financial matters put in order, a major work session in the garden completed, and logistical things like reading the course materials and packing are prerequisites. This in addition to my usual responsibilities at the newspaper and CSA. The next eight days will be busy.

My friend Dick Schwab decided to run for another term on the community school board. Being on the board is a thankless, unpaid job made more contentious by the negative community reaction to standards based grading. I have been reading about the new program in our local newspaper for about two years, so I don’t get why there is a reaction when the long planned program is being implemented. That is, only to say that while there has been complete transparency, like in most locations in the U.S., the public tuned out until it dawned on them the discussion actually affected their lives. I’m also helping Dick get petition signatures for the Sept. 10 school board election before leaving for Chicago.

During a phone call with my mother we talked about the food storage cabinet in her basement. It looks home made, and was built to store a year’s worth of canned goods in Mason jars. On grocery day, one of the tasks I shared was hauling bags of canned goods to the basement and arranging them on its shelves. The cabinet was in the house when we moved there the summer before I entered second grade. For a while, I wanted it in Big Grove to store my own canned goods, but changed my mind. I favor a better arranged pantry close to the kitchen over an artifact designed for another era.

Dawn has broken on another glorious summer day in Iowa, and soon I’ll be off to the newspaper for a long morning’s work. This summer has been what we expect of summer days, full of life and belle weather on the Iowa prairie.

Categories
Writing

Tomato Sandwiches on RAGBRAI

Fresh Tomato Sandwiches
Fresh Tomato Sandwich

BUSSEY– Trish Nelson is enjoying RAGBRAI and sent a brief note with a couple of photos. Trish wrote on her mobile device, “another shot of the tomato sandwiches being made. Very Iowa. Selling like hotcakes at 2 bucks apiece as fast as they could make them. I haven’t experienced a more flavorful red juicy tomato like that since I was a kid.”

What else to say, but it is Iowa summer.

Making Tomato Sandwiches
Making Tomato Sandwiches

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Caesura in Big Grove

Moon Set
Moon Set

LAKE MACBRIDE— As July draws to a close, much needed rain came last night, tapping lightly on the bedroom windows. Predawn, the driveway was wet, and the clouds had opened to reveal the waning gibbous moon which illuminated the landscape, reflecting its silvery light in pools of rainwater.

It seems halfway through the gardening season, and the spring abundance has turned to waiting— for the late lettuce to mature, tomatoes to ripen, and four or five varieties of peppers to fruit. The apple and pear trees are laden with fruit, weighing the branches so that I can’t get under them with the riding mower. Biting into a fallen apple, there was sweetness, but also the sourness of immature fruit. Not ready yet, but soon.

CloudsOne Japanese beetle was spotted on an indicator plant I let grow in the garden, a weed the bugs favor. There was only one, and otherwise, the invasive species has left my apple trees and garden alone this year. Other gardeners and farmers in the area report the same thing. The only thing that changed from years they swarmed is that no one planted winter wheat in our area, favoring corn. This is anecdotal, but there seems to be a connection between winter wheat and an abundance of Japanese beetles showing up in our yard after the wheat is harvested from nearby fields. We dodged the bullet this year, and the apple harvest will be one of the best we have had.

The drama of a great gardening year has paused. We never know what today, or tomorrow might bring, and look forward to seeing how it unfolds as we reach toward winter. Winter. An unlikely topic now. Invoking it reminds us to live as best we can in the moonlight after rain has fallen.

Categories
Living in Society

RAGBRAI and Iowa Politics

From Trish Nelson at RAGBRAI
From Trish Nelson at RAGBRAI

Trish Nelson, regular editor of Blog for Iowa, posted this photo on the Internet, reminding us that there is a world outside the confines of what Al Gore described as “the worldwide digital communications, Internet, and computer revolutions (which) have led to the emergence of ‘the Global Mind,’ which links the thoughts and feelings of billions of people and connects intelligent machines, robots, ubiquitous sensors, and databases.” That is, outside blogs, Facebook, twitter, the World Wide Web and cable TV.

On the real world front, while Governor Branstad was participating in RAGBRAI, his staff was meeting behind closed doors with regional Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) staff regarding Iowa’s compliance with the Clean Water Act. Read the community organizing group Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (Iowa CCI) article here.

Putting the best face on it, the governor is managing mandatory compliance with the EPA on a number of fronts, including the Clean Water Act. Elections matter, and Iowa chose Terry Branstad, along with his views on EPA compliance, in 2010. To put the Iowa CCI face on it, they recirculated their frequent meme, “…the Farm Bureau does not run this state,” and demanded transparency. Both points have some validity, and there is no surprise by any of this as both party’s positions regarding concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are well known and have been.

Here’s the rub. In the May 31 letter from EPA staffer Karl Brooks to governor Branstad, Brooks wrote, “I respectfully suggest that those regulated parties with the most interest in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation Clean Water Act permitting and evaluation should be invited to this conversation.” While some members of Iowa CCI may be “regulated parties,” the governor was under no obligation to hold public hearings on the matter and didn’t. The Iowa Farm Bureau response, with recommended revisions to the CAFO program work plan, was not only expected, it was, for the most part, the purpose of the meeting. The Iowa CCI response to the meeting was, like so many of their news releases, a red herring that gained some press coverage but diluted their effectiveness. I appreciate Iowa CCI making the information readily available, but there is no news here for anyone who follows water and air quality issues in Iowa. This meeting was predictable, and consistent with the Branstad administration outlook on EPA compliance.

For most Iowans who participate in RAGBRAI, it is a chance to get away from the daily grind for a while. The governor and thousands of others are participating in RAGBRAI, and for Branstad, as a politician, it was a photo opportunity. For Iowa CCI, RAGBRAI was a news hook to beat the drum on one of their core issues, one they know well. One of my groups, Veterans for Peace, uses RAGBRAI to publicize the true cost of our wars, as do a host of groups with their pet issues. All of it is good in what remains of our democracy.

The point is that involvement in a specific cause, regardless of how vocal one is, does not equate political change. There is a lot to hate about the Branstad’s approach to clean water, clean air and compliance with the Environmental Protection Agency. To effect political change means getting involved and working for political candidates, most of whom are subject to influence by moneyed interests like the Iowa Farm Bureau. Any candidate who dismisses as irrelevant the Farm Bureau, the livestock producers and row crop associations won’t be elected to statewide office in Iowa. It’s not going to happen in 2014.

Groups like Iowa CCI make political results more difficult when they throw out red meat as bait for their members and supporters, when most people are tuned out. For one, I’d like to see Iowa CCI less divisive and more involved with electing candidates that support progressive views, as many of their members are, and less focused on braggadocio after hammering the same nail once again.

RAGBRAI is happening, the summer weather has been unusually nice, and most people I know are unplugged from the global mind and living in the real world under Branstad until we can do better. For me, I prefer not to dip even a bicycle in the contaminated Mississippi River, long bike ride or not. Whether we as a state will do better on water quality and compliance with EPA depends a lot on whether people get together to elect a new governor in 2014. The work of doing so should begin now.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

Categories
Social Commentary

Don’t Build the Danged Fence

The U.S. Congressman from Iowa’s fourth district made some comments about immigration recently. Actually, he’s made a lot of them over the years. We can’t let him frame the discussion or worse, re-distribute his memes. For why, read Mark Karlin’s interview with George Lakoff, “Progressives Need to Use Language That Reflects Moral Values.”

The idea of building a fence around the U.S. border is as lame as a joke about corn at a 4-H meeting, funny though those jokes may be. Proponents of what Senator John McCain of Arizona called the “dang fence” across the southern U.S. border, don’t get the humor. In 2010, I wrote about immigration,

The author believes that as long as we maintain borders, we create a form of apartheid where the haves (in the U.S.) will use the have-nots (in Mexico, China, India and Africa) to do their menial work here or in their countries, largely without social justice. The borders serve to keep them out, when we should be letting them in. America will grow stronger with open borders, even if most Americans and some Arizonans don’t believe it.

Troll activity on Blog for Iowa was heavy after that post, mostly from organized groups who favored restricting immigration, illegal immigration particularly. The same folks who gave us Arizona’s SB 1070.

To deny the global reality of population growth is plain dumb. To think the U.S. can keep everything to ourselves reflects a lack of understanding about who we are as a people, and how we fit into the global village.

To deny the effects of our wars on the creation of conflict migration is to ignore the vast amount of U.S. blood and treasure invested in our endless wars.

To deny climate change is to lack an understanding that it will impact not only small island nations like Tuvalu and the Maldives, but will result in tens of millions of people needing someplace to go.

To deny the economic reasons why undocumented people from Mexico, Guatemala, and other places in central America come north is evidence of a misunderstanding of the role U.S. policy and the North American Free Trade Agreement played in creating economic reasons for the migration.

There is nothing new in these denials and a lot to learn.

What we learned in grade school that applies is from the Great Wall of China. Our teachers taught us that while the wall may have been successful in keeping nomadic groups and warlike people out of China, the unintended consequence was that Chinese culture calcified during the period. Whether what our teachers taught us is historically accurate, I can’t say, but it makes sense. The United States will be the less for building a fence to keep people out.

So as we hear outrageous comments about immigration in the media, and in conversations in society, I urge you to refrain from repeating their memes. Instead, work toward solutions. There is no single resolution to the need for immigration reform in this country. But it begins with each of us, individually and collectively.

While you’re at it, and while I’m being a bit preachy, read Derrick Jensen’s article in Orion Magazine, “Forget Shorter Showers: Why personal change does not equal political change,” and get involved in local politics.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

Categories
Living in Society

A Dose of Citizens United Reality

Writing in The Nation, John Nichols put the best possible face on what he described in as, “the broad-based national campaign to enact a constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court rulings that ushered in a new era of big-money politics.” He was referring to the high court’s decision in Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission.

Public Citizen, Move to Amend and others have organized, launched petitions, and convinced legislators in 16 states, the District of Columbia, and about 500 municipalities to support overturning Citizens United. There is tangible evidence in the form of resolutions and referendum results. As Nichols indicated, 2013 has been a banner year for efforts to overturn Citizens United.

At the same time, virtually no one I encounter in rural Iowa knows of this movement specifically. People can agree on generalities: that money is property, that humans are people, that corporations have property, and despite Mitt Romney’s assertion at the Iowa State Fair, corporations are not people.

People also don’t know much about the Citizens United case. They don’t know that it was about a conservative group airing a film critical of Hillary Clinton on television. They don’t know that the McCain-Feingold Act (a.k.a. Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act) prohibited airing the film within 30 days of the 2008 Democratic primaries. They don’t know, and for the most part don’t care, that McCain-Feingold’s regulation of how corporations spend money in campaigns was found to be unconstitutional. What my neighbors do know is a lot of money is spent on politics, and they get sick of television advertisements when it gets close to elections and tune out.

Iowa Move to Amend has had an uphill climb, made more difficult by the departure of Marybeth Gardam, who left the state. Gardam was the grassroots organization’s leader and spark plug. As a grassroots organization, Iowa Move to Amend will proceed without her, but whatever activity there is in Iowa regarding Citizens United will be concentrated in the liberal urban areas, especially Iowa City and Des Moines. The statewide reach that Gardam strove for and could well have organized is on hold with her gone. The Iowa web page on the Move to Amend site hasn’t been updated since 2012.

Groups of citizens pursue the idea of amending the constitution, but saying it is one thing— doing it is a rarity. There have been 27 amendments to the constitution. The last one, related to when pay raises take effect for members of congress, was ratified in 1992— more than 200 years after it was introduced. With an electorate informed by a corporate media owned by a small number of corporations, gaining consensus among three fourths of the states to ratify a constitutional amendment seems improbable without the broad based, bipartisan support for which groups like Move to Amend strive.

Good people are involved with getting corporate money out of politics. Three and a half years after the Citizens United ruling, proponents of a constitutional amendment are less than half way there, which puts any real action beyond the 2016 general election, and maybe further. As Nichols indicated, the cup may be half full, and an amendment may be advanced. However, the political reality is that corporate money will remain in politics for the foreseeable future unless a fire is lit under the movement to amend the constitution. Based on what we see in Iowa, we are a long way from ignition.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa.