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Dorman: King Corn is an authoritarian ruler in Iowa

cigaretteman

HR King
May 29, 2001
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58,291
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Most of the best humor under the Golden Dome of Wisdom is unintentional. That certainly was the case this past week in the Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee.


At issue was a bill, Senate Study Bill 3134, which would basically penalize landowners who sell their land to a county conservation board or the Department of Natural Resources for conservation purposes. The bill caps the amount of money those public entities can pay for certain categories of land. All the caps are below fair market value.


For example, if you sell timber land to county conservation, you can only get 80 percent of its value. For “low quality” cropland, you get 75 percent.


Republicans who supported the bill argued that selling land for conservation is harming famers who want to buy the land for grazing and crop production. Sen. Jeff Taylor, R-Sioux Center, said he talked with constituents who missed out on buying timber land for grazing when it was sold instead for conservation uses. This is, apparently, a big problem even though no group is registered as supporting the bill.


Then came the comedy gold.


“We have to strike some kind of balance,” Taylor said.


Earlier in the meeting, Sen. Dan Zumbach, R-Ryan, said the bill is needed to make sure “Iowa remains an agricultural state.”


Senators, you’re killing me. But let’s talk about “balance.”


On one side of the scale we have 30 million acres of farming operations in a 36-million-acre state. We have 3.7 million cattle and 24 million hogs. We have farmers and their allies in control of the state’s environmental regulatory structure, the House, Senate and governor’s office, where politicians receive bushels of campaign contributions from agricultural interests. We have the weighty political clout of ag corporations and farm groups, including the Farm Bureau. We’ve got dirty water because those same politicians refuse to hold agriculture accountable for the pollution it spawns. We’ve got the ethanol industry, largely unchallenged by members of either party. Heck, throw in 11.7 million turkeys.


On the other side we’ve got public lands that make up less than 3 percent of the state’s landscape, a share so small it would all fit into a 40-mile-by-40-mile square, according to the Sierra Club. More than 900,000 acres of that public land is in road right-of-ways. Come, vacation on our medians. We’ve got hundreds of Iowans who have contacted lawmakers in opposition to the bill, numerous groups who value clean water, wildlife habitat and outdoor recreation that oppose the bill and some fuzzy headed scribes such as myself who keep writing, in vain, about the lousy state of Iowa’s environment.


In other words, we’ve got a bunch of folks whose opinions don’t count for a hill of beans, or corn, in this crazy state. Balance would be nice, but not in the way Taylor envisions.


I don’t mean to pick on Taylor. He seems like a thoughtful guy. Before the Natural Resources and Environment Committee met, Taylor watched the Commerce Committee scrap his bill that would have prohibited the use of eminent domain for private projects, such as Summit Carbon Solutions’ plan for a 2,000-mile carbon pipeline serving several Iowa ethanol plants. His bill didn’t even get a vote.


But what did he expect? Summit is holding a winning political hand. On the company’s payroll are GOP megadonor Bruce Rastetter, former governor and ambassador to China Terry Branstad, Jess Vilsack, son of the former governor and current U.S. secretary of agriculture and former chief of staff to Gov. Kim Reynolds Jake Ketzner. Ethanol always has friends in high places.


So in a matter of hours, we learned that Republicans want to punish landowners who wish to sell their land for conservation, not farming. But it might be OK for a politically connected company to grab private land for a carbon pipeline benefiting the ethanol industry.


And that’s not all. GOP lawmakers also are considering a bill that would prohibit the sale of productive farmland for solar energy projects. So we’ll move heaven and a lot of earth to prop up the ethanol industry but restrict the promise of clean solar energy. Again, the property owners’ choices are limited.


You thought this was the party of property rights?


Actually, corn is king, and it turns out he’s an authoritarian ruler. All the land is his. In exchange he will bestow great wealth upon the livestock confiners, ethanol refiners and corporate farm input providers. Pollution? Give him more taxpayer dollars and he just might volunteer to do something about it. Someday. Maybe.


He’s decreed the outdoor public spaces we have are enough. The sun is for crops, not solar panels.


The public land bill and the solar bill are lousy legislation that never should have seen the light of day. Government has no business shoving around property owners so they’ll be forced to sell or use their land for purposes lawmakers like. The idea that the sale of some parcels to conservation boards or the state will somehow tip the scales against agriculture is ludicrous.


Suburban developers profiting off of sprawl are grabbing more farmland than government. But Republicans love developers only slightly less than farmers, so the bill is silent on the subject.


Using pipelines to keep ethanol on life support a few more years is a poor environmental trade off. Sure, ethanol gets greener, but corn production still fouls our waterways and contributes to downstream flooding. Growing even more corn, with no meaningful environmental rules in place, makes those problems worse. Some farmers are doing the right thing, but not nearly enough of them.


We want to attract talent to Iowa by showcasing outdoor recreation, but we underfund it and now we’re preparing to discourage land sales that could enhance it. Kick out the park rangers while we’re at it.


But it’s all about striking a balance. Yep. Their way or the highway. How’s that for balance? But I hear some of the medians are nice.

 


Most of the best humor under the Golden Dome of Wisdom is unintentional. That certainly was the case this past week in the Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee.


At issue was a bill, Senate Study Bill 3134, which would basically penalize landowners who sell their land to a county conservation board or the Department of Natural Resources for conservation purposes. The bill caps the amount of money those public entities can pay for certain categories of land. All the caps are below fair market value.


For example, if you sell timber land to county conservation, you can only get 80 percent of its value. For “low quality” cropland, you get 75 percent.


Republicans who supported the bill argued that selling land for conservation is harming famers who want to buy the land for grazing and crop production. Sen. Jeff Taylor, R-Sioux Center, said he talked with constituents who missed out on buying timber land for grazing when it was sold instead for conservation uses. This is, apparently, a big problem even though no group is registered as supporting the bill.


Then came the comedy gold.


“We have to strike some kind of balance,” Taylor said.


Earlier in the meeting, Sen. Dan Zumbach, R-Ryan, said the bill is needed to make sure “Iowa remains an agricultural state.”


Senators, you’re killing me. But let’s talk about “balance.”


On one side of the scale we have 30 million acres of farming operations in a 36-million-acre state. We have 3.7 million cattle and 24 million hogs. We have farmers and their allies in control of the state’s environmental regulatory structure, the House, Senate and governor’s office, where politicians receive bushels of campaign contributions from agricultural interests. We have the weighty political clout of ag corporations and farm groups, including the Farm Bureau. We’ve got dirty water because those same politicians refuse to hold agriculture accountable for the pollution it spawns. We’ve got the ethanol industry, largely unchallenged by members of either party. Heck, throw in 11.7 million turkeys.


On the other side we’ve got public lands that make up less than 3 percent of the state’s landscape, a share so small it would all fit into a 40-mile-by-40-mile square, according to the Sierra Club. More than 900,000 acres of that public land is in road right-of-ways. Come, vacation on our medians. We’ve got hundreds of Iowans who have contacted lawmakers in opposition to the bill, numerous groups who value clean water, wildlife habitat and outdoor recreation that oppose the bill and some fuzzy headed scribes such as myself who keep writing, in vain, about the lousy state of Iowa’s environment.


In other words, we’ve got a bunch of folks whose opinions don’t count for a hill of beans, or corn, in this crazy state. Balance would be nice, but not in the way Taylor envisions.


I don’t mean to pick on Taylor. He seems like a thoughtful guy. Before the Natural Resources and Environment Committee met, Taylor watched the Commerce Committee scrap his bill that would have prohibited the use of eminent domain for private projects, such as Summit Carbon Solutions’ plan for a 2,000-mile carbon pipeline serving several Iowa ethanol plants. His bill didn’t even get a vote.


But what did he expect? Summit is holding a winning political hand. On the company’s payroll are GOP megadonor Bruce Rastetter, former governor and ambassador to China Terry Branstad, Jess Vilsack, son of the former governor and current U.S. secretary of agriculture and former chief of staff to Gov. Kim Reynolds Jake Ketzner. Ethanol always has friends in high places.


So in a matter of hours, we learned that Republicans want to punish landowners who wish to sell their land for conservation, not farming. But it might be OK for a politically connected company to grab private land for a carbon pipeline benefiting the ethanol industry.


And that’s not all. GOP lawmakers also are considering a bill that would prohibit the sale of productive farmland for solar energy projects. So we’ll move heaven and a lot of earth to prop up the ethanol industry but restrict the promise of clean solar energy. Again, the property owners’ choices are limited.


You thought this was the party of property rights?


Actually, corn is king, and it turns out he’s an authoritarian ruler. All the land is his. In exchange he will bestow great wealth upon the livestock confiners, ethanol refiners and corporate farm input providers. Pollution? Give him more taxpayer dollars and he just might volunteer to do something about it. Someday. Maybe.


He’s decreed the outdoor public spaces we have are enough. The sun is for crops, not solar panels.


The public land bill and the solar bill are lousy legislation that never should have seen the light of day. Government has no business shoving around property owners so they’ll be forced to sell or use their land for purposes lawmakers like. The idea that the sale of some parcels to conservation boards or the state will somehow tip the scales against agriculture is ludicrous.


Suburban developers profiting off of sprawl are grabbing more farmland than government. But Republicans love developers only slightly less than farmers, so the bill is silent on the subject.


Using pipelines to keep ethanol on life support a few more years is a poor environmental trade off. Sure, ethanol gets greener, but corn production still fouls our waterways and contributes to downstream flooding. Growing even more corn, with no meaningful environmental rules in place, makes those problems worse. Some farmers are doing the right thing, but not nearly enough of them.


We want to attract talent to Iowa by showcasing outdoor recreation, but we underfund it and now we’re preparing to discourage land sales that could enhance it. Kick out the park rangers while we’re at it.


But it’s all about striking a balance. Yep. Their way or the highway. How’s that for balance? But I hear some of the medians are nice.

I like medians. Put Buffalo on them and the tourists will come. 3% of Iowa is public lands? Wow. Not many rec areas, huh? That is nutz.
 
This does actually affect me. I inherited some not terribly good farmland a few years ago. I'd prefer, and I have spoken to the other heirs about eventually trying to sell it off to a conservation trust, or some endeavor that would take it out of production. The land is bordered by a river, and has a significant portion that is timber. Barely half to the total acreage can be tilled.
Why should't we be able to negotiate in our interests, without having Big Government telling us what to do?
 
This does actually affect me. I inherited some not terribly good farmland a few years ago. I'd prefer, and I have spoken to the other heirs about eventually trying to sell it off to a conservation trust, or some endeavor that would take it out of production. The land is bordered by a river, and has a significant portion that is timber. Barely half to the total acreage can be tilled.
Why should't we be able to negotiate in our interests, without having Big Government telling us what to do?
Party of Property Rights.
 
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