- Sep 13, 2002
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Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig is MIAWhile Trump hammers Iowa's economy...
I enjoyed presenting Ag Leader Awards for Conservation at the @AgribusinessIA Showcase & Conference to @agronomist_Evan (@IowaSoybeans) & Liz Hobart (GROWMARK). Thank you for helping accelerate the adoption of soil health and water quality practices in our state. #IowaAg In the month since he took office, President Donald Trump’s policies have hit rural America, especially Iowa, hard. Donnell Eller at the Des Moines Register has documented some of the damage, but it keeps on coming. As you can see above, on Valentine’s Day, the same day Eller’s column was published, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig tweeted from another dimension where President Donald Trump doesn’t exist. Apparently, Donnell Eller doesn’t exist for Naig either, as he declined her request for comment. The man Iowans elected to serve as the Secretary of Agriculture, to provide leadership in support of agriculture and our rural economy, and one of the most knowledgeable people in Iowa about agriculture, declined to comment when it’s his responsibility to do so. Among the damage Eller documented are the $10 million Iowa farmers are owed for conservation initiatives, and potentially another $86 million approved for adopting climate-smart agricultural policies. Practical Farmers of Iowa and others are owed millions of dollars, and $46 million awarded last year through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program is at risk. Funding through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act as well as conservation programs in the farm bill have also stalled. Naig has nothing to say. Trump has also threatened or imposed tariffs on our three largest trading partners, Canada, Mexico and China which will hit the rural economy hard. Naig has nothing to say. Food shipments to countries in need overseas has stopped as Trump shut down USAID, leaving $450 million dollars of food left to rot, abandoning our humanitarian efforts around the world, leaving vast opportunities for China and Russia to build new relationships with our friends and allies we have abandoned. Naig has nothing to say. Because of Trump’s freeze and cuts, 38 out of 39 staff members of the Soil and Water Conservation Districts of Iowa have been laid off after not receiving promised funding from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. According to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship’s (IDALS) website, “The Division provides staff support to all 100 soil and water conservation districts (SWCDs) in Iowa. The efforts of these staff support the combined soil and water conservation mission of the SWCD, the State of Iowa, and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. Each SWCD is unique in the resource conservation problems it addresses and the way it chooses to package and deliver programs to landowners, farm operators, and local communities.” IDALS supports the staff of the SWCD and it’s part of the infrastructure that IDALS works with. The loss of these jobs is a direct reduction in IDALS’ capacity to do soil and water conservation work. Naig has nothing to say. But the Montgomery County SWCD does:
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