Participants offer perceptive insights on future directions

By Laura Miller
Newsletter editor

We heard great ideas and talked about what people value. We discussed some of agriculture's most perplexing problems. But most of all, we got a “reality check” from nearly 200 Iowans about three proposed initiatives for future activities at the Leopold Center.

The Leopold Center initiatives target the creation of new markets and policies that benefit midsize Iowa farms and seek ways for those producers to use more ecologically driven production technologies. We worked with partners in Sioux Center, Hiawatha, Mt. Pleasant, Decorah, Lewis and Greenfield to conduct “community conversations” as part of the Center's visioning activities. The meetings included people with many opinions—rural and urban, producers and consumers, young and old, conventional and organic—about far-ranging topics from urban sprawl and food labeling to government support programs and green payments.

The consensus was that we're on track with the three initiatives of economic policy, marketing and ecology. People also told us not to abandon family farmers, and that they were open to new ways to support them. The overriding message at all meetings was a sense of extreme urgency because many family farmers may not have a lot of time left before they retire or quit the business.

Center staff members are forming teams to discuss activities for each of the three initiatives and what can be accomplished in the next year, five years and 10 years. Michael Duffy, extension economist and associate director at the Leopold Center, will head the economic policy initiative. Research coordinator Jeri Neal is working on the ecological initiative and Rich Pirog, who has coordinated the center's educational programs, is working on the marketing initiative.

Summaries from the conversations and other updates are posted on a special page, The Leopold Center looks to the future, on the Leopold Center's web site.

Here's a sample of what we heard during the conversations

“Iowans are in denial. Eighty percent of the food eaten by Iowans comes from outside the state. We need to begin to produce more of the food that we eat.

“The picture on your brochure really struck me. What do we want the countryside to look like? This is a farmer issue as well as a community issue.”

“Farmers are the original conservationists. They'll try to be good stewards if they can, but sometimes they're between a rock and a hard place. The key is education and making it easier for farmers to voluntarily choose to do the right things.”

“Our economic policies need to reward diversity in agriculture. I'd also like to know how present policies help or hurt smaller farmers.”

“I like the idea of a local food system. The key is loyalty of people who live in a geographic region. Most large companies rely on standardization and uniformity of a product across the country, but these food systems can offer something that no one can do on a large scale.”

“Efficiency of scale will no longer work in a country where labor is no longer cheap.”

“We need to make conservation a commodity, reward farmers who are caring for their land and build that into public policy so that we subsidize conservation practices and not just commodities.”

“Global politics won't save agriculture. We must face the reality of overproduction and use our resources, which can include government subsidies, more wisely.”

“Where is agriculture without the people and the communities they support? If we're looking only for the cheapest product, most of our food will come from other countries. We need to tell the consumer that this is happening and bring it to the personal level.”

Return to the Spring 2001 Leopold Letter Index