Absolutely perfectly said. I second it, motion passed! A process that erodes soil, and pollutes Iowa in multiple ways can not be called renewable. I loved your observation of the biggest con man coming to Iowa to reinforce ethanol's eminent domain over our, soil, water and health.
Background to what I said on The Iowa Down Ballot podcast: The funny thing (well, not really funny, but you know what I mean) is that year-round E-15 was included in a government funding bill way back in December 2024. They were so close! But Donald Trump and Elon Musk blew up that funding deal, and when they struck another one, E-15 was no longer in there.
Incredible breakdown of the Too Big To Fail dynamic. That 100:1 solar-to-corn energy ratio really exposes how much poitical inertia is propping this up rather than actual economics or physics. Watched a farm neighbor rip out waterways last year to maximise corn acres and it clicked for me how theentire system rewards exactly the wrong incentives at scale.
Grassley’s most recent constituent email I received, extolling the virtues of year round E-15, proclaimed it was “very, very, very good,” and responsible for over 57,000 good paying jobs.
Why Iowans continue to allow him to keep selling his snake oil into his 90’s, and now that he’s filing for reelection baffles the senses.
The transcript from IOWA PRESS on 1/30/26 was a glum reality check. Iowa House Minority Leader Brian Meyer, when talking about water quality, said "we're open to anything, anything that will address the problem." But, except for more funding, he did not mention any of the measures recommended by the Iowa Environmental Council and other protect-water groups (not to mention experts like Chris Jones). And he repeated other language some of us have heard sooooo often before, old classics like "we have to have a collaborative effort with farmers" and "it's important as an agricultural state that we include everybody at the table" and "we have to have a collaborative effort with farmers to sit down at the table and say, how can we help?" and "I don't think it's particularly helpful to say this has to be mandatory."
I felt like I had ridden the Wayback Machine to 2012, a year when the severely-dentally-challenged Nutrient Reduction Strategy was being developed by the Iowa Farm Bureau, oops, I mean the State of Iowa. Not a happy memory. And that's apart from what Rep. Meyer said about the carbon pipelines. I am a Democrat, but I am an increasingly-desperate Democrat. If what happened in 2025 wasn't enough to start to change the pattern of Iowa Democratic legislators being better than Iowa Republican legislators on water issues, but not much, what will?
I find the idea of “soil loss” disconcerting and amazing. I associate that with Oklahoma and the dust bowl and the 1930’s. To think that is “today” is frightening. And yes, Trump doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anything but himself.
Thinking about "mass deportation." Expand the definition slightly, and we have deported healthy lives, topsoil, water quality, thriving small towns/schools, local economies, and our youngest/brightest. Farmers, many operating on small margins to begin with, are screwed by the system and it reverberates to all of us. I'm reading Beth Hoffman's brilliant "Betting the Farm" right now--should be required reading by anyone wanting to understand how ag works. The irony is that city jobs held by spouses are needed to provide the income needed to keep from losing the farm. Those employers are often part of the failed infrastructure keeping farmers hopelessly in debt. Round & round the toilet bowl swirls...and we're all getting swept away.
China is moving ahead dramatically with solar, batteries and EVs. They could solve our Climate problems with their solar plan for the future. The U.S. can't compete. Big Oil, Detroit, King Corn, Koch and the chemical people run this place--into the ground. And, Iowa--the big, big loser. Sinful waste of natural capital here. Why? Greed. And, a public nursed on crazy right wing media.
When the orange-one argues that solar panels take up too much good farm land, I wonder what he thinks all that corn is doing. Surely he realizes that corn takes up just as much land and destroys it. At least with the solar panels, native prairie plants can grow beneath them.
Excellent essay, thanks. Iowa is horribly corrupted by the agricultural lobby, but few Canadians appreciate just how bad our own provinces can be in similar ways. Iowa grows about 2.8 billion bushels of corn annually, Ontario grows a fraction of that but about 37% of ONtario’s corn crop goes to the production of ethanol. It’s horribly harmful to our topsoil and organic content.
An autocratic power forces racial and ethnic "heritage". While dispossessing us of our natural heritage.
While using ICE to "root out social spending fraud" in Minneapolis, immensely greater frauds are countenanced in the realms of taxation and land use by market and government collusion. Adding further dissonance -- a visit to Iowa by the great godfather of fraud. Pardon me.
"Mass deportation", if not selectively applied only to blue enemies within, would force out human immigrants we greatly depend on to feed and nourish us. The system also forces by "choice" an economic and energy "winner" -- burning corn on the hard road, crowding out local and regional food alternatives. (Ok, this ain't dissonant as much as asinine since both lead to similar mal-adaptive ends.)
While a dictator was made by propagandizing the nation's "open borders" to aliens, the nation's entire agricultural policy rests on immunity given to toxins freely crossing borders from private lands within. No eyes on these alien fence jumpers. The cognitive dissonance of "homeland security" screams loudly. But for moral and ethical salving, for privatizing profits and socializing costs, it is crickets.
While Trump extols energy independence based on domestically produced oil and gas, he blesses corn's oil-me-too, heavily dependent on foreign and industrial inputs with increasingly unsustainable costs, as the Midwest ag recession reveals. While demonizing solar, wind and EVs. Corn can't compete with "all the above"? Not without your "choice" for a "clean environment". Why yes, give me 50% more "choice" as the too-much-corn elixir!
By forcing the return to a fatherland, so dense with insolence and "f-ery", they force their manufactured space upon us and alienate us from place, from a place we had grown to love to a space we grow "by choice" to despise. Such is the feel of being colonized by un-American powers that limit real choices for better ways of living on earth.
We're caught in a catch-22 between producers and consumers. We need to take politics out of the picture. there are enough farmers planting cover crops that help hold the soil in place. I suggest folks take a drive on Hwy 30 towards Cedar Rapids and you will see bare topsoil on both sides of the road.
Absolutely perfectly said. I second it, motion passed! A process that erodes soil, and pollutes Iowa in multiple ways can not be called renewable. I loved your observation of the biggest con man coming to Iowa to reinforce ethanol's eminent domain over our, soil, water and health.
Background to what I said on The Iowa Down Ballot podcast: The funny thing (well, not really funny, but you know what I mean) is that year-round E-15 was included in a government funding bill way back in December 2024. They were so close! But Donald Trump and Elon Musk blew up that funding deal, and when they struck another one, E-15 was no longer in there.
https://www.bleedingheartland.com/2024/12/23/musk-trump-tanked-funding-bill-with-iowans-priorities/
Incredible breakdown of the Too Big To Fail dynamic. That 100:1 solar-to-corn energy ratio really exposes how much poitical inertia is propping this up rather than actual economics or physics. Watched a farm neighbor rip out waterways last year to maximise corn acres and it clicked for me how theentire system rewards exactly the wrong incentives at scale.
Grassley’s most recent constituent email I received, extolling the virtues of year round E-15, proclaimed it was “very, very, very good,” and responsible for over 57,000 good paying jobs.
Why Iowans continue to allow him to keep selling his snake oil into his 90’s, and now that he’s filing for reelection baffles the senses.
Yep, we've been conned. When will we ever learn?!
Unless we want to drink gas/ethanol, we should put serious work into water quality. Water is life.
The transcript from IOWA PRESS on 1/30/26 was a glum reality check. Iowa House Minority Leader Brian Meyer, when talking about water quality, said "we're open to anything, anything that will address the problem." But, except for more funding, he did not mention any of the measures recommended by the Iowa Environmental Council and other protect-water groups (not to mention experts like Chris Jones). And he repeated other language some of us have heard sooooo often before, old classics like "we have to have a collaborative effort with farmers" and "it's important as an agricultural state that we include everybody at the table" and "we have to have a collaborative effort with farmers to sit down at the table and say, how can we help?" and "I don't think it's particularly helpful to say this has to be mandatory."
I felt like I had ridden the Wayback Machine to 2012, a year when the severely-dentally-challenged Nutrient Reduction Strategy was being developed by the Iowa Farm Bureau, oops, I mean the State of Iowa. Not a happy memory. And that's apart from what Rep. Meyer said about the carbon pipelines. I am a Democrat, but I am an increasingly-desperate Democrat. If what happened in 2025 wasn't enough to start to change the pattern of Iowa Democratic legislators being better than Iowa Republican legislators on water issues, but not much, what will?
Grassroots demands
You get it. Yes!
I find the idea of “soil loss” disconcerting and amazing. I associate that with Oklahoma and the dust bowl and the 1930’s. To think that is “today” is frightening. And yes, Trump doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anything but himself.
Well said, Dr. Jones!!! and that’s also why we don’t see meadowlarks singing along country roads in the spring and summer like we used to 50 years ago
Thinking about "mass deportation." Expand the definition slightly, and we have deported healthy lives, topsoil, water quality, thriving small towns/schools, local economies, and our youngest/brightest. Farmers, many operating on small margins to begin with, are screwed by the system and it reverberates to all of us. I'm reading Beth Hoffman's brilliant "Betting the Farm" right now--should be required reading by anyone wanting to understand how ag works. The irony is that city jobs held by spouses are needed to provide the income needed to keep from losing the farm. Those employers are often part of the failed infrastructure keeping farmers hopelessly in debt. Round & round the toilet bowl swirls...and we're all getting swept away.
Happy February!
China is moving ahead dramatically with solar, batteries and EVs. They could solve our Climate problems with their solar plan for the future. The U.S. can't compete. Big Oil, Detroit, King Corn, Koch and the chemical people run this place--into the ground. And, Iowa--the big, big loser. Sinful waste of natural capital here. Why? Greed. And, a public nursed on crazy right wing media.
When the orange-one argues that solar panels take up too much good farm land, I wonder what he thinks all that corn is doing. Surely he realizes that corn takes up just as much land and destroys it. At least with the solar panels, native prairie plants can grow beneath them.
Excellent essay, thanks. Iowa is horribly corrupted by the agricultural lobby, but few Canadians appreciate just how bad our own provinces can be in similar ways. Iowa grows about 2.8 billion bushels of corn annually, Ontario grows a fraction of that but about 37% of ONtario’s corn crop goes to the production of ethanol. It’s horribly harmful to our topsoil and organic content.
What is most confounding is that we have good, competent and smart people like you in Iowa and the biggest idiot on the planet in the White House.
As always, thank you Chris!
An autocratic power forces racial and ethnic "heritage". While dispossessing us of our natural heritage.
While using ICE to "root out social spending fraud" in Minneapolis, immensely greater frauds are countenanced in the realms of taxation and land use by market and government collusion. Adding further dissonance -- a visit to Iowa by the great godfather of fraud. Pardon me.
"Mass deportation", if not selectively applied only to blue enemies within, would force out human immigrants we greatly depend on to feed and nourish us. The system also forces by "choice" an economic and energy "winner" -- burning corn on the hard road, crowding out local and regional food alternatives. (Ok, this ain't dissonant as much as asinine since both lead to similar mal-adaptive ends.)
While a dictator was made by propagandizing the nation's "open borders" to aliens, the nation's entire agricultural policy rests on immunity given to toxins freely crossing borders from private lands within. No eyes on these alien fence jumpers. The cognitive dissonance of "homeland security" screams loudly. But for moral and ethical salving, for privatizing profits and socializing costs, it is crickets.
While Trump extols energy independence based on domestically produced oil and gas, he blesses corn's oil-me-too, heavily dependent on foreign and industrial inputs with increasingly unsustainable costs, as the Midwest ag recession reveals. While demonizing solar, wind and EVs. Corn can't compete with "all the above"? Not without your "choice" for a "clean environment". Why yes, give me 50% more "choice" as the too-much-corn elixir!
By forcing the return to a fatherland, so dense with insolence and "f-ery", they force their manufactured space upon us and alienate us from place, from a place we had grown to love to a space we grow "by choice" to despise. Such is the feel of being colonized by un-American powers that limit real choices for better ways of living on earth.
We're caught in a catch-22 between producers and consumers. We need to take politics out of the picture. there are enough farmers planting cover crops that help hold the soil in place. I suggest folks take a drive on Hwy 30 towards Cedar Rapids and you will see bare topsoil on both sides of the road.
the answer my friend is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind...bob dylan