Last Thursday, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party hosted a roundtable in Dysart, Iowa to examine theft of U.S. agriculture technology. This is an important issue, and we applaud the members of this committee for taking the time to listen to farmers who have ...
Greetings, friends and neighbors! I hope you’re all enjoying your summer so far. It’s been a busy and fun month and a half since I last wrote, filled with town festivals, parades, the 4th of July, and hundreds of great conversations with constituents at their doors. Despite the rain ...
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a lifelong farmer and senior member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, recently joined Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) to introduce a bipartisan bill to increase transparency and oversight of foreign investments in the American agricultural industry. The Farmland ...
What Iowa GOP lawmakers and Gov. Kim Reynolds were planning to do in Tuesday’s (July 11) special session may have started out as the most politically expedient course of action on abortion – but it could backfire in a spectacular way. Here’s why. Reynolds and the GOP majority under ...
Fifty years ago, founders of the Center for Rural Affairs knew that if they wanted policy to work for rural Americans, they had to raise their voices and grow a grassroots community. Today, policy remains a big part of the Center’s work. And, our work, as well as the rural communities we ...
I’m “pro-life,” you could say. I was reared in a strictly Catholic household at 216 Geneseo St., and sent to St. Mary’s School in Storm Lake where that regimen was reinforced. I matriculated to an all-men’s college run by priests in the Twin Cities, where I was fully schooled in ...
In the years ahead, U.S. agriculture as we know it will be shaped by transitions. Recent figures show that 34% of our nation's farmers and ranchers are above the age of 65, and only 8% are younger than 35. Supporting the next generation of agricultural producers will be crucial to keeping ...
The United States’ founders firmly rejected King George III and the entire idea of monarchy 247 years ago, on July 4, 1776. Political power does not come from some absolute authority of a king over people, the founders argued. Rather, political power comes from the people themselves. And ...
With all the important national news stories in recent weeks – the debt ceiling showdown, the Trump indictments – an unhealthy trend has developed in local media. Iowa Democrats, as well as local news outlets, need to address it. The problem is the nearly complete lock that Iowa ...
For the past decade, the media has been obsessed with the idea of a growing divide between rural and urban areas, often portraying it as a deep chasm separating the nation's citizens. I've come to see this narrative as more about entertainment than a serious attempt to understand or address ...