Wampum

In the six months we spent in the Iowa 2nd, MB working (unpaid) at the IDP office and the adjacent Loebsack office in Iowa City, me talking to everyone in the camps as Jonah did the rounds to visit the curves and reflections of the wheelwells of their tow vehicles, we never encountered an Iowa Dem who had a positive thing to say about The Pledge. For the farmers we talked to, with their acreage split across corn, soy, and alfalfa, the delta it made in silo prices was much less important in determining how they farmed than the general structure of subsidies and cost factors. The bigger issues were rising land prices, the indebtedness that went along with that, and the fragility of operations, large-scale or small, that were essentially share-croppers, leasing land and equipment. A strongly held farm was one that owned both land and equipment and could look at the yield difference and the number of trips over ground (tractor/cultivator) for pesticide-free and/or GMO-free operations.

We didn't have a "candidate" for Draft Gore, so we had the luxury of planning to have our candidate-free campaign return to Iowa a year ago and, like the Arnold Vinnick character played by Alan Alda in the final season of The West Wing, talk about farm policy and western water policy and corn export (NAFTA) being the primary cause for agricultural dislocation in Mexico, that is, a few cents on the acre, most of which goes to ADM and the other giants of the Iowa farm food chain, is what is fueling the loony "Illegal immigrant crisis" marketed by Steve King in the Iowa 5th and Tom Tancredo in the Colorado 6th. It also fueled the agricultural dislocations of the 19th century, ending the farm economy in New England that once fed New York.

We also had the luxury of being able to point to serious academic studies of the ethanol energy economy that showed beyond a doubt that ethanol from corn in the midwest was simply a total energy sink, unlike switchgrass, which leads to the marginal land and nitrogen runoff issues ...

Of course, the problems in Iowa aren't limited to Iowa. California ag interests dictate that Iowan can grow corn, soy, alfalfa, and sunflowers, but not lettuce or anything that might end up in a farmer's market in the midwest that looks suspiciously like a salad. So however venal Iowa's Pledge is, for the producers (starting with the Iowa boosters) and the consumers (what candidate hasn't taken The Pledge), the venality runs along both axis of the refrigerated lettuce line that connects Salinas and New York, and both axis of the grain barge line that connects the ports on the Great Lakes and the Gulf, creating monoculture and fossil fuel and water costs everywhere.

Jean Ziegler's view is that the production of biofuels is "a crime against humanity" because of its impact on global food prices. Ziegler is the UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food. Last week the European Environment Agency (EEA), advised the European Commission to suspending its biofuel target, as the EU will have to import, which means accelerate the transformation of rain forest into export biomass monoculture, for overstated benefits. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, head of Nestle, the world's biggest food and beverage company, and just about the last place anyone familiar with the exploitation of "forumla" to replace breast milk would look for ethical guidance, last month argued that "to grant enormous subsidies for biofuel production is morally unacceptable and irresponsible." Robert Zoellick said soaring food costs could potentially push 100 million people deeper into poverty. Mr. Zoellick is the president of the World Bank, which reported last week that global wheat prices jumped 181 percent over the 36 months to February, with overall food prices up 83 percent.

On the other side of the issue is Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who just said "Don't tell me, for the love of God, that food is expensive because of biodiesel. Food is expensive because the world wasn't prepared to see millions of Chinese, Indians, Africans, Brazilians and Latin Americans eat," and "We want to discuss this not with passion but rationality and not from the European point of view."

And the interests that hold Iowa's position in the early primary calender is inviolate, and its corollary, that there is no farm policy issue but The Pledge.