Wendy Johnson has spent more than a decade building diversity on her Iowa farm, despite financial and cultural pressure to stick to the status quo. Now, she’s pushing for system change.
Source: https://civileats.com/2023/04/05/op-ed-we-need-a-new-farm-bill-for-my-iowa-farm-and-beyond/
I grew up on a farm in Iowa during the Farm Crisis of the 1980s. Back then, life here was not flourishing, but dying. I pursued a career in fashion and moved to Los Angeles, where I discovered my connection to food. Then, 10 years ago, I returned to Iowa to find that things hadn’t changed much: Our small town was smaller, more farmhouses had been left to decay, and the big farmers had gotten bigger. I returned to the farm and I have stayed because I love Iowa and see it as ground zero in the battle for the heart of the food system. Now, I’m regenerating land, building healthy ecosystems, improving the water cycle, and storing carbon in the soil—all while the system is actively working against farms like mine.
Iowa is one of the most altered ecosystems in the world. Once a rich and diverse landscape filled with prairie grasslands and oak savannas, today it is a grid of corn and soybean fields. The state is home to some of the richest soils in the world, a natural resource that took millennia to form, but those soils are being quickly washed and blown away through stronger and stronger wind and rain events due to climate change; we’re currently losing soil faster than at the height of the 1930s dust bowl.
In the last 75 years, Iowa has essentially become a mining state, a place from which profit is being extracted while people are left behind to clean up the mess. Nitrate pollution is filling our natural and abundant underground aquifers, algae blooms proliferate our freshwater lakes, and pesticides fill the air we breathe.
Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) can be found in all 99 Iowa counties. The state has over 23 million pigs, 60 million chickens, and only 3 million people. CAFOs are built here in large numbers because we have the perfect soil to grow their feed: yellow corn No. 2—a far cry from Mexico’s sacred maize. In return, the animals produce a liquid waste slurry rich in nutrients required to feed that corn.
The agriculture industry here has spent billions in corn development, infrastructure, and lobbying, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has spent trillions in taxpayer dollars protecting and subsidizing it. However, the animals’ manure isn’t enough to feed all 13 million acres of corn in the state so farmers also add fossil fuel-derived anhydrous ammonia and urea ammonium nitrate to their fields, as well as mined potassium and phosphorus also needed to grow the crop.
Iowa is one of the heaviest polluters of both nitrate and phosphorus. We are literally polluting ourselves out of a healthy place to live while polluting waterways downstream and killing the seafood that thousands of people rely on for their livelihoods in the Gulf of Mexico, all in the name of King Corn.
In Iowa, our property values are based on soil type and corn suitability ratings (CSRs). The higher the CSR, the higher the value of the land. According to a survey conducted at Iowa State University, average market rental rates today are currently $3.10 per CSR point. In the county where I live, the average CSR is 80, and so the average rental rate is $248 per acre. And most landowners renting to tenants rarely go down in rate because they know someone will pay more.
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Food is life
We began Jóia Food Farm out of a desire to connect with our food, be an active participant in the food process, and to live a life filled with intention and genuine purpose. A life that integrates the land, family, community, the work we do, and the food we raise.
We believe in the principles of agro-ecology, with a focus on biodiversity and share the understanding that we live in community with the natural world. The sharing and collaboration of the soil, animals and plants working together creates healthy soils, healthy animals, healthy plants, a healthy environment and most importantly, healthy food.
At Jóia, we are advocates of nutrient dense slow food, from raising it to preparing it. Slower food simply tastes better. We raise heritage pigs, sheep, turkeys, ducks and chickens. We grow certified organic grains and lush pastures and use regenerative methods to grow the livestock in our soils. We plant trees, including fruit and nut trees and shrubs annually to increase the diversity on our food farm. Every animal has a very diverse diet, from the diverse pasture mixes we seed to their feed choices. Our animals are certified Animal Welfare Approved to show you our commitment to high animal welfare standards.
We are passionate about our practices and we believe it shows through the flavor of our food. Discover the many ways to purchase our food from our farm for your table.
