iowa underground blog

Tom Vilsack vetoed SF 2377, which proposed to remove the ability of the Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources to deny large animal confinements in environmentally sensitive areas.

AMES, IOWA 2006-05-31 Governor Vilsack said he will veto a controversial bill that would have stopped tough new environmental protection rules from going into effect. The rules will make it easier to block large hog confinements which threaten the environment. The governor’s veto is considered a victory for the Department of Natural Resoures. The DNR is about to receive final approval for new rules which will let them stop hog confinements in environmentally sensitive areas, even if they meet all state regulations. Senate File 2377 would have blocked that new authority. In announcing his veto the governor said the leiglsation would have meant big step backward for environmental protection. The governor said the new rules would have halted construction on less than 1% of the roughtly 2000 new livestock confinements that have been constructed in Iowa over the last four years. Critics of the new rules which include Iowa’s major farm organizations can now take their case to the legislature’s administrative rules review committee, which can delay the rules or require a regulatory analysis.

WOI’s Joyce Russell Reports.

From this morning’s Agribusiness Examiner comes a story about Tate & Lyle building an ethanol plant in Fort Dodge, with a note about the recent majority sale of a locally owned ethanol plant to an Australian interest:

TATE & LYLE PLANS TO BUILD ETHANOL PLANT
By David Pitt Associated Press Business Writer
May 25, 2006

Tate & Lyle PLC, a London-based manufacturer of renewable food and industrial ingredients, said Thursday it plans to build a $260 million ethanol plant in the north-central Iowa town of Fort Dodge.

The plant, to be located about 70 miles north of Des Moines, would be built in two phases with an eventual capacity to produce up to 100 million gallons of ethanol a year. The plant also will make starches for the paper industry.

The first phase would have the capacity to process 150,000 bushels of corn per day. Completion of the first phase is expected by March 2009 with operation beginning in 2010. When the second phase is completed, the plant will process 300,000 bushels of corn daily.

“This investment will double our ethanol capacity, producing environmental and energy saving benefits in the U.S. and reducing American oil dependance,” said Lain Ferguson, Tate & Lyle CEO, in a statement released Thursday. The company specializes in cereal sweeteners and starches, sugar refining and value-added food and industrial ingredients.

The company said it will work with local environmental groups and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to obtain necessary regulatory approval.

Tate & Lyle operates 65 plants in 29 countries throughout Europe, Southeast Asia and the Americas. It employs nearly 12,000 people in its subsidiaries and joint ventures.

It is the second major investment in ethanol production in Iowa by a foreign company announced this year.

On March 30, shareholders of Midwest Grain Processors approved a $100 million offer from an Australian company to buy a controlling stake in the ethanol producer.

The deal gave Global Ethanol a 60% stake in the farmer-owned Midwest Grain, which operates an ethanol plant in Lakota and owns a plant under construction near Riga, Mich.

The companies said they plan to build three more ethanol plants.

Many of the 1,287 investors in Midwest Grain are Iowa farmers who invested in the plant as a way to add value to their corn by turning it into ethanol.

“Investors in the facilities here in the state of Iowa are looking for ways they can expand their production capabilities and improve their return on investment.” said Lucy Norton, managing director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, an industry trade group.

Norton said Iowa is seeing a boom in ethanol production.

“We now have 25 ethanol plants in the state of Iowa producing around 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol,” she said. “We are in the midst of a significant upswing in the production of ethanol.”

Three plants began production in the last three days, she said.

The production of ethanol will be a lynchpin of Iowa’s economic development policies: not only is there an upswing, we’re supporting political candidates that will promote Iowa’s ethanol industry. However – is such outside investment going to be a net positive? Most of Iowa’s farmland is already dedicated to the production of two crops: corn and soybeans. These two crops have taken an increasing amount of ground, nitrate fertilizer and caused a significant amount of soil erosion.

Will outside investors (those furthest from the land) view soil stewardship and sensible agricultural policy in the same light?

• Sousy

Deciding where to buy produce? Keep this in mind: buying food from local producers can mean a lot more than better tasting food.

STUDY SHOWS POTENTIAL ECONOMIC PAYOFFS TIED TO HEALTHY EATING

AMES, Iowa – Answering the question, “Does five-a-day pay?” could mean a lot more to Iowans than eating five servings of fruit and vegetables every day. It could mean an additional $302 million in sales and more than 4,000 jobs added to the Iowa economy if just 25 percent of the extra fruit and vegetables are Iowa grown.

A new report from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture considers the economic impact if Iowans followed a diet of five servings of selected Iowa-grown fruit and vegetables each day for three months of the year. The report considered additional production of apples, carrots, spinach, squash and tomatoes, half marketed directly by Iowa producers and half sold through existing retail stores.

“This is an important question to consider because it ties healthy eating to the additional economic development that could occur if Iowa farmers provided some of the food for this change in diet,” said Rich Pirog, who leads the Center’s Marketing and Food Systems Initiative.

“Eating five servings of fruit and vegetables is recommended because of the potential health benefits, but if more of that produce is grown in Iowa, the state would reap considerable economic benefits, too,” Pirog added.

Pirog said the report addresses four different scenarios, each hypothesizing an increase in the production of fruit and vegetables in Iowa. The “five-a-day” scenario would increase Iowa consumption of five produce items (apples, carrots, spinach, squash and tomatoes) to a total of five daily half-cup servings, with 100 percent of the crops coming from Iowa farms for three months of the year. He said the items were selected because they can be grown easily in all Iowa counties and potentially could be supplied for three months of the year. They also were chosen for their higher nutrient density relative to other choices.

The economic impact analysis was prepared by Dave Swenson, an associate scientist in the Iowa State University Department of Economics, and reviewed by Pirog and Angie Tagtow, registered dietitian for the Iowa Department of Public Health. The analysis was based on several assumptions:

Increased production of fruits and vegetables would reduce corn and soybean production in Iowa. In the “five-a-day” scenario, 31,800 acres of crop land would be required to produce 382 million pounds of produce with expected farm-level receipts estimated at $101.2 million.

Prices reflect sales of conventional rather than organic produce. Swenson estimated that the retail value of the “five-a-day” scenario would be $429.7 million.

Half of the new fruit and vegetables would be sold directly by producers and half would be available in existing retail stores. The analysis offsets the reduced retail store sales of produce in the grocery sector due to increased direct market sales by farmers.

All produce is sold fresh for in-state consumption.

The model also takes into account the rise in inputs needed to produce these crops, such as additional machinery and seed.

According to the report, the “five-a-day” scenario would sustain (either directly or indirectly) $331.2 million in total economic output, $123.3 million in total labor income, and 4,484 total jobs in Iowa. Compared with existing production, its net impact would be $302.4 million in total new industrial output, $112.6 million in labor income, and 4,094 jobs.

The impact is high because a “five-a-day” scenario would mean that many Iowans would eat more fruit and vegetables than they do now. According to the Iowa Department of Public Health, only 19.5 percent of Iowans eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables every day. The impact also is high because much of the produce eaten in Iowa comes from outside the state. Based on current estimates, only 25 to 50 percent of the apples, 12 percent of the squash, 10 percent of the tomatoes, 5 percent of the carrots and 1 percent of the spinach consumed on a fresh weight basis in Iowa is grown within the state.

Swenson said the model is based on a common economic concept of import substitution.

“By substituting in-state production for out-of-state purchases, money that otherwise would have left the state remains in the state,” he said. “Keeping money in the state is desirable because money that leaves the state rarely returns. Money that remains in the state has a multiplier effect on the whole economy.”

Swenson and Pirog said the scenarios generated in the report are hypothetical, and would require huge shifts in the infrastructure of Iowa’s fruit and vegetable industry, as well as gains in the Iowa market share taken from states such as California.

Pirog added: “Even though the scenarios are hypothetical, it is important to consider options that could be a win-win for Iowa’s farmers, the state’s economy, and our overall health.”

The report, “The Economic Impacts of Increased Fruit and Vegetable Production and Consumption in Iowa: Phase II,” is available on the Leopold Center web site at: http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/files/health_0606.pdf.

• Sousy

So.. did anyone else catch the fake news/advertising section in the Des Moines Register yesterday? Two stories written in “news” format with headlines, and author and a byline appeared hawking an arthritis drug and collectible money sheets or somesuch.

A note to the Register editors: it does not help your reporting credibility to print “newsy” looking pages with a bare minimum notice that the “Unversal Media Syndicate” advertisements were paid advertising. Not only do such things look like you’re making poor editorial decisions, it makes it look like the Register has an interest in the sales of the nonsense products as well.

• Sousy

Pat Murphy yesterday accused Chris Rants for allowing donations to influence debate in the Iowa House.

DES MOINES, Iowa Democrats are accusing Speaker of the House Christopher Rants of putting the Legislature up for sale.

They say the Republican is allowing donations to a campaign committee to influence debate.

House Democratic Leader Pat Murphy, of Dubuque, made the accusations today at a news conference at the State Capitol. He targeted the Iowa Leadership Council, a P-A-C he says Rants helped create.

Murphy says donations to the P-A-C included money from tobacco companies, from a casino owner and a beer company, and could be directly linked to the fate of legislation in the House.

This was also noted earlier by the Des Moines Register – with a bit of creative writing from “Loquacious”. Here’s the earlier tally from the Register:

The Iowa Leadership Council raised $177,000 in 2005, its filings show. That included $40,000 from Select Management Resources of Alpharetta, Ga., which is connected with LoanMax; $25,000 from tobacco company RJ Reynolds; $25,000 from Altria Corporate Services, the parent company of tobacco maker Philip Morris; $10,000 from Lorillard Tobacco Co.; and $20,000 from Anheuser-Busch, maker of Budweiser.

Of course, big issues of the session included smoking bans (after the Iowa Supreme Court shot down an Ames ordinance), cigarette taxes, gambling (TouchPlay) and car title loans. You don’t think someone is being rewarded for good behavior now, do you?

The Iowa Leadership Council should work on a few slogans to bolster their image: “ILC: Downtown East Dubuque for the 21st Century”, or “ILC: Because Vice Is Nice”, “ILC: Family Values For Us, Smoky Casinos For Everyone Else”, etc.

• Sousy

... to protect falling approval ratings?

While we’re going through this “temporary” deployment – keep in mind that one of the requirements of the Dec. 17 2005 National Intelligence Reform Act was to bolster the Border Patrol by an additional 10,000 agents over the course of five years.

Officially approved by Bush on Dec. 17 after extensive bickering in Congress, the National Intelligence Reform Act included the requirement to add 10,000 border patrol agents in the five years beginning with 2006. Roughly 80 percent of the agents were to patrol the southern U.S. border from Texas to California, along which thousands of people cross into the United States illegally every year.

So – what happened in the 2006 budget?

But Bush’s proposed 2006 budget, revealed Monday, funds only 210 new border agents.

The shrunken increase reflects the lack of money for an army of border guards and the capacity to train them, officials said.

Retired Adm. James Loy, acting head of the Department of Homeland Security until nominee Michael Chertoff takes over, said funding only 210 new agents was a “recognition that we need to balance those things as we go on down the road with other priorities.”

The White House referred questions about the border agents to the Homeland Security Department.

The law signed by Bush had a caveat that went virtually unreported at the time. A summary, published by the Senate Government Affairs Committee, required the government to increase the number of border patrol agents by at least 2,000 per year, “subject to available appropriations.”

Democrats were unhappy that the proposed budget used the escape clause so soon after the president approved the huge boost in border agents.

Keep this in mind: this sudden emergency on the southern border was not an emergency in January 2006, when the President submitted his budget to the Congress for approval. Now, we’re going to pay for National Guard deployment on a temporary basis until “civilian contractors” can be put in place.

Why civilian contractors instead of following the requirements of the law passed in December, 2006? The answer, of course, has six letters:

AFL-CIO

The Bush Administration wouldn’t actually want to hire people with the ability to organize, after all.

• Sousy

 Welcome to another installment of ‘As Our  Banana Republic Turns’. How many years have  we known about Diebold machines and security  vulnerabilities now? How much longer do we  continue to allow Diebold, a private corporation,  such power and control over our election process  while simultaneously maintaining a suspicious   degree of secrecy and giving us no paper trail??

 Story via InsideBayArea.com.

 (You’ll have to forgive abccbsnbccnnmsnbcfox for  continuing to pay short shrift to this fundamental  concern to our democracy. They’re hot on the   trail of the missing white woman’s killer.)

New security glitch found in Diebold system
Officials say machines have ‘dangerous’ holes
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

Elections officials in several states are scrambling to understand and limit the risk from a “dangerous” security hole found in Diebold Election Systems Inc.’s ATM-like touch-screen voting machines.

The hole is considered more worrisome than most security problems discovered on modern voting machines, such as weak encryption, easily pickable locks and use of the same, weak password nationwide.

Armed with a little basic knowledge of Diebold voting systems and a standard component available at any computer store, someone with a minute or two of access to a Diebold touch screen could load virtually any software into the machine and disable it, redistribute votes or alter its performance in myriad ways.

“This one is worse than any of the others I’ve seen. It’s more fundamental,” said Douglas Jones, a University of Iowa computer scientist and veteran voting-system examiner for the state of Iowa.

“In the other ones, we’ve been arguing about the security of the locks on the front door,” Jones said. “Now we find that there’s no back door. This is the kind of thing where if the states don’t get out in front of the hackers, there’s a real threat.”

This newspaper is withholding some details of the vulnerability at the request of several elections officials and scientists, partly because exploiting it is so simple and the tools for doing so are widely available.

...

California, Pennsylvania and Iowa are issuing emergency notices to local elections officials, generally telling them to “sequester” their Diebold touch screens and reprogram them with “trusted” software issued by the state capital. Then elections officials are to keep the machines sealed with tamper-resistant tape until Election Day.

...

Scientists said Diebold appeared to have opened the hole by making it as easy as possible to upgrade the software inside its machines. The result, said Iowa’s Jones, is a violation of federal voting system rules.

“All of us who have heard the technical details of this are really shocked. It defies reason that anyone who works with security would tolerate this design,” he said.

BradBlog has much more on this here.
Story originally found on this metafilter thread.
See also: Iowa Voters for Open and Transparent elections
Yet more from The Smirking Chimp

• pdx

Thanks, Drew, and State 29.

Lamberti, a republican from Ankeny and co-president of the Iowa Senate [Ed: and 3rd District GOP Congressional Candidate), says almost every other alternative beyond the sale to Whirlpool is worse for the community and workers.

Drew also points out that Whirlpool has been greasing the GOP palms in Iowa as of late, as well.

• Sousy

From today’s “Agribusiness Examiner” (#428 from A.V. Krebs) comes an item from Tennessee’s Agricultural Policy Analysis Center. As Congress debates “permanent” tax cuts (is there such a thing?) – the common example of why the estate tax needs to be repealed is not Paris Hilton – it’s the “family farm”!

... or maybe not.

DO “DEATH TAXES” CAUSE THE DEATH OF FAMILY FARMS ?
By Daryll E. Ray Director of University of Tennessee’s Agricultural Policy Analysis Center
May 2, 2006

Judging by the amount of effort that some farm organizations have put into their support of eliminating the estate tax (also dubbed the death tax), one would think that most farm heirs are like the maiden in the typical silent film melodrama. As the piano player builds to a musical climax, the villain (played by the federal government’s estate tax) tells the helpless maiden (read farm heirs) that if she doesn’t give him the deed to the ranch he is going to tie her to the railroad tracks.

In an era of federal budget deficits it seems to us that it makes sense to determine how likely such a scenario is. Is the federal estate tax breaking up family farms and driving the next generation off the farm? The Congressional Budget Office examined that question in a report they completed in July 2005. The report is titled, “Effects of the Federal Estate Tax on Farms and Small Businesses,” and is available online at http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/65xx/doc6512/07-06-EstateTax.pdf

The report shows that in 2000, the number of farm estates that had to file an estate tax return was 4,641 and of those a little over one-third (1,659) owed any estate tax at all. Of the 1,659 who owed estate taxes only 138 did not have sufficient liquid assets to immediately pay the taxes due. It should be noted that for farmers, the estate tax payments can be paid over as many as 14 years. The 2000 filings included the estates of persons dying in 1998, 1999, and 2000 and the exemption level varied from $625,000 to $675,000, according to the year of death.

If the exemption level were raised to $1.5 million, the number of farm estates required to file an estate tax return would shrink to 1,005 with just 300 of those having to pay any estate tax. Of that 300, only 27 would lack sufficient liquid assets to immediately pay the tax. At a $3.5 million exemption the numbers would be 187 tax returns, 65 owing any tax, and 13 with insufficient liquid assets to pay the estate tax liability. The CBO notes that its analysis “probably overestimate[s] the number of estates with taxes in excess of liquid assets because they do not reflect money held in trusts.”

If we accept that the number of commercial farms in the U.S. is around 500,000, then with a $3.5 million exemption, only 3-one thousandths of one percent of farms would be in jeopardy of having to sell some land to pay the taxes. These numbers also assume that at least one of the heirs wants to stay on the farm and continue the operation. In some cases the farm is broken up after death not because of taxes but because some of the non-farm siblings want to sell the land and invest the money in other ways.

It is often the lack of interest by family members to remain in farming that causes the break-up of family farms, not estate taxes.

Daryll E. Ray holds the Blasingame Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy, Institute of Agriculture, University of Tennessee, and is the Director of UT’s Agricultural Policy Analysis Center Ray’s column is written with the research and assistance of Harwood D. Schaffer, Research Associate with APAC.

This is, of course, something that we already know – high taxes are not chasing the next generation of farmers away: it’s more that ‘family farming’ is becoming increasingly an occupation of the past, particularly if the farm cannot diversify away from the commodity businesses.

Another item: I’m reading the ‘Rural Populist’, Brian – keep up the good work!

• Sousy

Well, it’s obvious that the most important issue facing American agriculture is…. how the USDA is aiding Iraqi reconstruction.

Career appointees at the Department of Agriculture were stunned last week to receive e-mailed instructions that include Bush administration “talking points”—saying things such as “President Bush has a clear strategy for victory in Iraq”—in every speech they give for the department.

“The President has requested that all members of his cabinet and sub-cabinet incorporate message points on the Global War on Terror into speeches, including specific examples of what each agency is doing to aid the reconstruction of Iraq,” the May 2 e-mail from USDA speechwriter Heather Vaughn began.

The article contains the real “sweet spot” of this policy:

Another attachment “contains specific examples of GWOT messages within agriculture speeches. Please use these message points as often as possible and send Harry Phillips , USDA’s director of speechwriting, a weekly email summarizing the event, date and location of each speech incorporating the attached language. Your responses will be included in a weekly account sent to the White House.“

• Sousy

I just need to address an odd notion that the “conservative media” operate on a higher moral plane:

When a caller to his radio show questioned the prospect of democracy spreading in the Middle East by noting that people are “vot[ing] for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas on the West Bank,” Hannity replied: “Well, you could vote for Hillary Clinton tomorrow, too, for crying out loud.”

I guess when you spend your days out of touch from the real world, you begin to believe anything. Can we have a serious debate about NASA staging the moon landing in a Hollywood studio?

• Sousy

The DNR asked for more authority to protect Iowa’s wateways from being threatened by the growing hog confinment industry…. instead the legislature says “Quit picking on polluters!”

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources had asked for the power to protect waterways from factory farm pollution, but instead received backlash from lawmakers who accuse the agency of overstepping its authority.

The Legislature on Wednesday passed a bill that strips DNR director Jeff Vonk of his ability to deny construction permits to livestock confinements that meet state requirements but may pose environmental risks.

Lawmakers said they want the DNR to approve permits by the rule of law, not at the agency’s or its director’s discretion.

“We have not had a high degree of confidence in the department,” said Rep. Jack Drake, R-Lewis, a proponent of the bill.

Vonk’s request for more authority through an administrative rules change came earlier this year as factory farm construction reached record highs for five years in a row. In 2005, the DNR approved 203 permits—the bulk of them for the $12 billion hog industry in Iowa, the largest in the nation.

As of April 28 this year, the DNR had handled 358 permits, DNR officials said. The agency has rejected a handful of those permits, mostly because they didn’t meet manure management plan requirements.

CAFO construction is at record highs, Iowa’s water quality is at record lows…. and we want to step on the gas?

• Sousy

The Des Moines Register has a good wrap-up of the items being passed in the final days of the legislative session. Of particular interest (more so than TouchPlay or CIETC) were a few items relating to education:

A compromise was reached between House Republicans and the Senate. In: increases in average teacher pay to bring the average salary up to 32nd nationally, and in a sea change, the introduction of statewide graduation requirements:

The most notable change was a massive policy amendment that creates graduation requirements for high schools, which was part of an omnibus budget agreement crafted last week by legislative leaders.

Rep. Roger Wendt, a Sioux City Democrat, praised the policy change. “It sets some goals we feel will increase the rigor in our schools,” he said.

Under the bill, students will be required to complete four years of English and three years of mathematics, science and social studies. The new requirements would go into effect for the 2010-11 graduating class.

In reality, this means that students will be required to take higher level math and science classes. In most school districts this means a year of advanced algebra, and a year of chemistry will be added. The trouble with adopting “year” standards is that it does not address curriculum components in the way that other states have defined. (Such as “Being able to derive information from a graph”, etc.) Time will tell how these new standards will be implemented, but all in all this is a good start – particularly as school districts will need to address curriculum and teaching needs with the likely coming rounds of consolidation.

The compromise also included a pilot project for merit pay, which will probably yield predictable results. (Teachers in “good districts” will see the higher bonuses, etc.)

• Sousy