Breaking the Grip of Corporate Agriculture on Rural Iowa
THURSDAY, October 19, 2017 at 7:15 pm
Fairfield Arts & Convention Center, Fairfield, IA
Factory farming has a stranglehold on rural Iowa, but can that grip be broken? Celebrated syndicated columnist Alan Guebert will dive into the realities and the possibilities during this year’s JFAN Annual Meeting.
Penned an “agricultural insider” by Civil Eats, Guebert will take a hard look at the role of factory farming in the corporate food system and its widespread influence throughout society. Not escaping his attention is the failure of governance to address these issues because Big Ag often controls the agenda on the state and national level.
Guebert, a multi-award-winning agricultural columnist of the Farm and Food File says current farming policies fit the definition of insanity. “It hasn’t worked in the past, so let’s do more of it and see what happens,” he wrote about current farm policies. Guebert, though, sees change as inevitable and contends that there is a role for everyone to reshape factory farm policies. He will outline how Iowans can play an important part.
Alan Guebert is an award-winning agricultural journalist with his finger on the pulse of agribusiness. With early roots on a 720-acre, 100 cow dairy farm, he authors the popular syndicated agricultural column, The Farm and Food File that he began in 1993. It appears weekly in over 70 US and Canadian newspapers. He’s also a contributor to the online publication The Daily Yonder, and worked previously as a writer and senior editor at Professional Farmers of America and Successful Farming magazines. His numerous awards include the prestigious Writer of the Year and Master Writer from the American Agricultural Editors’ Association. His memoir, In the Land of Milk and Uncle Honey, authored with his daughter Mary Grace Foxwell, lays out his vision of the future of farming over the next 50 years.
Johnson County Supervisor Mike Carberry will also underscore the need for taking action. He’ll share why Johnson County recently passed a resolution in support of a factory farm moratorium, elusive here in Jefferson County, and other ways his county is addressing the CAFO issue. A strong advocate of regenerative agriculture, Carberry will speak on ways Iowans can and must wrestle back control from the corporate agriculture agenda to force needed legislative changes that protect people and the environment.
Dr. John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus, University of Missouri at Columbia, will give a brief overview of the myriad ways that industrial livestock corporations influence the well-being of rural communities – ranging from influencing CAFO laws to structuring a food system that makes it difficult for farmers to raise hogs independently – and what can be done to structure change.
Breaking the Grip of Corporate Agriculture on Rural Iowa will begin at 7:15. Admission is free. A donation of $5 is welcome to support JFAN’s mission.
JFAN is a 501(c)(3) educational foundation that has been working to protect Jefferson County’s quality of life since 2005. For more information, visit www.jfaniowa.org.
We Thank Our Community Partners for Cosponsoring This Event:
Southeast Iowa Sierra Club, Solar Powered KRUU-100.1 FM, Southeast Iowa Food Hub, Radish Magazine, and Little Village Magazine