In the shade of the Cattlemen’s Association kiosk at the Kossuth County Fair, local seed dealers Rich Frideres and Kent Seely sat at a picnic table, sipped lemonade and offered up a sour commentary on Iowa’s farm economy.
“Some of these young fellas with some equity left in their farms, they’re saying `To hell with it’ and are getting out of farming while they can still get out and get some other job during the day,” Seely said.
“They’re saying, `Let’s go get a job that I can be home by 5 o’clock and spend time with the family,’ ” Frideres added. “You start asking yourself, `Am I going to make it until I’m 65 on the farm?’ “
This is the Iowa that lies before the nation’s presidential candidates, a state in steady transition. Farming is giving way to franchising. Many residents struggle to maintain some connection to rural life, having given up the independence of working the land for themselves by taking jobs working for others.
Despite the personal economic hardships created by an evolutionary economy, Iowans still take their role in helping decide the nation’s presidential nominees. A week ago, more than 23,000 of them traveled to Iowa State University in Ames to cast ballots for a symbolic preference for the Republican nomination to set the stage for Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses early next year.
The national image of Iowa continues to be the heartland that artist Grant Wood depicted, an unending vista of corn, soybeans and livestock. But a closer inspection reveals that parts of the state have been undergoing a metamorphosis from a farm culture to one attuned to suburbia.
The economic transformation is evident in Algona, a northern Iowa community of almost 6,000 people located 60 miles west of Mason City.
As the state’s farm economy suffers a continued downturn from low grain and hog prices and increased production costs, Algona finds itself on the fringes of what might be called rural suburbia, minus a big city to latch onto. While it remains dependent upon agriculture, it also is moving to a more diversified franchise-filled service and retail economy.
Heading into town, the John Deere farm-implement dealer competes for attention across the street from the Snap-on Tools Inc. storage-unit manufacturing plant and the city’s industrial park. The agricultural cooperative extension service office is located next to a real estate firm specializing in farmland sales.
City officials are spending more than $3 million on a new aquatic center for recreation. At the Four Corners, as the locals call it, where U.S. Highways 18 and 169 intersect, the McDonald’s, Hardee’s and Subway are filled with area residents at the lunch hour.
“We’re seeing an urbanization of rural culture,” said Paul Lasley, a professor specializing in rural sociology at Iowa State. “The mom and pop independent-owned restaurant is giving way to franchises, and most people have become employees of someone else.”
Rather than deal with the ups and downs of a farm economy with variables as diverse as hail damage to embargoes by the European Union, workers are looking to the security of a steady job. There’s no risk of personal capital. Income is stable. The jobs provide health insurance benefits and maybe a pension.
“There are some people who live in a small town, but are driving an hour to go to work in a bigger city,” Lasley said. “An hour may not sound like much when you’re commuting in Chicago and its traffic, but you can cover a lot of miles in an hour in Iowa.”
Just how the shift from an agrarian to suburban lifestyle will affect voting patterns is uncertain. The candidates, however, know that in addition to high-profile promises to help save the family farmer, those who have already left the farm are also concerned about crime and uncontrolled development.
Some political analysts expect that in a state of 2.8 million people, where unemployment dipped to 2.6 percent in June, the best predictor of voter reaction is Wall Street rather than the commodities market. Those content with their economic situation will not be looking for radical changes as might those dependent upon the farm economy.
In the past, Iowa’s rural independence helped give it the label of being a Republican state.
But Iowa voters went for President Clinton and Michael Dukakis in the last three general elections. And after a 30-year streak of GOP governors, last year they elected Democrat Tom Vilsack as governor with 53 percent of the vote, including majorities in five of the state’s eight largest counties.
The effect of the presidential caucuses in setting the nation’s political agenda also has been hard to pin down.
In 1972, Democrat George McGovern used the caucuses as a springboard for the presidential nomination, as did Jimmy Carter in 1976. Four years later, George Bush upset Ronald Reagan, but it was Reagan who was the eventual GOP nominee and winner over Carter.
In 1988, Republicans selected then-Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and Democrats chose Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, neither of whom became the parties’ nominees. In 1992, favorite son Sen. Tom Harkin won a virtually uncontested caucus on the Democratic side, while Clinton won the nomination. And in 1996, Dole eked out a victory.
But much like the way the caucus system weeds out the field of candidates, the Iowa farm community also has gone through a winnowing process.
Farmers who survived the high-interest rates and low farmland values of the 1980s are now reeling from the loss of government subsidies and price supports. At the same time, commodity production costs per acre of farmland continue to skyrocket.
“You’ve got people in Chicago going to the grocery store and paying more for a ham than the farmer out here got paid for the entire hog,” said Denny Schroeder of McGregor, a town in the roll-
ing glacier-formed hills of northeast Iowa. “I don’t think we’ve got a candidate running who cares. I’m not even looking forward to voting.”
Schroeder is an example of the changes that have come to Iowa. Having given up on full-time farming during the mid-1980s, Schroeder sells real estate, including farms.
“You’re seeing a lot more people from Chicago and Minneapolis buying our ground up in this area for hunting and recreation,” he said.
“The county up here is getting bought up something terrible. They buy ground that we can’t afford to buy. They’ll give a farmer $1,000 or $1,500 an acre just to say they’ve got this hunting ground. And you can’t blame these farmers for selling. They’re finding a way out.”
More and more are getting out. From 1982 to 1997, the number of farming operations in Iowa declined by 25,000. During that same 15-year span, the number of people who said their principal occupation was farming dropped from 86,000 to slightly more than 56,000. Meanwhile the average size of an Iowa farm increased by 60 acres, a symbol of the growing influence of corporate and cooperative farming arrangements.
“They’re going to work in town, becoming suburbanites,” said Dave Faugmann, a farm implement dealer from New Vienna, in eastern Iowa. “It ain’t his choice. He’s forced to work in town. The guy farming used to be a man and a wife running a piece of land. Now the wife or the man has to work in town and the other spouse is literally killing themselves trying to get the work in the field done if he still has a field.”
Overall, agriculture, including farming, manufacturing of agricultural-related equipment and food processing, represents one-fifth of the state’s economy. But farming alone now represents less than 5 percent of Iowa’s economy.
“Farming still has a soft spot in the hearts of politicians, but it’s an unusual spot given the numbers of farmers that are left,” said Kenneth Stone, an extension economist and professor of economics at Iowa State.
And that has placed a greater emphasis on politicians to cater to such places as Ankeny, a city 6 miles north of Des Moines, which has seen its population increase to 25,000 this year from more than 15,000 in 1980. With a variety of manufacturing, light industrial and material distribution, 80 percent of Ankeny’s population is 44 or younger–a sharp contrast to the graying population in many of the state’s rural communities.
There is West Des Moines, an upscale community of homes, shopping, office parks and golf courses, including the home of this year’s U.S. Senior Open, where the value of construction permits last year exceeded $163 million and the population has more than doubled to 44,510 since the 1980 census.
To the east is Cedar Rapids, where officials trumpet the label of “least stressful metropolitan area in the country,” awarded by Zero Population Growth Inc. In June the city of more than 113,000 people had an unemployment rate of 2 percent.
Yet the low unemployment rate has also resulted in problems. Businesses large and small complain about a lack of skilled workers. Job seekers contend that wages have not increased with demand.
“I’ve been looking for six months for something that pays more than $7.50 an hour,” said Paula Hatfield of Cedar Rapids, a former factory worker who now is cleaning homes until a better job comes along.
Meatpackers advertise on the radio that jobs are to be had and some locals complain that the low-wage jobs have created a tide of immigrants from Mexico and Southeast Asia.
“In 1976, meat processing was spread out among several companies and at that time paid $10 an hour. Now there are only a few processors and they’re paying $7.50 an hour, which represents less than a third of what was paid 25 years ago in real dollars,” said economist Stone.
In Algona, manufacturing and retail jobs increased by 10 percent from 1990 to 1996 and service jobs were up by nearly 25 percent. There are 80 more retail outlets in the city than in 1971, although retail sales, as measured in constant dollars, are down over the same period.
“We’re going through a revolution out here, the emigration away from the country farm life for a lot of people. This is a major shift,” said Jon Pierce, a seed dealer from Clare.
But competing seed dealer Rich Frideres said he believed the transitional economy of rural suburbia remains too dependent upon farming.
“It’s going to trickle down to the Main Street,” Frideres said of the current farm crisis. “I’d say a year from today it’s going to be awfully ugly out here. Awfully ugly.”
Hog farmer Curt Bockenstedt of Edgewood, however, saw one reason for optimism.
“It’s a presidential election year next year,” he said. “You know something will help us.”
