Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
[Commentary] Thanksgiving is one of the truly great holidays, because it's really all about food. You just get together with your family and friends, and you eat.
You don't even have to buy people gifts or anything. You just give thanks to God for providing everybody with plenty of food, and let the feasting begin.
There are others who probably deserve a thanking as well, and that's the farmers who did all the work to produce those foods. Farmers and farm laborers all across America who worked really, really hard to get that food to our tables. And good Iowa farmers right here close to home probably played a part in many of the dishes being served this Thanksgiving.
Sure, that Butterball that you got at Hy-Vee probably wasn't raised in Iowa, but it's very likely that the grain that fattened him up was grown here. (There are millions of turkeys grown in Iowa, but they typically end up as sliced lunch meat, not as whole roasters.)
It's no secret that Iowa farmers are among the most productive in the world. Iowa is well known as the nation's leader in the production of corn and soybeans, but most people probably don't know that the majority of those grains are fed to livestock.
We're also number one in production of eggs, and I must say I'm looking forward to having a few deviled eggs today. Iowa also does quite well at growing lots and lots of other agricultural products, like dairy and pork and beef.
Hard-working farmers from all over the nation played their role as well. Cranberries and pumpkins and sweet potatoes … these things don't just magically appear in a grocery aisle. Let's not forget that a lot of people worked really hard with their fingers in the dirt to produce these wonderful foods. Whether it's an Iowa family farmer struggling to keep up with modern agriculture or an underpaid farm laborer picking vegetables in California, these people deserve our thanks.
The folks at Farm Bureau say it only costs about $40 to buy the food to prepare a big Thanksgiving meal for 10 people. They've been doing a survey of the costs for the last 22 years, checking on the average prices for a meal consisting of turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, pumpkin pie with whipped cream and all the rest. The cost has only risen about $14 since 1986, which demonstrates the remarkable stability of food prices in our country.
Count me among the people in America who think it's a good thing to have such a plentiful and affordable food supply. It really is unprecedented in history for a nation to be able to produce such bounty.
Now that's something for which to be thankful.
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