Thank you for posting this. I grew up there and have been sickened to see its decline from a pragmatic reasonable population to Reich Wing while
Polluting themselves into chaos.

Well, if Gates is buying up Iowa farmland, he better fucking rethink growing corn. This author gets into the effects of climate change and the yields are going down and will continue to. The seasons are changing and what was so compatible with corn will no longer be realistic. But the problem is big Ag relies on huge economies of scale. Yet the environment and those farm animals cannot handle it much longer.

This is a concept in system thinking and sustainability called overshoot. Human ingenuity can do a lot of things, but if it doesn’t look to the natural world and natural systems and understand those that it is set to collapse an entire system.

I argued with so many people for so long about Iowa policy. A big part of it was because as a vegetarian, I am 110% against the factory farm system. Not only is it inhumane objectively, cruel, it was damaging local communities because of the manure and disease. You have to give those animals antibiotics well that goes into the flesh of what meat eaters consume. And that long-term consequence is disease get stronger and the antibiotics that humans use get less effective. The other reason is the manure management. It has wrecked communities economically because of the smell and water pollution issues. Also, the abuse of the farm worker. Or hiring abusive farm workers. It is absolutely horrid at every level other than the fact that it keeps meat plentiful and cheap. But at what cost?

And now not only have Iowa and other Midwest farms been polluting the Mississippi river, which they flow (output) has led to a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico for decades. It’s now staying closer to home and contaminating rivers, ground water and aquifers.

In the podcast, the author goes into something I hadn’t thought of and that is why China is getting in with Russia for the Ukraine war. China cannot grow the crops to defeat. Its people and Ukraine is a grain basket. So these issues go beyond what you normally think and lead to incredibly high-stake consequences geopolitically.

Meat packing used to be a union job that made a good living. Now the “kill floor” pays $40k and is non-union and is all immigrants.
(Funny, ICE hasn’t raided all of those plants. And all of your brethren in Iowa that’s so upset about immigration wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if I they actually went after the true “illegals” working at these places. these workers also are the remaining life blood of many rural communities. So it’s a hypocritical policy and support.)

This is no longer the state I was born into. Granted, there have always been problems here, but now it's in overdrive. Honestly, I don't see how this doesn't get worse before it (hopefully) gets better.