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Thursday, June 2
Dealing With The Devil
by
Chad Thompson
on Thu 02 Jun 2005 01:00 PM CDT
 Dealing With The Devil
For
those of us in the Central Iowa area, there has been a rather
interesting battle going on between the West Des Moines City Council,
the citizens of West Des Moines - and Wal-Mart.
The
basics: West Des Moines has been pursuing a
retail-growth-at-all-costs plan of economic development. The area
around the new "upscale" Jordan Creek Mall is booming with big-box
retailers. This isn't quite what the original planners had in
mind when proposing opening the area to rapid development. Things
got signficantly worse when Wal-Mart bid on a spot in the "Galleria",
and wanted to open an "Open 24 Hours" SuperCenter.
Residents
in the area immediately complained about having such a large business
open 24 hours a day - particularly the owners of new residential
property nearby.
Jon Gaskell of Cityview quotes West Des Moines City Council member Brad Olson:
Councilmember
Brad Olson says the city did nothing wrong by trying to limit
Wal-Mart's hours of operation because of where it sits geographically,
and he is launching an investigation into why his cohorts - namely
Sieman - collectively changed their minds in regard to the number of
hours the retailer can stay open. The city voted for Wal-Mart to be
open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., but is now likely going to OK a switch to
6 a.m. to midnight. Wal-Mart would like to be open 24-7.
"It's
disgusting to see representatives of the people cave in like this,"
Olson says, recalling the history of retail in the Jordan Creek area.
"Jordan Creek is not a town center, it's a mall. Pet-Co, Costco and
Best Buy is not a village and Big-O Tires, McDonald's and Wal-Mart is
not a galleria." Essentially, Olson says, residents were promised class
but got nothing but ass - big boxes and parking lots. And the council
is paving the way for much more of it.
The Des Moines Register reported last week
that Wal-Mart has filed a lawsuit against West Des Moines to void a
weakened ordinance finally passed by the city council limiting the
proposed hours of operation.
Monday,
the council voted 3-2 to restrict big stores like the proposed
Wal-Mart, but hours could be extended during the holiday shopping
season.
The
ordinance expanded by four hours the limit originally attached to the
site plan for the Wal-Mart store planned as an anchor of the Galleria
at Jordan Creek.
Some
residents objected to the ordinance. Luke Vogel, who lives in nearby
Pheasant Ridge, said of the vote and company, "They win, residents
lose."
In
some ways, this is an interesting take on the same problem that rural
Iowa and smaller communties have been facing for years: what
right does a community have to set limits on corporate operations?
Rural Iowans have struggled with corporate hog farms - the Iowa Supreme Court voided a Worth County ordinance barring large animal farms, which also voided other county efforts to police factory farms within their borders.
Smaller communities have also struggled with Wal-Mart.
It seems
that we'll have to come to a conclusion one way or the other what
"local control" means in the State of Iowa rather than letting the
issue boil over on the back burner.
Why Iowa Should Worry About the Agriculture of the Middle
by
Linda Thieman
on Thu 02 Jun 2005 06:52 AM CDT
 Why Iowa Should Worry About the Agriculture of the Middle
The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University
During
the past several decades, the American food system has increasingly
followed two new structural paths. On one hand, small-scale farm and
food enterprises in many regions have thrived by adapting to successful
direct markets which enabled them to sell their production directly to
consumers. This is an encouraging trend with real benefits to their
communities. On the other hand, giant consolidated food and fiber firms
have established supply chains that move bulk commodities around the
globe largely to serve their own business interests.
This new
pattern of food systems has had a disastrous effect on independent
family farmers - it has led to a disappearing "agriculture of the
middle." These farms and enterprises of the middle have traditionally
constituted the heart of American agriculture. They operate in the
space between the vertically integrated commodity markets and the
direct markets. While the bulk of these farms have gross annual sales
between $100,000 and $250,000, it would be a mistake to characterize
them simply as "midsized" or "small" farms. Many of these endangered
"agriculture of the middle" farms are what the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's Economic Research Service calls "farming-occupation
farms" and "large family farms."
What we
are calling the "agriculture of the middle" is, in other words, a
market-structure phenomenon. It is not, strictly speaking, a scale
phenomenon. Yet, while it is not scale determined, it is scale related....
The Disappearing Middle
Evidence of the disappearing middle is already accumulating. Iowa serves as a compelling example.
The decade from 1987 to 1997 saw an 18 percent sales increase in farms
that are 1 to 100 acres in size and a 71 percent sales increase in
farms that are more than 1000 acres in size. Farms in the 260 to 500
acre range averaged a 29 percent decrease in sales. The percentage of
operators and acres in all farms between 100 and 999 acres in size
declined 23 and 25 percent, respectively.
In the
time since the USDA‘s 1997 data was published, we have seen the
"middle" disappear at an even more alarming rate. In Iowa during the
five-year period from 1997 to 2002, there was a 17 percent drop in
farms with sales ranging from $5,000 and $500,000 while the number of
farms with gross sales of more than $500,000 increased by 17 percent.
Farms with less than $2,500 of gross sales increased by 39 percent....
Some of What We Will Lose
So, exactly what is it that we stand to lose if the agriculture of the middle disappears?
• The opportunity to choose foods with special desirable attributes.
• Open spaces that are easily accessible
• Wildlife habitat
• Clean air
• Soils that hold rainwater for aquifers
• Soils in crop and pasture land that help reduce flooding
• Taxes will increase because farmland requires fewer services than residential areas
•
Diversified farmland that includes perennials serves as a carbon "sink“
to reduce greenhouse gases that are implicated in global climate change
• Face of America altered from featuring smaller farms on a diverse landscape to endless fields of mono-crops
(Click here to read the complete article in PDF format.)
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