Iowa farmers push back on agriculture checkoff cuts

IOWA CITY  — Iowa farmers are pushing back on a plan to make cuts to the popular agriculture checkoff program, which has generated billions of dollars to promote corn, dairy, beef, pork and other ag products in its six decades. Small family farmers say it’s not helping them where they need it most. The first voluntary ag checkoff program for U-S producers was formed in 1966 by the Cotton Board. Congress formalized it 30 years later.

University of Iowa ag economist Silvia Secchi says the US Department of Agriculture program tends to fund research at large institutions that don’t really help Iowa’s small family farmers.  “If you’re the kind of farmer who is doing a lot to promote soil health on their farm, or who is really concerned about animal welfare and things like that, the checkoff doesn’t really benefit you.”

Small farmers are pushing for policymakers to rework checkoffs so the funds are directed to smaller producers. Secchi also argues that in their current form, checkoff programs support research that promotes ag products that tend to be produced in large factory farms, which have been known to pollute the air and nearby groundwater, creating even more problems that are bad for small farmers and the environment. “Research that perpetuates the practices of conventional agriculture that basically is just increasing demand for these products without any thinking about their environmental impact, their human health impact in a real way, right?”

Between 2012 and 2022, Investigate Midwest reports that the pork industry alone gave more than $17 million to land-grant colleges across the country to research large scale ag operations, half of which went to Iowa State University alone.