Sean Dengler. PHOTO BY SOREN M. PETERSON

My wife and I attended a wedding in the Okoboji area this past weekend. From our house, there were no direct routes. It meant a lot of backroads and two-lane highways. This is the perfect type of travel to see the past. The harvested fields gave off a dreary look as machinery was parked on the yards next to some recently tilled corn and soybeans land. This is not grounded in statistical analysis, but Tama County feels like there are more conservation practices deployed than in northwest Iowa.

During the drive through the small towns and open fields, the landscape felt hollow. Remnants of proud farm families were plowed under with the occasional sideways-looking corn crib still standing. One of my favorite but sad sights was heavy concrete steps sitting by themselves as the house had been gone for a while. People traversed these steps for years, and now they are only a relic of the past.

I could be wrong on this next part, but I wonder what this land would have looked like when more animals lived in these fields or around the barns. Maybe there never were too many animals on the landscape, but there are definitely not many now. There were occasionally a few cattle herds out on clean-up duty. Imagining in modern times these animals out doing their work while more families live on the land. These animals provide a portfolio for a farmer to manage risk instead of only an ever-decreasing number of asset categories farmers use at this point. Unfortunately, large corporations have flipped the policy in their favor as opposed to small, independent farmers.

The adage of America Needs Farmers might not be true. America only needs a few farmers is what our policies say. This ignores the effects of the consolidation of farmers, small businesses, and schools in rural Iowa. The policies push for this hollowness in the country and town. The old buildings standing for more than 100 years are starting to break down with no wealth to help restore them. With fewer animals on the land and farmers planting as close to stream banks as possible to get as much yield as possible, these are only symptoms. These warning signs point to what happens when highly consolidated farm input producers can pinch farmers on one side of the market while the buyers of the farmers’ products who are also highly consolidated can pinch farmers on the other side. This leaves little wiggle room for farmers and rural America.

The government needs to look out for people and not allow these large corporations to extract as much wealth as possible. Maybe Trump will help. I am doubtful, but this is what the United States wants at this point. Something needs to be done because rural America is on an unequal playing field. This inequality also extends to urban America where both places can be health care and food deserts. It is time for the government to respect every American as an American and make this country feel less hollow.

Sean Dengler is a writer, comedian, farmer, and host of the Pandaring Talk podcast who grew up on a farm between Traer and Dysart. You can reach him at sean.h.dengler@gmail.com.