Resilience celebrated in Ag Secretary Naig’s visit

Working in any sort of agriculture can require exposure and submission to great risk. It is the resiliency that is required when times get hard that Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig wanted to make note of in a visit Friday, March 28 to Adair County.

Naig’s visit here capped Iowa Agriculture Week. As Friday’s theme was resiliency, Naig spent his day visiting western Iowa farmers and others who are still picking up the pieces from disaster.

“I can’t think of a place where we have to be resilient in agriculture than to visit a place like this,” Naig said. “I’m amazed at the pace of recovery, but as everybody knows if you live in this area, it’s a long road to recovery. From the road it might look like something’s finished but there’s a lot left to do.”

The secretary began his day in Shelby County touring farms impacted by tornadoes near Minden, Shelby and Harlan. He then traveled to Pottawatamie County where he toured a levee repair project, seeing firsthand the efforts made to protect infrastructure and farmland from future flooding. He visited a farm in Council Bluffs that is a Choose Iowa grant recipient and is connecting consumers with locally raised meats and produce. He ended the day in Adair County.

While in Adair County, Naig was joined by Representative Ray “Bubba” Sorensen and local ag leaders Jim Frederick and Ralph Lents. They visited the Queck farm, featured last fall in the Adair County Free Press, and the farm of Marlin Marckmann. Both farmsteads were destroyed by the May 21, 2024 tornado and are in the process of being rebuilt.

“Those are two homes you can probably see from each other. They both took direct shots. There is still work to be done in both places, but I’m impressed by the resiliency of those families, and this community,” Naig said. “There’s a lot of work to do but a lot of work has been done.”

The group also toured Adair County Health System to experience the revival of that facility. Naig said he is impressed with how quickly the hospital was able to reopen after it endured so much damage in the tornado.

Going into the growing season, Naig said that talking about resiliency serves as a reminder that there are many things in their profession that farmers can’t control. While weather is the most impacting of these risks, markets also weigh heavy on farmers’ minds. Their job is to manage through the risk.

Commodity prices are compressed throughout agriculture right now. That can lead to a lower expected farm income. Finding any type of certainty is crucial for agriculture.

“We have to work to bring certainty to the ag community wherever we can and we need a five-year Farm Bill passed. We always need to be looking to find ways to expand markets,” Naig said. “We are an incredibly productive agriculture which means we have to have places to market our products, whether that we domestically in the U.S. or international trade. We always have to be pursuing those opportunities.”

Sorensen said when officials such as Naig visit and he’s able to be a part of showcasing the hard work that Adair County residents have done, he takes that opportunity.

“It’s important when the statewides come and want to see the hard work that has been done in a small town that has seen natural disasters like this,” Sorensen said. “I’m glad when the Governor and the Secretary can come and see what we’re doing and how the rebuild is going. That’s why we wanted to start at the hospital, then go see the damage and the farms that were impacted. It’s one of those somber reminders that we’ve been through so much. It’s amazing to see how much we’ve recovered.”