Why
I have always been immensely proud of where I grew up in Iowa. Northern Tama County will always be home. Both sets of grandparents lived less than ten miles from each other. I went to school in Traer, church in Dysart, special occasions in Clutier, and the Corn Carnival in Gladbrook (they had one of the better fireworks shows). To where I grew up, I will not and cannot go back and be depressed about why things are different today than they were when I was a kid. It is not anyone’s fault besides those letting large companies obtain monopoly power. This destroys rural and urban Iowans due to the lack of enforcement of antitrust laws and antimonopoly policies.
These laws and policies matter because this problem is personal. This monopoly power destroys community bonds and family. With my farming career done, I was the last Dengler to actively farm in Tama County. Both grandpas were Tama County farmers. My Grandpa Dengler, Vernon, grew up on what is now a century farm. My Grandma Dengler (her maiden name was Wilken. Yes, I am very German, let alone in a very Czech area. Tama County has the best kolaches in the world.), Mildred, grew up near Gladbrook. While the century farm is still in the family, we have nothing to show about it except the pain of stopping the farm. No one lives at the century farm, the machinery is continually being sold off, and all for a fewer and fewer monopolistic agribusiness companies to extract more wealth.
Society should not have to only focus on the dollar. It is not doing society any good to push multi-generational farm families like mine to leave the land and move away from the heritage due to a lack of enforcement of antitrust laws and antimonopoly policies. What happens is consolidated food systems, hollowed out small towns, and fractured rural areas. Fortunately, there are still Koprivas, Wilsons (The longest serving United States Cabinet, former Secretary of Agriculture, James “Tama Jim” Wilson hails from Traer), and Wiebens still farming and hopefully will be for a long time. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer of these farm families who are still holding on by a thread before slowly fading away with history.
While rural flight is a tale as old as time, we cannot accept the narrative that this is the way it will always be and has been. I am not expecting rural Iowa to have a sudden growth in population, but we owe it to our ancestors who toiled on the land to protect their legacy. As advancements continue to happen in agriculture, they cannot only be taken advantage of by large multinational corporations. These advancements and potential wealth gained by them need to be obtained through a fair playing field by enforcing antitrust laws and antimonopoly policies. Everyone should have a chance at making a difference and not only the companies who have a leg up to start with. The scales are tilted towards large multinational companies, and it is time to tilt them back towards the public.
The Declaration of Independence declares, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The Oxford definition of liberty is “the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.” This also means economic liberty. People deserve to be free from anticompetitive tactics used by large companies which extract more wealth from rural and urban Iowa. These large companies should not oppress or make Iowans’ lives worse due to their power. By enforcing these antitrust laws and antimonopoly policies, this is a way to fight back.
While I will always write through an agricultural and rural lens because that is my story, my goal is to write about different economic industries and tell stories about the impact of monopoly power*. Iowa was the first state to put in an antitrust statute, so we have the power to do it again. Fighting against monopoly power is an American tradition. The Boston Tea Party was not only about no taxation without representation but also American merchants being unhappy about the British Tea Act of 1773. This granted the East India Company a monopoly on the tea trade, and they feared this could extend to other goods.
As Iowans and Americans, we owe to our ancestors to fight against monopoly power. They fought for the New Deal era policies which created competitive markets from the 1930s to the mid-1970s. Preferably, let us be proactive this time before we get to another Depression. The story of monopoly power is not only a story about rural America. It is the story of America.
*If you have a story about monopolies in the industry you work in, I would love to write about it.