Christinia Crippes

Jul. 29, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- MOUNT PLEASANT -- Francis Thicke has an ambitious program for reshaping the farming scene in Iowa and across the country.

The Democratic candidate for Iowa secretary of agriculture candidate will publish a road map with his vision and hopes to lead the state in that direction. It involves taking on industrial agriculture, promoting locally grown foods and focusing on alternative and renewable energies.

"There's no real one silver bullet; (environmentalist) Bill McKibben says we need to have a silver buckshot," Thicke said after a meeting Wednesday with Henry County residents. "I think we need to look for a lot of opportunities."

But first he must get elected. Thicke is taking on Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey, who is vying for a second four-year term.

Thicke's book, "A New Vision for Food and Agriculture," is subtitled with the forewarning phrase "Agriculture After the Oil Crash."

"Energy is the big game-changer in agriculture, I think," Thicke said. "If you look at agriculture anywhere in Iowa, immediately it's apparent that it's dependent on cheap oil, cheap energy ... without cheap oil, we couldn't farm the way we do, and we are at the end of the cheap oil era.

"We're just not quite ready to recognize that yet. We're sort of in denial about that."

Thicke, a Fairfield dairy farmer who has a doctorate in agronomy, said his views look forward rather than to what is now and what is soon to be past. Specifically, he pointed to Northey's public speeches where he talks about Iowa's role in supplying eggs to McDonald's.

But Thicke said the fast-food giant is moving away from caged eggs in Europe.

"The model that he's talking about is really a model of the past," Thicke told about 20 people at Mount Pleasant's Tazza Bella coffee shop. "The industrial revolution started, what, 250 years ago? That's a long time ago, but it took a long time for agriculture to really become industrialized."

He said two things were responsible for industrial farming: The cheap price of oil and the end of World War II.

After the war, corporations turned their attention to mass producing not weapons but agricultural products, Thicke said.

But as oil prices rose as supplies became limited, he said farmers can begin to use renewable energies to their advantage. To Thicke that not only means getting more farmers to put in wind and solar on their property but also putting their efforts into farming perennial crops for ethanol.

"If you could imagine that they could do it at a farm scale and we could produce this kind of fuel, and we could even refine it ... we could have fuel for the farmers at home to power the farm," Thicke said. "The key thing here is that we need to keep the money in the pocket of farmers, not in the pockets of corporations that always tend to steal the profits from the farmers you might say."

The British newspaper the Guardian quoted a report in April from the U.S. military that predicted within two years surplus oil production could disappear and oil shortages may not be much further away, perhaps as soon as 2015. Other reports put it a decade out.

For Thicke, the way forward is a combination of looking for renewable and sustainable forms of fuel, while returning to farm practices that are less dependent on oil.

"Right now we use about one-third of our corn crop for ethanol, so if we could convert that toward perennial crop usage, then we could have a lot more diversity in the landscape and more resilience in the landscape," he said.

Thicke argued that the monoculture practices many farmers use now are bad for the soil and the rivers that eventually receive the runoff. He also said single-crop farmers use more pesticides and fertilizers.

He advocated Iowans get more of their food locally. Thicke said 90 percent of Iowa's food is imported from other states, despite its reputation as an ag state.

"It doesn't take much land to grow food for people; studies show that for every job that's lost for corn and soybeans, we'll gain five jobs for local food production," Thicke said. "Less than a county would grow all the food for all the people in Iowa."

Plus, he said there's already a growing demand from citizens to move to local foods. While he said some of the policies will need to change at the federal level, the states and people have their own roles to play.

"Part of it is consumer demand; if we start to demand better foods, we'll get them," Thicke said. "But I've worked at the (U.S. Department of Agriculture) in Washington, so I know a lot about how policies are made in Washington, and so as Secretary of Agriculture, I think I could help influence some of that policy discussion."

Newstex ID: KRTB-1064-47436154