09/23/25 Afternoon CommStock Report – For Better or Worse

Part 1: Preamble to Commentary on Bloomberg Businessweek article Critical of Iowa Water Quality and Health Conditions: Iowa Agriculture and our physical environment are married generationally to each other. The relationship that they have with one another is intertwined in every way. Folks who live in rural Iowa are the children of this relationship with their lives depending upon it. They are the parents of the next generation that will do the same. It is a huge family and not everyone has the same experience but we all make a living off what this relationship produces. We owe our health and wealth to this marriage and more than just the immediate family for which agriculture is a vocation, we depend on its sustainability. This marriage is the primary wealth generation of this state yet also feeds a nation and contributes to human development the world over. The marriage can be traced back some 10,000 years when human species settled down to farm for their subsistence, rather than hunt and gather. That was one of a few very pivotal turning points in developmental human history. Farmers today are the lineage of what makes our society possible, through its productivity, allowing it…