Democratic U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Scholten said the next federal Farm Bill must encourage more competition, more conservation practices and stronger regional food systems.
Scholten, a state representative from Sioux City, laid out his campaign’s farm policy during a Monday, Aug. 4 visit to the Griffieon Family Farm in Ankeny.
“Agriculture is the heartbeat of Iowa,” he said. “It’s over a $16 billion industry. At the federal level, we haven’t had a Farm Bill, a real Farm Bill since 2018, and they just continue to kick the can down the road. And the status quo isn’t working for most Iowa farmers.”
Scholten said the agriculture industry has become highly consolidated, giving a few large companies more power to set prices and dominate the market.
“When you go to a grocery store you think you have all these options, but really it’s owned by just a couple (companies),” he said. “And when you don’t have the competition, that squeezes farmers, it hurts consumers and it hurts workers.”
State Rep. J.D. Scholten, D-Sioux City, who is running for U.S. Senate, talks with the media about farm policies on Aug. 4, 2025, at Griffieon Family Farm in Ankeny, Iowa.
LaVon Griffieon said when she started farming 40 years ago, her family farm used to have three different buyers competing to buy meat from her, so she could get a good price. When that dwindled to one buyer, they weren’t able to negotiate and the buyer could make more demands of them.
Now, she said, she has started direct marketing their beef, pork, chicken, turkey and lamb, which has helped them get better prices. But consolidation has harmed rural Iowa more broadly, she said.
“There’s 943 towns in Iowa and they used to all have a grain elevator, a granary, someplace you could buy feed, a seed supply store,” Griffieon said. “And that’s all disappeared. And we’ve pulled Main Street right out of most small little towns. And so it’s affecting the social fabric of Iowa.”
Farmer LaVon Griffieon talks with the media about farm policies on Aug. 4, 2025, at Griffieon Family Farm in Ankeny, Iowa. State Rep. J.D. Scholten, D-Sioux City, who is running for U.S. Senate, held the event to talk about his farm policies.
Griffieon said she and her family have used U.S. Department of Agriculture grants to pay for conservation programs like stream bank restorations, but President Donald Trump has cut funding for those types of programs.
“There’s a lot of ‘he cut those funds’ around here,” she said.
Scholten said putting more money into conservation programs would be “a huge first step” toward solving Iowa’s water quality problems.
And he said Iowans should be able to eat more food produced locally.
“To me, food security is national security,” Scholten said. “And so anything we can do to create more local food systems and things like that, that’s money that stays in Iowa communities. That’s food that stays. It makes us healthier. It would help with health costs. And so I think it’s a win, win, win.”
Tony Thompson helps operate Prudent Produce, a business that delivers locally grown foods to nearby customers, and he’s running for the Iowa Senate as a Democrat. He said “we need to be talking more about” the issues Scholten is raising.
“We talk about the value of feeding the world, but we don’t really feed ourselves,” Thompson said at Monday’s event. “We talk about the value of farm families and rural communities, but we’re doing everything from a policy standpoint that essentially undermines that.”
Scholten’s 11-point agriculture plan also includes reforming commodity payments, banning foreign ownership of U.S. farmland, mandating country of origin labeling for meat, reining in eminent domain and overhauling immigrant work visas for the agriculture industry.
Scholten faces several other Democrats seeking the party’s U.S. Senate nomination in 2026, including state Sen. Zach Wahls, former Knoxville Chamber of Commerce Director Nathan Sage and Des Moines School Board Chair Jackie Norris. State Rep. Josh Turek is planning to launch a campaign in August.
Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst is up for reelection next year, although she has not formally announced if she will seek a third term.
Two Republicans have said they intend to challenge Ernst for the GOP nomination: former state Sen. Jim Carlin and Joshua Smith.
Stephen Gruber-Miller covers the Iowa Statehouse and politics for the Register. He can be reached by email at sgrubermil@registermedia.com or by phone at 515-284-8169. Follow him on X at @sgrubermiller.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Democratic US Senate candidate JD Scholten lays out agriculture policy
