T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig, sitting, back center, visited The Flying Elbow in Marshalltown for the final stop of his 99-county tour on Thursday. While enjoying a Jerry the King from the award-winning local restaurant, Naig talked livestock with a group of local cattle producers and Jason Lekin, the owner of the Tama Livestock Auction.

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig has been traversing the state on a 99-county tour hearing from farmers and others involved in the industry throughout the year, and he wrapped up the tour Thursday with a lunch at the award-winning Flying Elbow restaurant in Marshalltown and a roundtable discussion with local cattle producers and Tama Livestock Auction Owner Jason Lekin.

Naig, a Republican who is up for re-election in November, ordered a Jerry the King burger and, like most of the other patrons who have visited the establishment in recent months, left satisfied with a full stomach.

“I maybe wasn’t as daring as I could’ve been by ordering off the front of the menu, but the burger itself was fantastic,” Naig said. “We got here just as it was opening (for the day), and so to watch the amount of traffic that’s come in through here on a Thursday, it’s great.”

During the luncheon, Naig discussed some of the most pressing concerns producers are facing, including supply chain interruptions, inflation and ever-increasing input costs to raise animals. Due to the supply chain situation, Naig said items as small as ear tags have become much more difficult to obtain for livestock farmers during an interview with the T-R after the meal.

Still, it isn’t all doom and gloom, and Naig is doing his best to take the good with the bad.

“What we’ve been generally seeing across the ag landscape is (that) prices are good. Prices for livestock and for crops are good. Demand is up here in this country and around the world, but that’s only half the story,” he said. “You’ve also got the increase in the cost of production, and so that is concerning… At some point demand will, or the price may drop, and then if the costs of inputs stays high, then you’re underwater. You’re upside down.”

The secretary and his guests also discussed preparedness and potential responses to foreign animal diseases like foot and mouth and the upcoming Farm Bill. Naig said he hopes the bill will avoid placing the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in direct competition with farmers who need land for crop production or pasture space.

“These folks agree, and I agree with them, we want to keep lands working lands. Yes, do the right things from a conservation standpoint, but grazing cattle on grass, that’s a great thing from an environmental standpoint and for the producer,” Naig said. “You don’t want those programs to displace what would otherwise be productive operations.”

When asked about solutions to some of these problems, Naig opined that it was important to keep Iowa’s house in order and keep the state business-friendly while also addressing water quality improvement and conservation practices. He then took a question on another recurring concern for livestock producers — the contention that processing giants continue to see higher profits without passing them on to the farmers themselves.

“We’ve seen consolidation in that space, which is concerning. You want to make sure that there is healthy competition for producers. I think we have seen a packer taking more and more of that margin themselves and not sharing that with the producer,” Naig said. “That is concerning because you’ve got to have balance in that. Everybody in that supply chain needs to be able to be profitable, otherwise you don’t have a stable supply chain.”

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a huge surge in business for independent butchers and meat processors, and Naig hopes to build on that momentum going forward through some state incentives approved by the Iowa Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds.

“If you can have a small livestock producer who sells direct to consumer and processes locally, you just kept all the value in that community,” Naig said. “We see tremendous opportunity for that. That’s something that the state of Iowa is doing and we’re going to do even more of.”

Naig, a native of Cylinder, was first appointed to his position in 2018 after his predecessor, Bill Northey, took a position with the United States Department of Agriculture under former President Donald Trump. He won his first full term that same year in a close race against Democratic challenger Tim Gannon, and he will face John Norwood, who made a stop in Marshalltown last week, in this year’s general election.

In making the case for why he deserves another term, Naig pointed to continued increases in soil conservation and water quality practices under his leadership and said he would continue to work toward opening new markets for Iowa farmers — citing a recently signed agreement with Taiwan — and promoting renewable fuels and bio-based manufacturing.

“There’s never been more work getting done in the state of Iowa in terms of conservation — and I’m talking in the urban areas and rural areas — than there is today, and we’ve been working hard to accomplish that with lots of partners,” he said. “We’ve changed the trajectory when it comes to conservation work and water quality in the state of Iowa. I’m proud of that. I think we’ve got a lot to show that we’ve done and contributed to, and we’re really focused on scaling up. I think we’ve accomplished a lot. I’m proud of that, but we’re not satisfied. We want to do more.”

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.