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Today's tour begins with what I call the I-380 corridor between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. Iowa reflects what is going in rural America, for the state is split between two cultures?rapidly depleting small towns in the rural areas and pockets of growing suburbs. Cedar Rapids, taking advantage of highly educated work force, is becoming a home to young professionals. From Rockwell Collins to Quaker Oats, Cedar Rapids has diversity of industry that is independent of agricultural decline. One advantage of this corridor is swift movement for commuters. Compared to New York, where traffic travels at a snail's pace, commuters can move from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City and vice versa at a 65 mph pace down the interstate. This makes the corridor an attractive place to work and live, as there are plenty of activities between the two communities. This should make any New York commuter jealous.

Iowa City is the southern branch of the corridor and the University of Iowa dominates the employment of the city as nearly everyone has some connections to the university. This influx of university politics colors the political culture of Iowa City, making it the Berkeley of Iowa. The recent war on terrorism has brought out the best in radical politics, ensuring an entertainment factor. Former city councilwoman/political gadfly Karen Kubby summed up the attitude of most leftists when she declared, "As a taxpaying citizen of the United States of America, I am not innocent when it comes to being part of terrorism. Some of my tax dollars go to the training of military and paramilitary forces that perform acts of terrorism on their own people or on neighboring states... Corporations perform economic and environmental terrorism on a regular basis."

Can anyone in radically chic New York top that?

In the rural areas, a new force is emerging that could energize the left throughout the Midwest. It's revival of the old Great Plains populism. Chuck Hassebrooke of the Center for Rural Affairs complains that the "Community decline is driven by agricultural decline." Farming is becoming a corporate enterprise as farms become consolidated. Farm subsidies are the key issue that will decide the future of the House and Senate.

In Iowa, farmers collect $2.3 billion in federal funds and both parties are committed to keeping the gravy train going. (The Des Moines Register observed that you could support a private company of 50,000 workers averaging $46,000 a year with this subsidy.) Farm subsidies are promoted to keep the family farm afloat but the reality is that the majority of the money goes to corporate farms. Ninety percent of food is produced by fewer than 20 percent of all farmers. As one Iowa editorial writer noted, subsidies provide larger farms extra money to buy their smaller competitors and this only accelerates the demise of the family farm.

Another aspect of the farm debate is that the goal of any farm program is to increase food prices to the consumers as a means of propping up farmer income. As Hassebrooke claims, "Consumer surveys find that most Americans would pay premium prices for food produced on environmentally responsible family farms."

"When farmers are permitted to plant and raise whatever they wish whenever they wish," says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, "when they produce for the market, not for government, then our food supply is secure and prices are low. Food is cheaper in the United States than at any place at anytime in world history." Moore's conclusion is that this success story comes from the incredible productivity of the American farmer. Moore observed that "[T]he paradox of modern-day agriculture is that farmers often do better when yields are low, because prices are high. But for the rest of us, low prices mean higher real incomes."

What is good for the consumer may not be necessarily good for many farmers. As the 20th century came to a close, food was cheaper in the United States than any place in the world. As Moore asks, "How could this be classified as bad news?"

Iowa's Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin is defending his Senate seat and is basing his campaign on his own farm bill, sitting in front of Congress. You could easily call the Senate farm bill the Tom Harkin reelection bill. Harkin is determined to overturn the Freedom to Farm Act while making Iowa's farmers more dependent upon the dole. This will merely speed up Democratic control of Iowa and open the door to Democratic control throughout the Midwest.

His major opponent is Rep. Greg Ganske, a moderate Republican. Ganske has in the past supported Democratic plans for healthcare and campaign finance reform, and for the most part enjoys being independent of the Republican leadership. And Ganske will also support more federal handouts to farmers. The only difference between these two is that Ganske supported President Bush's tax cuts and Harkin didn't. Ganske's own apparent nomination is GOP surrender to the liberal trends of Iowa. As agricultural populism continues to grow, the left will cut into traditional rural Republican area, and threatening to turn the GOP into the minority party throughout the Midwest.

The debate over corporate hog lots is a good example of the alliance between of environmentalists and new agri-populists. These hog farms are merely manifestation of the changes in farm productions as specialization and need to increase production volume is now the norm. Environmentalists have used the fear of water pollution as a means to undercut the consolidation of hog lot farms and many populists have joined their environmentalist allies in pushing legislation to restrict the growth of corporate hog lots. New confinement technology has contracted the area needed to produce the same number of animals. Confinement systems may be less damaging to the local ecology but these hog farms tend to be corporate-owned, and threaten smaller pig farmers. Corporate hog farmers are now targets of the politicians looking for wedge issues.

Another dagger in the heart of farmers is the recent trend away from free trade. Farmers' success depends upon open worldwide markets but, unfortunately, the Democratic Party has virtually walked away from its own past commitment to free trade and even nearly one-third of congressional Republicans have joined the political left in rejecting free trade. Any deviation from free trade hurts the farmer's ability to export and sell his excess goods on the world market economy.

There are no easy solutions out of the present crisis. The majority of Americans benefit from low food prices today, and this will be the case in the future. Many farms are evolving into corporate identities and this trend will continue. Local policies are needed to help with the adjustments that many rural communities will go through. The Freedom to Farm was not designed for a farm economy of the past but rather was intended to take agricultural economy into the future. Woes of farmers need to be put in perspective. Yes, many farmers are suffering and we will see that some of these farmers will be forced to move into other enterprises. This is tragic, but it is an aspect of life in a market society, or in any society that is growing. More than a century ago, there were people whose job was to clean horse manure from the city streets. How many of us would like to see a society in which we need the services of street sweepers of horse manure? The American farmers are the most productive in the world and with the technological advances, are in a position to dominate the world market. The revolution has been going on for nearly a century and this will not be slowed down by government edict. The populist revolution will only delay the inevitable, but it could shift American politics leftward over the next two election cycles.