Ernst keeps focus on farming during Nashua visit

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst kept the focus on agriculture on Tuesday.

“We are focusing on agricultural activities and things that might be unique to Iowa, such as producing food and fuel for the rest of the world,” Ernst, an Iowa Republican, said during a morning visit and tour of the ISU Extension and Outreach Northeast Research and Demonstration Farm near Nashua. “I do encourage folks to visit a research farm like this one when the opportunity comes.”

Ernst’s visit to the research farm was a part of her 99-county tour, and this week is entitled “Home Grown Week.” Earlier Tuesday morning, Ernst visited Osage Municipal Utilities in Mitchell County to learn about the work being done as a recipient of a USDA rural development grant.

At the research farm near Nashua, she toured the area on a tractor-drawn canopied trailer bus, driven by Ken Pecinovsky, research farm superintendent. She also received a demonstration on aerial drones, courtesy of Matt Schnabel, superintendent of the ISU Extension and Outreach Northern research farm.

“They can go up and they can take an aerial look at those crops and how to best pinpoint the types of products necessary so you’re not applying them field-wide,” Ernst said. “Farmers are doing such a phenomenal job at protecting our environment.”

Matthew Helmers, professor at Iowa State and director of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center, gave Ernst a tutorial on bioreactors used at the research farm, demonstrating a wood-chip fueled bio-reactor that Ernst had first been made aware of on a visit to the research farm four years ago.

“We just wanted to highlight what we do as Extension and what they do here at the research farm,” said Brian Dougherty, a field agricultural engineer with ISU extension. “We appreciate Senator Ernst coming to visit and learn about some of the agricultural issues we deal with here in Iowa.”

Ernst said that if she is re-elected, she would continue to be “a tireless advocate for our farmers, our veterans and working families across Iowa.”

“Agriculture is one of the topics that I love to promote,” she said.

Ernst is up for re-election in November, and her Democratic Party opponent is Des Moines businesswoman Theresa Greenfield. Ernst is one of five first-term Senators all elected in 2014 to help Republicans clinch control of the U.S. Senate.

Most polling shows a tight race between Ernst and Greenfield. In a Public Policy Polling poll taken in mid-August, Greenfield led Ernst by 3 points. The Cook Political Report rates the race as a “toss up.”

On Monday, Ernst had reportedly repeated a debunked conspiracy theory that deaths from COVID-19 were being inflated, and suggested that health care providers had a financial motive to falsify cases. Those comments have received nationwide attention and have been criticized by the Greenfield campaign and others.

Ernst did not discuss the virus or her comments about it on Tuesday, but did talk about another important issue to Iowans — increasing federal aid for derecho assistance.

“There’s a lot of hurt out there,” Ernst said. “It’s rough out there for the farmers, and for the towns and cities hardest hit.”

On Tuesday afternoon it was announced that additional Iowa counties that sustained damage in the Aug. 10 derecho storm have been approved for the Federal Emergency Management Agency Individual Assistance Program.

“There are still a number of counties that might still qualify for individual assistance, and that would be a good thing as well,” Ernst said.

She said Tuesday she was excited to announce that U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue would be visiting some of the impacted areas on Thursday.

“We have asked for a secretarial disaster declaration for 57 countries across Iowa, and we continue to push him on that,” she said.

Ernst also talked about being just a few miles away from the childhood home of Carrie Chapman Catt, and called Catt one of her “favorite suffragists.”

Catt, who grew up in Charles City and also spent many years here as an adult, was central to the fight for women’s suffrage in the U.S. and devoted most of her life to the expansion of women’s rights around the world.

Her political strategies and organizational skills have been called instrumental to the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote in 1920.

Ernst said the movement was of particular interest to her as the first female ever elected to represent Iowa in the U.S. Senate.

“We have come a long ways in the 100 years since the suffrage movement,” Ernst said. “We now have our first elected female governor in Iowa, our first ever female congresswomen from Iowa … we see so many firsts, just in recent decades, but we do have a ways to go yet, as far as electing women in service.”

Ernst said she hoped to encourage women to continue to get involved.

“We really need young women to understand the sky is the limit, and whatever it is they want to do, there is opportunity for them,” she said.