Iowa's Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey visited the Heartland on Friday.
By Matt Buhrman
Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 10:02 p.m.
Read more: Local, State
BLOOMFIELD, IOWA -- Secretary Northey spoke with Iowans at informal town hall meetings to discuss various issues with agriculture and the issues facing farmers. He plans to visit each of Iowa's 99 counties again this year.
KTVO spoke with the Secretary at the Southern Iowa Electric Cooperative in Bloomfield where he said that there are still misconceptions about H1N1 and pork regarding the U.S. trade with China. He reiterated that people cannot become infected with H1N1 from eating or handling pork.
"But we still have that trade disagreement with China right now and that impacts the demand for our pork products and continues to be one of the reasons, anyway, that's causing us some problems on the price side of the pork industry," Secretary Northey said.
He added that two of the biggest challenges to Iowa agriculture are dairy and pork.
"And it impacts everybody," Secretary Northey said. "How these industries go impacts a lot of folks that are out there. Now grain prices are down, cattle feeding hasn't been very easy either and so the economics in general are a little tougher than they were a year ago."
Northey is a corn and soybean farmer from Spirit Lake and is serving his first term as Iowa's Secretary of Agriculture. He said that his priorities are the opportunities in renewable energy, conservation and stewardship.
