Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

It's the last line at the bottom that bothers me. It tells me industrial 
farming is no way to make a living, no way to draw young people into food 
production, and no way to local food security.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
------------------------------------------

Hard times in the Heartland
Layoffs hit the Whirlpool appliance plant in Iowa, but the economic pain 
doesn't end at the factory gates.
By Aaron Smith, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: October 17, 2008: 11:02 AM ET
http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/17/news/economy/whirlpool_layoffs/index.htm

AMANA COLONIES, Iowa (CNNMoney.com) -- The turmoil on Wall Street has come to 
the Pit Stop, a bar in the blue-collar town of Marengo, Iowa.

That's where Al Powell spent a recent Sunday afternoon thinking about his 
future after he and his wife were laid off from their assembly line jobs at 
the nearby Whirlpool factory.

"There's a lot of pain going through that place right now," said Powell, 
sipping a $2 Bud while the juke box played "Chicken Train" by the Ozark 
Mountain Daredevils. "A ton of people got hurt this year."

Powell and his wife, who have two children, join 440 of the factory's 2,000 
workers in losing their jobs. Whirlpool blames the cuts on the international 
economic downturn, which has dried up demand for its high-end refrigerators.

Powell and his wife were making about $15 an hour, which covered the mortgage 
payments on their $60,000 three-bedroom house. But they just started working 
at Whirlpool last year and the layoffs were carried out in terms of 
seniority, from the bottom-up.

Powell, who has worked at other factories nearby, said the plant sometimes 
hired back laid-off workers, but he wasn't sure what was in store for him.

"I don't know whether I'm going back in three months or six months. They 
don't tell ya," he said.

In the past month, there's been a lot of talk - on the floor of Congress in 
Washington and in kitchens and at office water coolers throughout the country 
- about how the global financial crisis is hurting Main Street. Powell and 
others in this community have heard all of it. But more to the point: They 
are living it.
The factory

The sprawling Whirlpool factory emerges from a land of corn fields, soy 
beans, silos and 19th century farmhouses. The number of workers at the plant, 
post-layoff, is roughly equal to the 1,500 residents who live in the Amana 
Colonies, a collection of seven villages established in the 1850s by a 
religious commune of German farmers. (The Amana appliance company, which was 
named for the area, was bought by Whirlpool in 2006.)

Many of the plant workers come from small towns within 10 miles, like Marengo 
and Walford, or from the larger city of Cedar Rapids, about 20 miles away. 
Workers have grown accustomed to the cyclical layoffs and periodic 
unemployment, but this time it feels different: Not only is the number of job 
cuts larger than usual, but it occurs amid a time of deep financial 
uncertainty.

Whirlpool, a Michigan-based corporation with about 73,000 workers worldwide, 
announced the job cuts on Oct. 9, and said they would occur between Oct. 13 
and 20.

"I think what makes these layoffs significant in many people's minds is the 
backdrop in which they have occurred," said Whirlpool spokesman Jeff Noel. 
"It is, in fact, a reflection of uncertainty in the marketplace. Consumers 
won't be buying the kind of appliances they need and deserve in order for us 
to maximize production."

The most recent data from the Federal Reserve shows that production at the 
nation's factories fell by 2.8% in September - the worst month-to-month drop 
in 34 years.

The cheapest refrigerator produced at the Whirlpool plant in Amana retails 
for $1,500. Such pricey appliances can be a hard sell these days. Retail 
sales dropped 1.2% in September, the worse month-to-month decline in three 
years, according to the Commerce Department. Appliance sales in North America 
fell 17% in September compared with last year, according to Longbow Research 
analyst David MacGregor.

"It's in our best interest to operate that plant at full capacity to make 
products and get them out the door," said Noel, noting that medical benefits 
for laid-off workers will be extended to the end of the year. "[But] like a 
lot of companies, we have to play the cards that have been dealt to us in the 
global economy."

A worker leaving the factory at the end of his second shift put it 
succinctly: "The markets are soft and people aren't buying."
Three pillars of the economy

The economy in the Amana area depends on three sectors: manufacturing, which 
is dominated by Whirlpool; tourism, centered on the historic homes and farms 
constructed in the 1800s by the agricultural commune; and farming, 
specifically for feed corn and soy beans.

Farming and tourism draw their income from sources other than manufacturing, 
but they are still dependent on the future of the Whirlpool plant.

John Peterson, chief executive of the Amana Society, is hoping there's an ace 
in the deck for Whirlpool. The Society is a home-grown corporation of 17 
local companies - including utilities, farmers and small local businesses - 
that was formed in 1932, when the German commune transformed itself into a 
shareholder-based company.

"Whirlpool is an important member of our community for a number of reasons," 
said Peterson, whose organization supplies power to the plant. "Since they're 
82% of our electricity load, we're very concerned for their health."

Kristie Wetjen, executive director of the Amana Colonies Convention and 
Visitors Bureau, which organizes tourism in the area, said, "If the plant was 
to close down, it would have a huge impact on the community, financially and 
emotionally."

Tourism and farming were hit hard by summer floods that inundated 2,000 acres 
of the Amana Society's farmland, ruining crops and making the area 
temporarily inaccessible to tourists. The farmers' hardships are offset 
somewhat by high prices for corn and soy, said Wetjen, while the tourism 
industry rebounded in the fall, with its most lucrative Oktoberfest in more 
than 40 years, she said.

John Vought became the head of his 500-acre family farm more than 50 years 
ago, when his father was killed in a farming accident. He later married a 
descendant of the German farming community and raised four children, two of 
whom worked temporary stints at the Whirlpool plant.

On a recent afternoon, Vought harvested soy beans from behind the wheel of 
his combine. Like many farmers, Vought is land-rich but cash-poor. His house, 
located just a couple miles from the Whirlpool plant, is dwarfed by the farm 
machinery parked outside.

"I've been broke all my life," said the 70-year old farmer, who said he can't 
afford to retire.

Vought doesn't see his profession as an option for laid-off factory workers, 
because of the enormous overhead costs in agriculture.

"Your average factory worker is not going to come out and start farming," 
Vought said. "It's too big an investment. I'm talking about investment in the 
millions."