(Radio Iowa) – Tom Harkin — the Iowa Democrat who served in 40 years in the U.S. House and Senate — has had a change of heart about the ethanol industry.  “For most of my time in the Senate, I was one of ethanol’s biggest supporters,” Harkin said. “…I was wrong, at least in the magnitude.” As a senator, Harin pushed for federal policies to expand the use of ethanol and in 2010 Harkin blasted the E-P-A for delaying regulations to let gasoline with higher amounts of ethanol be sold. Harkin now says while ethanol has its place in the marketplace, it will not solve all the problems in the ag sector.

“The push to make ethanol sort of the end all and be all of agriculture production — that’s just not going to happen,” Harkin said. “…We’re going to have to start thinking of doing other things, encouraging other forms of agriculture, other forms of enterprises, things that will help us get through this mess that we’re in right now. I don’t want to lose another generation of farmers.” Harkin, who is 85, served in congress during the Farm Crisis. By the end of the 1980s, 300-thousand U-S farms had defaulted on loans.

Former U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (Photo courtesy of the Harkin Institute)

“The ’80s happened because a secretary of agriculture in the early ’70s basically said plant fence-row-to-fence-row, go big or get out,” Harkin said. “…I remember sheep raising and cattle operations all over southern Iowa. Well, in the ’70s, they plowed it all up and started planting corn and beans.” Harkin says farmers got overextended with high interest rate loans for combines and other farm equipment — and that led to farm foreclosures in the 1980s. An I-S-U economics professor estimated that in every year during the Farm Crisis, nearly two-and-a-half percent of farmers left the business.

Harkin made his comments during a “Chautauqua Talk” in Algona hosted by Kossuth County Democrats.