Barb Kalbach.

It was maybe a happy coincidence last week that while I was following the news about Trump’s soybean deal with China that I also happened to tune into the Iowa Farmers Union (IFU) weekly “lunch and learn” on Facebook. Amid so much uncertainty, not just for farmers but all of us in rural America, it came as a breath of fresh air and call to action.

IFU’s topic that day was the 2025 Rural Policy Action Report, billed as a “roadmap for rural progress.” Speakers from IFU, Iowa CCI, Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, and Progress Iowa highlighted aspects of the report that kept me nodding my head in agreement on the things that we need to keep our rural communities alive and thriving.

The report, commissioned by the Rural Democracy Initiative, can be found at ruralpolicyaction.us. It seems to both confirm and reaffirm things I’ve been thinking. And I’ve been hearing these same things from folks that I talk with in my community – we have the answers when it comes to policy decisions that affect us. Wow! Who knew that we would be the ones who understand what works in our rural communities! If only Washington would listen.

Here in rural America, we know the value of hard work, investing in locally-driven solutions, protecting our collective freedoms, and respecting our connection to the land that we cultivate and grow for future generations. The report calls on our elected officials to deliver on issues like:

-Strengthening food labeling to combat the misleading tools used by corporations that don’t want us to know where our food comes from. That means Mandatory Country of Origin of Labeling, which helps our independent cattle farmers.

-Supporting our public schools, the bedrock of so many rural communities – and preventing the flight of our public dollars going to private schools through the guise of “school choice”, which leaves us left behind while paying the price. So let’s stop gutting the Department of Education and instead fund it to meet the needs of our rural schools.

-Hold multinational corporations accountable for not only the pollution they create, but also the damage they do to us, our loved ones, and the people we’ve lost. Something we’re all too familiar with here in Iowa given Bayer’s continued attempts to prevent us taking them to court if we get harmed from using their products like Roundup.

There’s more in the report that strikes me as common sense. And it looks like I’m not alone. The report shared polling of likely rural voters showing 88% support cracking down on meat processing monopolies, 92% support ensuring rural hospitals get the funding they need to stay open, and 87% believe in protecting our natural resources from corporate ag polluters.

I’ve never been too interested in what billionaires think this country should be or the policies we should pursue. Instead, Washington has a whole heck of a lot they could learn from us in rural America.

Barb Kalbach lives in Adair County, Iowa. She is a 4th-generation family farmer, a registered nurse, and board president of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. Barb can be reached at barbnealkalbach@gmail.com.