Opinion: Iowa prepares for an experiment in MAHA

The Make America Healthy Again movement has arrived in Iowa. Republican voters in the state nominated Zach Lahn for governor. Lahn, a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. acolyte, is running in the general election against Democrat Rob Sand. Lahn has to be considered the odds-on favorite, as the Democrats haven’t won the Iowa governorship since 2006.

Along with the executive order on regenerative agriculture recently signed by the president, the election in Iowa is an indication that MAHA has the wind at its back.  As I read Agri-Pulse’s closely reported article about the recent order, I couldn’t help but think about how this presidency, unlike other administrations in so many ways, has repeated history with this order. Remember President Nixon going to China, the first President Bush signing a large tax increase, and President Clinton passing welfare reform? Every president eventually disappoints part of his base. 

Although Agri-Pulse quotes several agriculture leaders who opposed the order, most of the farmers who attended the signing were in favor of it and clearly don’t think it went far enough. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins also favors the order, which, in the plain language of the document, puts Rollins, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in charge of the future use of technology in agriculture. 

Secretary Kennedy has a long record of willful and well compensated refusal to trust the existing science on vaccines and pesticides. He was backed in the meeting by Calley Means, who has spent his career selling supplements of doubtful efficacy and whose business interest guarantees a conflict of interest in his new position as the right-hand man of the HHS secretary. Kennedy’s own past income from litigation against the very companies he now regulates bodes ill for farms like mine.

In a blog post describing his meeting with the president, Jonathan Lundgren, a farmer who was present, has a lot to say about the use of pesticides, none of it good. Some of his claims beggar belief, including his statement that farmers are seeing a “2,600 fold” increase in Parkinson’s disease. That would mean that every farmer will eventually get the disease, since it afflicts around 1% of the general population. That would be bad, although fairly easily disproved by a trip to any coffee shop in the Midwest. Lundgren went on to say that conventional farmers like me are poisoning our neighbors. No wonder Agri-Pulse reported that the conversation in the Oval Office was heated.

President Trump may well be correct in his calculation that backing MAHA is a political winner. I’m sure he is convinced that farm support will not be hurt by his support for MAHA. We will have a test case this fall in the gubernatorial race in Iowa.

Lahn opposes vaccine mandates in Iowa schools, mRNA vaccines, and ties Iowa's high cancer rates directly to the state's largest industry, agriculture. He favors a moratorium on data centers and says big ag companies have lied about the dangers of their products. He does admit that, even if elected, declines in cancer rates will not come overnight. However, if Iowans start dying from childhood diseases because of vaccine hesitancy, they will not develop cancer later in life — so he has that going for him.

Sand has not made an issue of Lahn’s opposition to vaccines, focusing instead on Lahn’s residency, as the Republican’s arrival in Iowa was conveniently timed to qualify for an open gubernatorial race. That highlights a major problem for Republicans as they embrace the MAHA movement: they will never be able to outbid the left in this race to repeal modern technology.

MAHA polls very well and may well carry the day in Iowa. As the old saying goes, states are the laboratory of democracy. A Lahn victory there will be a definite experiment in the results of embracing MAHA, with Iowa citizens serving as willing participants. Will Iowa see an increase in measles, more sick pigs from a decline in available vaccines, and a decline in corn yields as farmers lose the tools they depend on to fight pests? It will be fascinating to see what Iowa voters choose this fall. 

Blake Hurst is a farmer and greenhouse grower in northwest Missouri.