Iowa: Living in the Third World is an article by Robert Wolf which appeared in the Des Moines Register[?] on July 16, 1995.
"When I moved here I believed that rural America was still a place where people gathered in community. I believed that the land and water were pure and uncontaminated. Perhaps I had been affected by the television commercials which try to sell products by identifying them with farms and country towns. The truth is that rural America is dying."
"I live in the Third World, in Iowa. Iowa is party of the Third World. A Third World country sells natural resources and human labor for a pittance. Does that fit Iowa? You bet. Iowa exports its produce and livestock, and in exchange receiveds a pittance. That is, the family farmer does. The profits usually go out of state, the corporate farmer lives in Chicago or Dallas."
"The colonizer's economy takes away the native's self-sufficiency and replaces it with dependence. That's Iowa's situation. No one in Washington seems particularly concerned about the Third World."
"So long as Iowans believe that they can rebuild within the existing economic system, their system will worsen."
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