New Jersey Senator and Democratic Party Presidential Candidate Cory Booker visited Indianola Saturday, as part of his statewide tour. State Representative Scott Ourth hosted the event for Booker at Annelise Winery, where Booker addressed a crowd of 165 people about issues, including agriculture. Booker tells KNIA News the problems Iowa farmers are facing are happening all across the Midwest.

“This should arouse everybody’s outrage and concern. We should create empathy with everyone for farmers, so I started working with farmers to try to design legislation to really help those with critical problems. One of those problems is we’ve seen a lot unchecked corporate consolidation of those industries which is driving up the costs of source products, seed, chemicals, fertilizer. And also because of the consolidation above them, I’ve talked with farmers whose grandparents used to have three, four, five people to sell their products to, now they’ve only got one.”

Booker also said he has reached across the aisle to help solve some of the problems, and that if we don’t act soon the family farm and independent farmers will soon be a thing of the past.