The number of family farms keeps fading. What defines Iowa?

Symbols of how we used to answer that question are vanishing. It’s no longer clear what our identity is.

Nothing lasts forever. But the pace and depth of changes to long-running institutions in Iowa has stood out of late. The net effect is to struggle to answer this question in just a few words: What defines Iowa?

One rote answer has been, and at least arguably still is, the state’s tradition of farming some of the world’s most fertile soils to feed the world. But going back at least to statehood in 1846, that idea, that point of pride, carried an implication that a great proportion of Iowans were deeply involved in that farming work.