With rock-bottom grain prices dominating the farm landscape, Iowa House District 62 candidate Gentry Collins says farmers are looking for elected officials who can help.

Collins, a Republican from Ames, took an important step in garnering those farmers’ votes Monday when the Iowa Farm Bureau designated him a “Friend of Agriculture.”

The endorsement was made after a Story County Farm Bureau committee favorably recommended Collins to a statewide political action committee, said Don Peterson, the bureau’s director of legislative affairs.

“We’re suggesting to our members that we know the views of this candidate,” Peterson said.

“There’s a lot of interest among candidates in receiving the designation,” he said. “We try to keep our recommendations to those elections where there’s a clear-cut difference between candidates.”

Collins is running against Dennis Parmenter, a Democrat from Cambridge, to fill the District 62 seat left open by the retirement of Rep. Bill Bernau, D-Nevada.

Parmenter has not received the “Friend of Agriculture” endorsement, a fact Collins chalks up in part to the two candidates’ stances on hog confinements.

“We differ sharply on the hog issue. I support statewide control and strict environmental regulations; he does not,” said Collins, a 1997 Iowa State political science graduate. “He supports local control. I think that’s a mistake.”

Collins said local control — giving counties more authority — would only lead to a jumble of new laws.

“Long-term, 99 different sets of regulations in this state is awfully confusing and doesn’t do anybody any good,” he said. “One coherent statewide policy is the best policy.”

Property tax relief is another ag-related issue Collins is emphasizing. He supports a current policy that exempts about 40 percent of farmland value from property taxes.

Some legislators are considering the repeal of this “rollback,” Collins said, a move he describes as disastrous for farmers.

“It would be staggering,” he said. “You’re looking at one of the worst years since we came out of the farm crisis. To add on top of that, to add more property tax would run more family farmers out of the state, and I don’t think anyone is looking to do that right now.”

District 62, which Bernau has represented since 1991, includes all of Ames south of Lincoln Way and Story County south of U.S. Highway 30 and west of U.S. Highway 65.