Farmers used to wait for the right conditions to spray their chemicals in the spring. It wasn’t that hard to do. Just wait for a day the wind wasn’t blowing at the neighbors property. But now the spraying can’t wait; it’s done by corporations that have a full schedule. If they don’t spray every day, their profits suffer.

So they spray. And rural Iowans suffer.

We watch them spray when the wind is swirling across every field, when billowing clouds of earth race before their giant tractors. We watch them spray from their bright yellow airplanes, misting homes and wildlife in a blanket of toxins.

Our politicians have refused to pass a law that holds these corporations responsible for the damage they do to us. Imagine that. These agriculture corporations literally cannot be held liable for the damage they do to Iowans. That’s how far from democracy we have fallen.

To further enable corporate overlords, our political leadership has defunded the Pesticide Bureau so severely that it is over a year behind in its investigative case load. Despite the fact that most rural Iowans don’t bother even reporting chemical drifts, many know it’s a wasted effort.

When my son and I saw one of these massive rigs roaring toward us while we worked in our garden — a huge cloud of toxic chemicals and Iowa top soil engulfing it — we tried to wave it off. But the operator was moving way too fast to actually pick his head up and look around.

We tried to outrun the poison cloud, but winds were gusting over 25 miles per hour, so there was no chance. We felt the grit and mist, we smelled and tasted the chemicals. Our eyes burned and teared as we reached the house and peeled off our clothes. The driver of the tractor never saw us.

We showered, trying to wash off the poison, then drove into Ames to the shiny new corporate headquarters of the Landus Coop, the company that had sprayed us. We sat in the lobby as the receptionist tried to find someone to come out from behind the tall glass doors to speak with us. No one would.

I explained the situation to her again. I emphasized that we may have long-term effects from this chemical exposure. I told her we need to find out what chemicals were being sprayed so we could inform our doctors. She tried again, but couldn’t convince a single one of the corporates to speak with us. The politicians have told them they have no responsibility — and they deeply appreciate that immunity.

The state investigated. Landus didn’t alert them. The investigator took our clothes and cut them up for testing. We both had new shirts on and good jeans. The tests cost us the value of those clothes, damage to the plants we nature and to our health. There was no reimbursement offered. It took months — nearly a year — to find out that the tests were positive for a number of toxic chemicals. The Landus Coop was fined $750. A sum we all know did nothing to curtail their continued poisoning.

Landus is far from the only guilty party. The Boone office of the multinational Nutrien has drifted us nearly every year. They have killed our grapes so many times we have given up any hope of ever harvesting fruit. They killed the wind break we planted and the fruit trees that survive the poison can’t bear fruit. Even if they spray in good conditions, the chemicals revitalize the next warm windy day and drift all over again.

The toxic chemicals are poured on so thick across the Iowa landscape that it evaporates into the clouds and literally rains down on those in the cities as well as the farms. They poison every single inch. Those who are sworn to protect us and our farms instead protect themselves. Things have got to change.

Joe Monahan is an ex-employee and former student of ISU.