By CHUCK OFFENBURGER

COOPER, Iowa, July 4, 2026 — It’s such a good life, farming. It really is. Don’t most all of us know that from our own families’ histories? We’re well-rooted in it.

That came up here Friday as I met with my great friends, Doug and Karen Lawton, now 71 and 68, at their farm outside this tiny west central Iowa town. We were together for our traditional check on whether their corn crop this year is at least “knee-high by the 4th of July.”

It is.

Doug and Karen Lawton, in the tall corn on Friday, July 3. I’ve been doing the 4th of July reports on their corn crops since the summer of 2005.

Of course, that’s the folksy measure used in an earlier time, back before hybrid corn. For the record, the Lawton corn on Friday morning measured “at least” 6 ft. 6 in. tall. And after another “million-dollar rain” of a couple inches in Greene County, and big heat the Thursday and Friday, their corn might actually be 7 ft. 6 in. tall before the fireworks fly tonight.

So, God bless America and the Lawton family, too.

And since this Independence Day we are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of our nation, I asked Doug and Karen where their ancestors were, back in 1776. Doug reported that his Lawtons — except they were “Lotens” back then — were in England. And Karen’s kin? “My Wilcoxes were in Holland and England, and my Middletons were in England,” she said.

And what were they all doing? “Farming, I suppose,” Doug said. “Almost everybody was.”

Big difference from today, though, we quickly agreed.

“Back then, they were raising enough food for their families,” said Karen. They were more like gardeners of a little larger scale. Most of their work, Doug said, “was done by hand, or with horses.” Or oxen, I added.

“Yeah, and now we’ve gone from horses or oxen to tractors with autosteer!” Doug said. “Amazing.”

That crop, not yet three months old, is thick, lush and very tall.

Farms like the Lawtons have are now really about “middle-sized,” at least across much of the Farm Belt. They’ve planted 1,200 acres, “split about 50-50 between corn and soybeans,” all from Hoegemeyer Hybrids, which is part of the Corteva Agriscience corporation, which is moving its agricultural headquarters to Johnston, Iowa, and will soon be renamed “Vylor.”

That led us to a darker reality in our conversation: If farm life is as good as we know it is, then why are there so few people our here living it?

“It depresses me,” Karen Lawton said. “I think a lot about all the neighboring we used to do with all the people who lived out here. That’s almost all gone now.”

“Yeah,” Doug Lawton added. “Think about all the farmsteads that have been torn down. If you take this section of land where we live — that’s the 640 acres right around here — we’ve got two people living in this whole section, the two of us.

“Then in the section north of us, there’s only 1 person now living there, Larry Monthei. In the section east of Larry, it’s another section with only 1 person living in it, Chris Henning. In the section east of us, it’s another one with only two people, Scott and Jennifer Weaver. In the section south of us, only two people, Eldo and Gina Walker. When I think about it now, we may have a few sections of land other places in Greene County where nobody now lives.”

Back in the late 1970s, when Doug and Karen Lawton became the fourth generation of Lawtons to take over the farm, their memory is that most sections of land in this area “would have had 12 or so people living in them,” he said.

Lawton Farms headquarters, a mile northwest of Cooper, seven miles south of Jefferson in west central Iowa.

We all know what happened. Agricultural science, technology and equipment got bigger, better and more expensive. Fewer farmers were needed, and they could get more work done than ever before. The countryside has emptied, our farm towns have withered. Our youngsters leave for college, get good educations in fields not directly related to agriculture, and many find life more interesting in larger cities and other areas.

It strikes me, thinking about this, that what makes farming continue to be possible, while also causing farming most of its problems, is the federal government.

Uncle Sam can create good international markets, encourage innovation, offer support payments when needed, and more. But Uncle Sam, as we’ve seen recently, also gets us involved in questionable wars, imposes tariffs that wreck international markets, and send farmers’ grain and livestock receipts tumbling.

What do the Lawtons hear about all that from other farmers around Greene County?

“Actually, I don’t talk to a lot of people that much about all that,” Doug said.

Karen rolled her eyes and said, “That’s just a farmer thing, not talking about it. Now, I’m married to the best farmer but he’s like most of them. If they are making money, they love, love, love to talk about it. If they’re losing money, they don’t want to talk about it.”

So here’s what farmers are checking regularly, and grumbling:

—Friday morning, the cash price for corn at the NEW Cooperative’s Cooper location, where the Lawtons deliver most of their grain, was $4.01 per bushel, and the cash price for soybeans was $10.98 per bushel. Just like a year ago now, those prices are $2 to $3 per bushel below what most farmers would like to have to be profitable.

—The record prices on the grain markets were set in April and May of 2022, with corn topping $8 per bushel then and soybeans at $17.69.

—Meanwhile, machinery costs “are horrible,” Doug said, “machinery repair costs are terrible,” and input costs for seed, fertilizer and weed control are soaring. “For two to three years now, the only prices that have gone down are the grain prices we receive,” he said.

And yet, life is good out here.

When you meander the Lawton farmstead, it comes clear that Karen Lawton is a decorator.

The Lawtons have raised three children who, with their spouses, all have excellent careers, off-the-farm. They have seven grandchildren, ranging up from 10-month old Wynnie Lawton up to 22-year-old Cooper Nailor, who in the spring graduated from Coe College in education and is now a graduate assistant coach for the men’s basketball program at Drake University.

Ah, yes, basketball. The Lawtons, you probably have learned over the years, are nuts for basketball and always have been. Doug has bragged that he’s been attending the high school girls basketball state tournament “since before I was born.”

And Doug and Karen Lawton have “probably” just completed a record basketball season, he said. With four grandsons playing, one son-in-law coaching, and the whole clan being fans, Doug estimates that he and Karen “probably attended 90 games” in the ’25-’26 season, driving “11,000 miles” to do so!

Their health is good, much better than a year ago when Karen was diagnosed with endometrial cancer, had two surgeries to remove the lower lobe of her left lung and then began pharmaceutical follow-up treatment. Ever since, she’s been taking four Alecensa pills each morning, four more each evening and will continue doing that for another year. There are side effects of “some muscle pain and fatigue but I feel pretty good most of the time.” Her check-up scans are good and she’s “optimistic.”

Doug’s bum right knee, caused by a strained large tendon running from his hip to his calf, still has him limping sometimes. “Every once in a while it flares up and gives me a problem,” he said. Does he consider having surgery on it? “I don’t have time,” he said. “I can’t miss any basketball games.”

One classic photo in the Lawton home is this one of grandsons Nathan (left) and Noah Towers in last summer’s Greene County Fair in Jefferson.

And, so, bottom line on this year’s crops?

“I think things look pretty good right now,” Doug said.

And how long do they plan to continue operating Lawton Farms?

“We’re doing it a year at a time,” he said. “We’ll watch for when a good time for a transition might come, but now is not a good time for that.”

Karen said “we’re both happy out here now, but we probably won’t stay until we die. I hope someone will come back here and take over eventually, and we do have people in the family who are very interested in agriculture. It’s getting a little harder for us to keep up with everything on the farm now, but we have the luxury of having family close, and that really helps.”

Karen Lawton, with a collection she is starting of turning her antique dishes into glass Christmas trees. She’s retired from a longtime job working in a floral shop but still is an active community volunteer. “Doug works five jobs,” she said, “and my job now is having fun!” His five jobs — farmer, insurance agent, real estate agent, corporate board member, and chairperson of the Franklin Township Board of Trustees. The latter position, he said, “means I’m tree-waterer-in-chief for the 19 new trees we’ve planted in the township cemetery.”

Doug Lawton, with a framed copy of a long-ago Jefferson Bee story about Lawton Farms. Look at the lower photo in the display — it’s an older family photo with Doug in his boyhood, his father Gerald Lawton in the middle, and his grandfather Harvey Lawton on the right. Harvey was known for almost always wearing a white shirt, necktie and hat. The Lawtons were widely known as cattlemen, and in the early 1970s had up to 10,000 head on their farm, before the cattle market collapsed in the late ’70s. They’ve focused on grain farming ever since.

—

You can comment on this column below or write the columnist directly by email at chuck@offenburger.com.