U.S. Senate candidate and retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Michael Franken toured the Landus Cooperative in rural Perry Tuesday morning and discussed agricultural issues with about a dozen coop members.
Landus Cooperative Business Unit Lead Matt Brown led the tour. He was joined by several other Landus figures, including Vice President of External Affairs Molly Toot, Area Lead Steve Morman and Communications and Marketing Lead Mary Harrington.
Franken, a Sioux City Democrat who seeks his party’s nomination to run against Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley in the November general election, grew up in his father’s blacksmith and machine shop in Lebanon, Iowa, and knows farming best from the equipment side, he said.
Landus Cooperative has more than 70 grain, agronomy and feed locations in 26 Iowa and three Minnesota counties and is the seventh-largest grain company in North America based on storage capacity. Services at the Perry plant include retail agronomy, crop inputs and protection and storage for dry nitrogen fertilizer and liquid anhydrous ammonia.
Renewable fuels was one of the topics that cropped up in discussion, and Brent Halling of rural Perry mentioned the importance of Western Iowa Energy LLC, a 45-million-gallon biodiesel plant in Wall Lake.
“I see an energy grid in this state that is sustainable and includes biodiesel when solar and wind aren’t enough,” Franken said. He said there is potential for using biodiesel in aviation fuel and to power naval vessels and freighters, which are large emitters of greenhouse gases.
Franken, 64, hired on at Sioux Preme Packing Co. at 17 in order to pay for college, and he later worked as a bar manager, math tutor, bouncer and civil engineer in a law firm. He earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a master’s degree in physics at the Naval Postgraduate School and pursued professional studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and the Brookings Institute.
He announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination in October. He shares the field with fellow Democratic candidates Abby Finkenauer, Glenn Hurst and Bob Krause.
