Kyle Munson

kmunson@dmreg.com

LORIMOR, Ia. — It never was as simple as a single cartoon.

Rick Friday suddenly was the nation’s most famous cartoonist when he lost his freelance job with Farm News. The Fort Dodge-based trade publication caters to about 24,000 farmers in 33 Iowa counties. It’s typically not the stuff that goes viral; the newspaper's advertisers include the “largest line of castration banders in the U.S.A.”

Yet Friday, a 56-year-old, fourth-generation farmer on these 600 acres tucked into the northeast corner of Union County, two weeks ago became a free-speech martyr championed by the likes of Columbia Journalism Review and the New York Times.

“Honestly, I try carefully not to offend,” Friday said with a weary chuckle as he sat at the end of his dining room table, which also doubles as his artist’s studio. “But obviously that didn’t work.”

A local seed dealer and advertiser took offense to Friday’s cartoon in the April 29 weekly issue, which prompted his firing.

Friday is angry. But not bitter.

“I know exactly who that seed company is,” he said, without naming names. “But I’m a better man than those people that swung that ax.”

And he may be better off in the end. Friday confirmed that he's reviewing a Farm News proposal to return, among other offers.

Titled “Profit,” the cartoon in question portrays a pair of farmers talking along a barbed-wire fence.

“I thought there was more profit in farming,” one says.

“There is,” the other responds. “In year 2015 the CEOs of Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer and John Deere combined made more than 2,129 Iowa farmers.”

The corporations actually singled out in the cartoon seemingly preferred a more nonchalant reaction (which tends to minimize the fallout from whatever they find objectionable in the first place).

Cartoonist says his work got him axed

Monsanto issued a statement saying that it values “open discourse and conversation.

“We also believe that a little humor and the ability to laugh at ourselves goes a long way. … We had no part in your departure from Farm News. We appreciate anyone who speaks out on behalf of farmers.”

With classic rock icon Neil Young in recent years waging a one-man musical tirade against Monsanto, I suppose that a lone cartoon from rural Iowa wasn't likely to raise the ag giant's hackles.

Pen and pitchfork

Unwittingly, Friday seems to have distilled all the threads of his life into a single panel that also captures much of the modern farmer's existential angst.

He prefers to wear bib overalls, and his work isn't likely to get published in the pages of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. But he's a compatriot. Friday's life has been defined as much by the pen as the pitchfork.

To write those lines about pay disparity in agriculture was to spill his farmer blood on the page. If "Profit" suggests the hollowing out of agriculture's middle class — fewer modest-sized family farms and more consolidated agribusiness — then he has lived it.

"What are we going to do when this country has no more farmers?" Friday said, basically the question implicit in his cartoon.

Most mornings, he tends to his 100 head of cattle and checks on his widowed mother. Only then does he sit down to draw.

His three sons and two daughters have grown up to pursue jobs off the farm. His wife, Juanita, works at the registration desk of an orthopedic surgeons' office in Des Moines.

He’s been drawing since age 4 and is self-taught — unless you count the influence of public-school teachers, one of whom in high school implored him to take an art scholarship and capitalize on his talent.

"It's that passion of farming that gets in the way of a lot of opportunities I've had over the years," he said.

Fourth and final generation on the farm

When Friday was 14, he hopped in the pickup truck with his dad, David “Buckeye” Friday, without knowing where they were headed. During the drive, his father announced: “Today is the first day on your new job.”

The journey ended at a local grain elevator.

“Go in and talk to Gary, and he’ll tell you what he wants you to do," said Buckeye, who was intent to provide his son the experience of working off the farm.

When the elevator shut down several years later, Friday focused on helping his dad. But during the farm crisis of the 1980s, the income couldn't sustain the entire family. So Friday in 1984 got another job at the Winnebago factory in Lorimor, which manufactured curtains and other soft components for RVs. In 22 years, he worked his way up from janitor to plant manager, overseeing about 60 employees. He took vacations to farm.

A decade ago, the plant shuttered. Friday had the opportunity to relocate to Forest City but yet again chose to stay faithful to the farm. He doesn’t regret it because he enjoyed good years with his dad, stricken with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) before dying at age 76 in August 2014.

But now there's nobody in the family to take Friday's place.

“I’m the fourth generation," he said. "It ends with me. It’s over."

His children, Friday said, have watched him "battle through" farming. Why would they want to endure the same frustration? He scans his rural neighborhood and sees similar stories playing out.

"There’s things in agriculture that just don’t make sense," he said. "And it’s the passion that drives you. It’s the will. And eventually, you have to lose that. Whether it’s age, whether it’s your physical ability. But there’s no one stepping in and taking the place except for large ag corporations.”

From Farm News to Facebook

Friday sits at his dining room table with a small pile of pencils and pens and a fat pink eraser. He starts with a blank white sheet of typing paper. The “drawing part” comes easy, he said. It's the captions that give him fits.

His primary inspiration is Gary Larson, the single-panel cartoonist of “The Far Side,” whose pithy humor and surreal, anthropomorphic depictions of animals shot him to fame and widespread syndication in the 1980s.

Friday was first published in the Creston News Advertiser and was paid with nothing more than a free subscription. He soon cut the same deal with two more local newspapers.

When Farm News launched in 1995, the publication sought him out as its freelance cartoonist and actually paid him. Last month, that 21-year history was cast aside in a single email.

Friday read the email he received from news editor Larry Kershner: “Well, believe it or not, Farm News' 20-plus years relationship with you is over. Today I was instructed by (the publisher) that we will no longer take a cartoon from you. The last one, ‘Profit,’ has caused a (storm) here that I do not understand. In the eyes of some, big ag cannot be criticized or poked fun at. The cartoon resulted in one seed dealer canceling his advertising with Farm News. … I’m sorry it ends on a note like this.”

To be clear, Friday has no beef with Kershner, admires his integrity and sees him as a fellow victim in this uproar. The editor has worked at Farm News for nine years and approved the cartoon for publication without a second thought.

"When I first got it, I thought Rick was down at the coffee shop with his friends," Kershner said, "and they were on their smartphones figuring out stuff and he turned it into a cartoon."

He added, "Cooler heads have prevailed, and we’re in negotiations to see if Mr. Friday would try to draw for us again."

In the interim, the farmer-cartoonist discovered the power of social media to spread a free-speech fight. His initial Facebook post yielded more than 10,000 likes and 15,000 shares of "Profit," and it attracted more than 4,000 followers.

It also has motivated him to finally pursue his "Far Side" dreams more aggressively and begin to pen more cartoons that stray beyond farm life. The ideas have been gushing out of him so fast that he speaks them into his phone, or wakes up in the middle of the night and immediately begins drawing.

It's amazing that this turning point in his life and the broader debate might not have erupted. Friday has voluntarily turned in substitute cartoons upon request at least twice; one of the rejected panels depicted Mother Mary telling Jesus to close the door, asking him whether he was born in a barn.

But "Profit" was not a passing joke for this farmer. In recent days, Friday has revisited the advice he got from his high school principal. As an impressionable freshman, he joined older students in a hallway sit-in without a clue about what they were protesting: school lunches.

“I have no problem with someone sticking up for their principles and voicing your opinion," Friday's principal told him that day, "but you should really know what you’re doing this for.”

Rest assured that this time, Friday knows where he stands, and why.

Whether as farmer or artist, the concentrated power of business interests against individual expression disturbs him deeply.

I noticed an item on the Farm News website seeking submissions for the "Agriculture Art Award" sponsored by the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, Department of Agriculture and the Iowa Farm Bureau. The newspaper said that it "applauds this superb competition."

Perhaps Friday should enter his “Profit” cartoon and compete for the $1,500 prize in the 18-and-older category.

Why not enshrine a specimen of agricultural art that, more than any other this year, seems to have cut to the heart of the matter?

Kyle Munson can be reached at 515-284-8124 or kmunson@dmreg.com. See more of his columns and video at DesMoinesRegister.com/KyleMunson. Connect with him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (@KyleMunson) and on Snapchat (@kylemunsoniowa ).