It weighs 600 pounds, and it’s all butter.
The butter cow is one of the highlights of the Iowa State Fair, which is expected to attract more than 1 million people this week in Des Moines, the capital and biggest city of Iowa.
For 207 years, every August, the state’s official celebration of agriculture has been held. And for 107 of those years the Butter Cow — which is frozen, can be reused for up to 10 years and is big enough that state fair officials say it could butter about 19,200 slices of toast — has been one of the main attractions.
But this year, local and national media covering the event report that the US trade war with China is getting as much attention at the fair as the Big Boar competition and the Butter Cow.
And the main topic is soybeans. Iowa is the nation’s second-largest producer of the crop. China buys about 40 percent of the US soybean crop. The percentage is even higher in Iowa — possibly 60 percent or more.
The Trump administration has imposed tariffs on China, and China has countered with retaliatory tariffs. The moves have brought down the prices of Iowa grain, meat and other agricultural commodities.
One former Iowa office-holder at the fair over the weekend was Terry Branstad, the US ambassador to China who served as governor for 22 years before accepting the ambassador post last year.
