Rick Friday, a 56-year-old veteran cartoonist for a newspaper publication, faced termination after a controversial incident involving one of his cartoons. The disputed piece featured two farmers, donned in overalls and sporting skewed baseball caps, engaged in conversation beside a fence. The dialogue was pointed and critical: “I wish there was more profit in farming,” one farmer said, to which the other responded, “There is. In year 2015 the C.E.O.s of Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer and John Deere combined made more money than 2,129 Iowa farmers.”

The fallout was swift. Following the cartoon’s publication, Friday disclosed that an email from an editor notified him that his services were no longer required at Farm News. The reason? A seed company had pulled its advertising in objection to the cartoon’s implications. Friday recounted, “I was informed in an email from an editor that the cartoon he created would be his last for Farm News because a seed company had withdrawn its advertising in protest to what the cartoon implied.”

Rick Friday’s background as an artist is as humble as it is self-made. Growing up on a 300-acre livestock and grains farm in Lorimor, Iowa, he began his artistic endeavors with a simple No. 2 pencil. His early ventures into art involved selling sketches to fellow children on the school bus, “in exchange for a nickel or a dime.” This early passion for drawing laid the foundation for a career that, until its abrupt interruption, connected him with readers over shared concerns and observations about rural life.

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