The Iowa Farm Bureau Fed­er­­ation (IFBF) last week joined with Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and medical officials to announce that the organization donated to a public-private program to attract more primary care doctors to rural Iowa.

The program, called the Rural Physician Loan Repayment Pro­gram, is designed to help pay off the medical school loans of doctors who agree to practice in a rural Iowa community of less than 26,000 people and in a specific primary care area, including family medicine, general surgery, pediatrics and internal medicine.

When the loan repayment program is fully operational, officials will select 20 medical students...