Chris Jones is a fisherman who lives in Iowa City. He writes the Substack newsletter The Swine Republic, where this post first appeared. 

Secretary of Agriculture is one of seven executive offices Iowans see on their off-year voting ballot. The Iowa legislature created both the office and the Department of Agriculture (now IDALS) in 1923.

It may seem curious that we have a statewide election for the administrator of a department that employs less than 2 percent of the state government workforce and represents a private industry that is only Iowa’s third-biggest and one with a declining share of the state’s Gross Domestic Product. All sorts of economic sectors are bigger than agriculture; for example, health care now nearly doubles Ag’s GDP in Iowa.

But we have to remember that in 1923, almost 40 percent of Iowa’s population lived on farms. It’s well below 10 percent in the present day, when only 67,000 people in Iowa list farming as their primary source of income (2 percent of Iowa) and many farmers don’t even live on the farm. GMO has made crop farming so easy that some Iowa farmers also farm in Kansas and the Dakotas and probably other states as well.

A person could wonder why we all don’t vote for a Secretary of Teachers, or a Secretary of Bartenders or Hairdressers or Truck-drivers.

Republicans have held the office continuously since 2007, when Spirit Lake farmer Bill Northey began his tenure after narrowly defeating organic farmer Denise O’Brien in the 2006 election. Democrats Dale Cochran and Patty Judge previously held the office going back to 1987. Northey landed a job in the Trump administration in 2017 and Governor Kim Reynolds appointed Mike Naig to succeed him as secretary of agriculture.

Naig has since won two elections of his own (in 2018 and 2022) and has announced his intention to run again in 2026. If he’s elected and serves a full term, he’ll have occupied the office longer than anyone in Iowa history, excepting the powerful Republican Robert Lounsberry (1973-1987).

Many years ago, a young fellow handed me his business card. It foreshadowed what sort of Secretary of Agriculture he would be.

Since all registered voters have a choice in who occupies the office, one could think the Secretary of Agriculture should represent all voters equally, regardless of whether they farm, are a CEO at an agribusiness giant, or teaching kindergartners on the east side of Des Moines. Yes, a reasonable person could think that. But with Naig, it’s been 1) Secretary of Agribusiness and 2) Secretary of Farmers, in that order.

It’s way past time that changed.

Almost every aspect of life in Iowa has been steamrolled by the corn-soybean-CAFO production model since the famous “fencerow to fencerow” paradigm was promoted by President Richard Nixon’s racist USDA secretary Earl Butz in the 1970s. There can be no doubt that our farming systems, tenaciously held in place by politically powerful agribusiness interests, erode the quality of life for every Iowan—and that includes many closely connected to the industry itself.

If you don’t visit Iowa’s rural towns, you should. There you can see how the current production model has decimated small town Iowa. Yes, there are exceptions—a town here and there where geography or luck or grit or visionary leadership or some combination thereof has enabled the citizenry to avoid becoming collateral damage as the Orc Army of Koch, Cargill, Bayer, ADM, Corteva, and Tyson relentlessly extract all that is good about our state and leave us with the pollution and societal decay. Both political parties have carried their water.

I’m starting to hear the word “water” pass the lips of a few Democratic candidates. If you’re meeting candidates at town hall meetings or candidate forums, as I did earlier this month in Iowa Falls, demand details! Don’t let candidates talk about water quality in the abstract. We need action—now. We need detailed ideas—now. The list below includes some ideas of mine, some informed by others, some inspired by others, some thought of completely by others.

Agriculture and Environment

1. The pollution that results from the Orcs’ preferred production system must be regulated. That has never been more clear than it is right now, when, yet again, 600,000 people in the Des Moines metro are held hostage by agribusiness and a few thousand upstream polluters. This is nothing less than a stain on our state and a public health crisis. We may not have the capacity to regulate the pollution today, but doing so is far from impossible. Parting ways with the Orcs will not be easy for farmers; those that do can be rewarded with no or more lenient environmental rules and more favorable tax policies.

2. Return zoning authority for livestock CAFOs to the counties. The current Master Matrix scheme was a disaster from Day 1 and its consequences have only gotten worse over the past 20 years. Consolidation and concentration of animals on a small subset of farms has served to rend rural Iowa into pieces. The livestock industry has been allowed to get so huge, and is so tenaciously guarded by the Orc Army, that Iowa needs a reset if we’re going to protect our and our children’s health from this behemoth.

3. Regulate nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) at the watershed scale. This will mean restrictions or taxation on fertilizer sales and animal populations. There are 56 watersheds in Iowa with an average of 1000 square miles. Regulate nutrient application at that scale. There is no other way to solve nutrient (and especially nitrogen) pollution. The current voluntary scheme will not produce better water during the lifetime of anybody reading this. After 50 years of deny, deflect, defend and delay by the industry—the jig is up. The voluntary approach had its chance and now its defenders need to swept off the playing the field—without mercy.

4. Restore riparian areas along stream banks. This means perennial cover (not row crops) in the flood plain. Streambank destabilization has been an ecological disaster in western and southern Iowa. We need 50-foot setbacks for farming along streams, and maybe 10 to 20 times that in some areas to allow re-meandering on rivers, which is a natural way to improve water quality and reduce flooding.

Nishnabotna River. Image credit: Iowa Learning Farms

5. Moratorium on additional agricultural drainage tile unless the outlet is mitigated for pollution at the landowner’s expense. We cannot solve nitrogen pollution until we come to grips with why it enters the stream network, and that is drainage tile.

6. Development of a strategic plan that helps Iowa retreat from corn ethanol. The Iowa Renewable Fuel Association said 20 years ago that ethanol was a “bridge” fuel. Get those few remaining cars off the bridge and then nuke it.

7. Development of policy incentivizing the production of alternative crops and livestock in pastoral systems. Inconvenient truth: we will never get adequate water quality with only two species covering 70 percent of Iowa’s land.

8. Set a maximum contiguous parcel size that can be planted to only one crop.

9. Ban mowing and chemical application to ditches unless well-defined traffic hazards will result.

10. Ban fall tillage. We’ve known for 40 years that it is a terrible practice. Why do we allow it when it’s clearly not necessary for robust crop yields? One reason—it’s convenient for farmers wintering in Florida. No thanks.

11. Ban application of manure from December 1 to March 15—no exceptions, and onto snow at any date.

12. Require cover crops at landowner expense on all rented crop land. We need policies that inspire non-operator landowners to sell. This could be one of several.

13. Sales tax on grain-based livestock feed to incentivize farmers to graze animals or feed with less-polluting forage crops.

14. Exempt farmland with a corn suitability rating (CSR) < 50 (100 is the highest) from local property taxes if corn and soy is not grown on the land. Tax land >50 CSR at elevated rates unless various conservation practices are in place. Or place an onerous tax burden on land <50 CSR if corn or soy is grown on it. We’ve got to quit growing the most polluting crops on marginal land!

15. Develop policy to create markets for alternative crops such as oats, wheat, barley, and livestock forages.

16. Zealous regulation of pesticide application—especially from airplanes, helicopters and drones. When the crop duster kills your oak trees or grape vines or the fish in a river—where are IDALS and/or the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR)? Stories abound of inaction and bureaucratic foot dragging on this. Mark my word—fungicides polluting our water will be the next big thing. It might already be the next big thing.

17. Onerous penalties for those in agribusiness killing our streams. Companies like New Cooperative, Three Rivers Cooperative, Agri Star, and CJ Bio need to be shown the door if they can’t operate in Iowa without leaving death and destruction of streams in their wake. Why do we tolerate this? We cannot and should not badger farmers to clean up their act when we let these Agribusiness giants kill entire rivers! Enough is enough! Evict them from Iowa!

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Food and Rural Development

1. A free fruit tree for any Iowan who wants one.

2. IDALS (Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship) helps provide assistance to any town or city for creation of a community orchard.

3. Creation of land halos around cities for food production. (Others have promoted this idea before me.) The city can manage or prescribe or incentivize food production as they see fit within certain guidelines—fruit and vegetable production, grazed livestock, etc.

4. Iowa school children should eat food grown and raised in Iowa—and from nowhere else. All children that want it can eat breakfast and lunch for free at their school. Former Iowa State Representative Chuck Isenhart of Dubuque has estimated that we could do this for less than half the cost of school vouchers. If 85,000 people farming the best crop ground on earth, many of whom were lucky winners of the genetic lottery by being born to a farmer couple, need our help to the tune of more than $1 billion (in 2024), we ought to be able to afford universal school lunch at 1/5 that cost (or less) for 500,000 Iowa youngsters!

5. Creation of a fleet of Foodmobiles—grocery stores on wheels that make regular rounds to rural Iowa towns and urban food deserts that are a minimum distance from a grocery store. Rural people should not have to eat Kwik Star and Casey’s meals for breakfast, lunch and supper because the nearest grocery store is 25 miles away.

6. Help create markets and incentivize production for food crops—sweet corn, beans of all kinds, kernza, wheat, oats, fruit, nuts, root vegetables, and many others that could be grown in Iowa. Importantly, less irrigation would be necessary to grow these crops in Iowa compared to arid areas where much of them are now grown.

7. Fast-track the farm workers necessary to (6) for citizenship. 70 of our counties have declining population and Iowa historically is one of the slowest growing states (in 1960, Iowa had as many electoral votes as Florida!). Immigrant farm labor could help revitalize rural Iowa and field workers could be trained to work in all facets of food processing, storage, and distribution.

8. More Parks. Why democrats don’t run on those two words alone bewilders me. Drive by any small town near a state park and what does the sign say at the city limit? “Gateway to 50,000 more forsaken corn acres”? No! It says “Gateway to Backbone State Park”, or Lake Darling State Park, or what have you. If I was a political consultant, I would put this on repeat and have the candidate listen to it while sleeping: We need more parks. We need more parks. We need more parks. We need more parks.

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Other

1. The College of Agriculture at Iowa State needs to be pried from the clutches of Big Ag and returned to the public. The incestuous relationship between corporate agribusiness and land grant research, the latter supported by tax dollars in a myriad of ways, is a malignant tumor for our state and has contributed to our polluted water in no small way. I’m not sure how this can be accomplished, but there is an urgent need to return this public institution to the public.

2. Environmental enforcement at the Iowa DNR in my view is unsalvageable and we need a reset. There are those that will tell you that this is a funding matter—if only we funded the agency at adequate levels, then they could do their jobs effectively. Funding is part of it for sure, but I can tell you that the problem is much, much deeper than that. The meat of agency culture is marbled with pro-polluter fat that cannot be sliced out.

A Democratic governor should peel off parks and wildlife into something resembling the old Iowa Conservation Commission, send Public Water Supply (drinking water) enforcement to the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, and then return primacy on environmental enforcement to the federal EPA for a period of time while we reorganize environmental enforcement into an Iowa Pollution Control Agency similar to Minnesota’s. That last thing obviously is a problem as long as Trump is president, but a future Democratic governor should be prepared to make it happen when the opportunity arises.

3. Get candidates to support a Constitutional Amendment for clean water and clean air! Iowa law should recognize access to clean water and clean air as a fundamental right. The Iowa Constitution should be amended to assure that right is protected, and to guarantee that governmental actions conflicting with this right are subjected to strict judicial scrutiny. A further constitutionally-imposed duty should be placed on state government: to affirmatively protect our precious natural resources for us, and for all future generations.

I’m sure some readers will scream, “You didn’t mention soil health!” Building soil health, i.e. restoring biological activity and organic matter to soils depleted from a relentless disturbance by iron (plows) followed by a biannual bath of toxic chemicals, is indeed an intuitively correct first step for farmers. It will not, however, transform water quality in the short term (and maybe not even in the long term), and in some cases may increase nitrate loss if other steps aren’t taken.

It is important farmers consider the overall condition of their soil, and we should encourage them to do so. I’m not in favor of using taxpayer dollars for inspiration. If it will produce measurable downstream improvements in water quality, then we should mandate basic soil health practices.

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Top photo is by dvande, available via Shutterstock.