A new poll conducted for Chris Jones’ campaign shows the Democratic challenger is “within striking distance” of Republican Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig and leads the incumbent after respondents read information about both candidates.

Change Research conducted the poll on behalf of Jones’ campaign from July 28 to August 1 and published key findings in a memo provided to Bleeding Heartland.

Naig led Jones by 42 percent to 40 percent in the first ballot test, before respondents heard biographies of either candidate. That’s within the margin of error (+/- 3.1 percentage points) for the survey of 1,071 likely general election voters. Some 16 percent said they were unsure.

After respondents read background information about both contenders, Jones led Naig by 46 percent to 40 percent, with 13 percent unsure.

Jones told me the poll backs up what he’s seen on the campaign trail: “Iowans are fed up with the status quo and ready for change.”

Naig’s campaign has not released any internal polling. But several signs point to Republican anxiety about the secretary of agriculture race.

Keith Schneider, a former New York Times national correspondent, is senior editor for Circle of Blue, where this column was first published. He has reported on the contest for energy, food, and water in the era of climate change from six continents. 

Expect the unexpected.

That’s the only certainty of planting season across the Corn Belt. Heat. Frost. Insects. Too much rain, or none at all. Now add the distress the Trump administration has cursed farmers with: Broken markets. Tariffs. Rising fuel costs.

Never, though, has the unexpected included this spring’s surprise: serious consideration of the harm from industrial crop and animal production. Farming’s mammoth water pollution and its consequences for public health are on the ballot in Iowa, where the primary election occurs today.

Candidates of both parties for governor and secretary of agriculture have included among their campaign priorities Iowa’s rising cancer incidence and the nitrate water contamination that may well be responsible. For the first time, the health and environmental damage from farming has moved from the margins to the center of political priorities in Iowa, an agriculture colossus that is the nation’s largest grain and pork producer.

Matt Russell is a farmer, political writer, and progressive ag and rural leader. He has published work in the New York Times, TIME, AgInsider, Civil Eats, and many state and local publications. He co-owns Coyote Run Farm with his husband Patrick Standley in rural Lacona, Iowa. A version of this essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, Growing New Leaders: Perspectives from Coyote Run Farm.

Iowans will have some outstanding Democratic candidates to vote for in 2026. A Democratic candidate for secretary of agriculture is not yet among them, but could be soon.

Chris Jones has announced an exploratory committee and plans to decide whether to run in January. You can read Laura Belin’s interview with him here. Jones, who has a PhD in analytical chemistry, is a longtime advocate for cleaner water. He’s a sharp critic of how the agriculture industry has contributed to the pollution but avoided taking enough (if any) responsibility for dirty water.

Until election day 2024, I had planned to run for Iowa secretary of agriculture in 2026. My plan was to stay in my appointment at USDA with the Biden-Harris Administration until this fall. I’d hoped Christina Bohannan would win in Iowa’s first Congressional district, and as only one or two Democratic members of the Iowa delegation, I’d work with her to identify a great candidate to offer to the Harris-Walz Administration to be the next State Executive Director of the Iowa Farm Service Agency.

“I heard a physician say one time, you can tell a lot from a person by looking at their skin, and if their skin looks good, generally they’re in pretty good health,” Chris Jones told a capacity crowd at The Harkin Institute at Drake University on November 12. “And the way I see it, I look at Iowa, our lakes and our rivers and our aquifers in that same way.”

Those polluted waters “don’t look good” now, Jones said. “They’re sick,” and they indicate “we have a malignant tumor growing on the inside.”

The malignant tumor, in Jones’ view, is “corporate agriculture.” But consolidation in agriculture and the dominant model for farming have “had effects far beyond our water.” They have also “contributed greatly to the decline of rural Iowa.”

After sounding the alarm for years through his writing and public speaking, Jones is now exploring a Democratic campaign for Iowa secretary of agriculture in 2026. He spoke to Bleeding Heartland after the event in Des Moines about his vision for change and the policies he would champion if he runs for statewide office.

Chris Jones is a research engineer (IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering) at the University of Iowa. An earlier version of this piece was first published on the author’s blog. -promoted by Laura Belin

I have written some things about manure lately (link, link, link, link). If you were able to make it to the end of those essays, you learned:

· We have a lot of livestock animals in Iowa

· These animals produce a lot of waste

· This waste is used to fertilize crops

· Manure is a good fertilizer

· Sales of commercial fertilizer are not affected very much by the availability of manure

Chris Jones is a research engineer (IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering) at the University of Iowa. An earlier version of this piece was first published on the author’s blog. -promoted by Laura Belin

The Landscape of Capitalism by former University of Iowa professor Robert F. Sayre (1933-2014) is an excellent short history of Iowa agriculture. I read Sayre’s essay many years ago and had all but forgotten it, but it was restored to my memory recently by a conversation I had with an ag drainage engineer.