Allen Bonini retired in January 2021 after nearly 45 years as an environmental professional, serving in various technical, managerial and leadership positions in water quality, recycling and solid waste across the states of Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois. Most recently, he served fifteen and a half years as the supervisor of the Watershed Improvement Section at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. In retirement he continues to advocate for responsible public policy and actions to improve and protect water quality in Iowa.

Even if 100 percent of urban Iowa eliminated all of its pollution runoff, Iowa would not even come close to solving its water quality problems. In fact, if this improbable scenario were even possible, it would solve, at most, 10 to 15 percent of Iowa’s water quality problems. The real, fundamental, root problem impacting Iowa’s water quality is industrial agriculture. Yes, I said industrial agriculture.

Notice I didn’t say “conventional” agriculture. Today’s Iowa agriculture is anything but “conventional.” It is a product of the industrialization of an activity that used to be carried out by 85 percent or more of Americans not much more than 100 years ago when most people lived on farms and raised food for their own consumption and for their neighbors in surrounding communities. That is true conventional agriculture.

I also didn’t glamorize modern-day industrial agriculture by trying to conjure up images of a 19th century “family farm” by using the phrase “farm family” (unlike the organized corporate agricultural industry that likes to use the phrase to conjure up romantic images of ma and pa Kettle toiling away on the old homestead farm).

Today’s modern industrial agriculture, which dominates the agriculture landscape in Iowa, is anything but the romantic image that industrial agricultural interests have fabricated. Most Iowa farms are privately held corporations worth millions of dollars. It’s certainly not the image that pops into people’s minds when they hear the marketing hype from commodity groups about the quaint, noble Iowa “farm family,” so overworked and burdened to try and scratch out a living on the “family farm.”

Did you know that only about 35,000 full-time farmers in Iowa make most of their living from farming? Another roughly 52,000 Iowans farm but earn most of their income from off-the-farm activities. That very small group of Iowans (less than 3 percent of the state’s population) has an outsized level of control and influence over public policy when it comes to protecting water quality in rivers and lakes—thanks to the outsized influence of commodity groups in Iowa politics.

For example, if you talk to individual farmers, you quickly learn many don’t believe the Farm Bureau truly represents the best interests of individual farmers. Instead it leverages its economic and political clout, thanks to its financial services business ventures, to influence public policy in order to protect the interests of industrial agriculture. Farm Bureau is devoutly committed to the industrial agriculture network, made up of companies like Cargill, ADM, Bayer/Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer, and John Deere.

Farmers also have an outsized impact on polluting the state’s water, whether it is the lakes and rivers we swim, fish and boat in, or the water we pull from those bodies, as well as from underground, to treat and ultimately drink, or use to cook our food or wash our bodies.

Yet, in spite of farms and farmers’ impact on a fundamental resource that is essential for all life forms on Earth to exist and thrive, keeping our waters clean is almost wholly dependent on a voluntary commitment from farmers and farm landowners to clean up their act and stop polluting our state’s shared water resources. It’s always been that way, since the adoption of the federal Clean Water Act.

Iowa’s overly-hyped Nutrient Reduction Strategy purports to be the be-all, end-all solution to this problem. Under that strategy, all we need to do is stick with a well-worn (and failed) system of “voluntary compliance.” Farmers will continue to do the right thing and adopt voluntary conservation measures on their lands. There is one caveat, by the way. Farmers can only be expected to do more of this stuff if the government (translation: the general taxpayers) provides more money (euphemistically referred to as “cost-share”) to subsidize (or, as some might say, “bribe”) farmers into not polluting our waters.

So let me get this straight: Iowa’s grand solution for farm pollution is to keep relying on farmers to voluntarily change their practices—as long as the government helps pay for conservation measures, and there is no consequence to the farmer if they choose to continue to foul our water instead? Even though this has been our strategy for nearly three-quarters of a century, using untold billions of tax dollars, somehow the future will be different from the past, and our waters will magically get cleaned up?

How do we know this? I’m sorry, did I hear you correctly? Did you say “because the commodity groups say so, and they understand farmers the best, and they assure us that Iowa’s farm families care the most about the land, therefore we need to trust them”?

What am I missing here?! What is going to happen in the next 30 years that hasn’t happened in the last 30 years to produce a different outcome?

A wise saying (often attributed to Albert Einstein, though there’s no record of him saying it) comes to mind: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

The commodity groups assure us that this time, it will work. They are experts in all things farming.

The fact remains: farmers are clearly the root of Iowa’s water pollution problems. The tired old ways of relying on some farmers’ willingness to do what is right (as long as we pay them to do it) has failed to protect our state’s waters from harmful pollution.

So what is the alternative?

Well Iowa, how about trying this approach: What if someone could harness the political strength of non-farming based Iowans (remember, there are only about 87,000 full and part-time farmers in Iowa, while there are about 2.2 million voting age adults in Iowa) in a way that votes the damn rascals out of office this fall. All of them that bow and kiss the ring of Big Ag—regardless of party affiliation.

Iowans, if you value a healthy and happy future for yourselves and your children, you need to wake up from your corn ethanol, pig and chicken factory farm, evangelically fed comatose state! It’s past time to throw the rascals out and take back your state before it is too late.

As for me, I’ve had enough. I’m leaving the state. Good luck with your future. I’ll watch from afar to see who wins the battle—you or the 30 million pigs and their industrial agriculture overlords.

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Top photo of blue-green algae blooms on water is by Cheng Wei, available via Shutterstock.