Dani Replogle is a staff attorney with the national advocacy group Food & Water Watch.

The Midwest’s iconic prairie potholes and other wetlands across the nation are under attack. A politically motivated lawsuit targeting the popular “Swampbuster” provision of the 1985 Farm Bill aims to erode a policy that has protected wetlands and supported farmers for nearly four decades. The case–CTM Holdings, LLC v. U.S. Department of Agriculture–is now pending before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa.

From cleaning water and providing wildlife habitat to mitigating droughts and flooding, wetlands perform a panoply of ecosystem services that benefit human health and safety. As the impacts of climate change intensify over the coming years, farmers and rural communities stand to benefit immensely from wetlands protected by Swampbuster. That’s why a group of sustainable agriculture groups including Food & Water Watch, Iowa Farmers Union, Iowa Environmental Council, and Dakota Rural Action have moved to intervene in the lawsuit that will decide the program’s fate. 

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Pundits are fond of saying that elections are about the economy, and people’s relationship to it. “It’s the economy, stupid” and all that. It may be true—but there’s certainly evidence to the contrary.

Look no further than the reaction to Donald Trump’s tariff proposals from Iowans whose livelihoods depend on the agriculture sector.

Maybe the more accurate comment would be “What reaction?”

James Larew is an attorney in Iowa City who served as general counsel and chief of staff for former Governor Chet Culver. Chris Jones is retired from the University of Iowa where he worked as a Research Engineer at IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering. Prior to that he worked at the Des Moines Water Works and the Iowa Soybean Association. He is author of the book The Swine Republic, Struggles with the Truth about Agriculture and Water Quality. He lives in Iowa City. 

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.

Dan Piller was a business reporter for more than four decades, working for the Des Moines Register and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He covered the oil and gas industry while in Texas and was the Register’s agriculture reporter before his retirement in 2013. He lives in Ankeny.

Cinematically-minded Iowans of middle age or older recall two films set in Iowa in the 1980s. The best remembered and most beloved was the Kevin Costner’s ode to baseball sentimentality, Field of Dreams.

The other was Country starring Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard, a hard-edged look at the farm crisis that gripped the Midwest during the decade. Country personalized the worst agricultural downturn since the Great Depression, costing Iowa more than one-quarter of its farm ownerships and reducing farm land values by 70 percent.

The opening scenes of the 21^st century version of Country already are running. Corn and soybean prices have fallen almost 40 percent. Iowa farmers are enduring a drop in income of more than 25 percent since 2002. The effect isn’t limited to the countryside; the closing of Tyson Foods processing plant at Perry as well as a sequence of layoffs at Deere & Co., Firestone, and other implement plants have cost almost 2,000 Iowa manufacturing workers their jobs.

Longtime agricultural banker Terry Hotchkiss, chairman of the American Bankers Association agricultural and rural bankers committee, said farm lenders “feel like they are looking over a cliff with regards to the agricultural economy.”

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

We are in the home stretch of another presidential campaign, and it is important for voters to be alert for the unintended consequences of candidates’ promises.

Office-seekers and their supporters like to portray issues in terms of absolutes—as in, my position is the very best way to address this issue; my opponent’s way is all wrong.

Most of the time, issues are not all black, nor all white. Most of the time, issues involve many shades of gray, meaning there are no simple solutions.

Take illegal immigration, for example.

Diane Rosenberg is executive director of Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors, where this commentary first appeared.

When U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley stopped at Jefferson County Park in June during his 99-county tour, it was the first time in a long while that he invited the general public to a meeting in this county.

Of course, I had to attend to ask him about CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) and the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression or EATS Act.

The EATS Act is Big Meat’s next move to gut California Proposition 12, and it’s currently embedded in the House version of the Farm Bill. (Grassley and Senator Joni Ernst were among its original Senate co-sponsors.) California voters approved Prop 12 in 2018 by a 63 percent to 37 percent margin. The measure requires any pork sold in that state to come from sows who were raised in a larger, more humane area where they can more freely move. It prohibits the sale of pork from sows caged in gestation crates or pork from their litters.

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa. Disclosure: Dugan has filed several objections into the Summit Carbon Iowa Utilities Board (since renamed Iowa Utilities Commission) dockets in opposition to the CO2 pipeline. She has neither sought nor received funding for her work. This is an opinion piece.

During a February 7 interview, North Dakota radio host Scott Hennen asked Bruce Rastetter to answer the following question posed by a listener: Can the carbon in CO2 be separated and just store the carbon?

A portion of Rastetter’s answer is transcribed below (emphasis added):

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

You know how some memories stick with you for no logical reason? One such memory involves my dad in the 1960s when I was a teenager.

After World War II, my father worked for the City of Bloomfield, eventually becoming operator of the city’s water treatment plant.

Pop graduated from high school on the eve of the Great Depression. His most intense period of book-learning after high school came in the 1960s when Iowa decided to require state licenses for operators of municipal water treatment plants and sewage treatment plants.

After so many years away from the classroom, this was a time of anxiety as Pop prepared for the licensing exam. He attended classes at night and had his nose in textbooks other evenings.

All of this happened about 60 years ago. More recently, a different and far larger contingent of Iowans has been experiencing anxiety over state regulations. This time, the anxious people are angry the government doesn’t address all major pollution problems the same way it approaches water treatment and sewage treatment facilities.

Diane Rosenberg is executive director of Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors, where this commentary first appeared.

With the passage of Senate File 2370 (a version of legislation introduced by the governor’s office), Governor Kim Reynolds’ Executive Order No. 10, issued in January 2023, is now Iowa law. It will have a substantial impact on the state’s ability to protect waterways and communities from factory farms.

State agencies across Iowa will be prevented from strengthening rules and regulations, but will have the ability to weaken them. It’s now a race to the bottom that will adversely affect factory farming’s impact on water quality and public health.

The Iowa Senate approved SF 2370 by 32 votes to 14, with all Democrats present opposing the bill.

In the House it passed by 91 votes to 3. It was expected that the GOP caucus would fully support this bill, as they have with most of the Reynolds administration’s priorities.

But nearly all House Democrats voted for SF 2370, too.

Mitch Henry chairs the Iowa Unity Coalition.

As the campaign for Iowa’s third U.S. House district gains momentum, Lanon Baccam emerges as a beacon of hope for progress and a brighter future.

With a proven track record of dedication to public service, Lanon Baccam embodies the values and principles that will lead our nation forward. Lanon is a veteran who served eight years in the U.S. Army and Iowa National Guard and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2004. He has never forgotten his fellow veterans and has dedicated his life to helping them. 

Throughout his career, Lanon Baccam has shown an unwavering commitment to addressing the pressing issues facing our communities. Following his military service, Lanon served in the U.S. Department of Agriculture under former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack. There, he worked to support veterans, expand pathways to jobs in the agriculture industry, and promote training and entrepreneurship opportunities for veterans transitioning to careers in agriculture.

Tommy Hexter is running as a Democrat for Iowa House District 53, representing Poweshiek and most of Tama County. He is currently Rural Organizer and Educator with the Iowa Farmers Union, a commissioner of the Poweshiek County Soil and Water Conservation District, and the director of a local food business called Grinnell FarmToTable that sources products from 35 local farmers.

Sour cream is just one of several tastes being left in Iowans’ mouths as Daisy Brand, a company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, plans to build a new plant with state and local support in Boone County. 

Recent announcements from the City of Boone, Iowa Economic Development Authority, Governor Kim Reynolds’ office, and Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig all emphasize the positive economic impact associated with the start-up of a new Daisy dairy processing plant in Boone.

Keith Schneider, a former New York Times national correspondent, is senior editor for Circle of Blue. He has reported on the contest for energy, food, and water in the era of climate change from six continents. This report was first published by The New Lede and is part of an ongoing collaborative project between The New Lede and Circle of Blue that looks carefully at how agricultural policies are affecting human and environmental health.) 

EMMETSBURG, IOWA –Raised in rural Iowa, 71-year-old Maureen Reeves Horsley once considered her tiny hometown in the northwest part of the state to be a blessed space. She recalls a time when the streams here ran clean and the lake water was clear.

The family farm where Horsley grew up was one of more than 1,200 farms in Palo Alto County in 1970. In her memory, the county’s 13,000 residents enjoyed a thriving agricultural-based economy and close-knit neighbors. Cows grazed in verdant pastures. And seemingly endless acres of corn marched to the horizon.

“We had good crops, corn and soybeans,” Horsley said of her family’s farm along the West Fork of the Des Moines River. “You could make it on a small amount of farmland. You felt safe. It was a good life.”

Two generations later, Emmetsburg and Palo Alto County have been radically transformed into a place where many residents worry that the farms that have sustained their livelihoods are also the source of the health problems that have plagued so many families.

Douglas Burns is a fourth-generation Iowa journalist. He is the co-founder of the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation and a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, where this article first appeared on The Iowa Mercury newsletter. His family operated the Carroll Times Herald for 93 years in Carroll, Iowa where Burns resides.

Harold Beach, a northeast Missouri farmer who runs a row-crop operation and raises hogs and cattle, traveled to central Iowa on April 20 to urge one of the nation’s top regulators to stop a multi-billion-dollar takeover of a Lee County fertilizer plant he and other rural advocates say will further erode competition in agriculture and increase costs for one of modern farming’s essential inputs, nitrogen.

“I would like you to be fearless and courageous and be a Teddy Roosevelt,” Beach told Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan.

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.

The authors of this post are Dani Replogle, a staff attorney with the national advocacy group Food & Water Watch, and Michael Schmidt, a staff attorney with the Iowa Environmental Council.

Safe, clean drinking water is a basic human right. In Iowa, that right is under serious threat as nitrate-laden pollution piles up, and state cancer levels rise unchecked. It’s time for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to step in. We filed a petition last week demanding just that.

Iowans have industrial agriculture to blame for worsening water quality. Over the past twenty years, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have steadily replaced family-scale operations statewide. Today, Iowa is home to far more of these enormous polluting operations than any other state. As Big Ag moved in, they consolidated control in Des Moines, permeating state government to tilt the scales in favor of industry.

Robin Opsahl covers the state legislature and politics for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

In their final days of the 2024 legislative session, Iowa lawmakers approved $8.9 billion in state spending for the upcoming year, financing the state government and public services. Most of those decisions now await a thumbs up or down from the governor.

Appropriations bills included funding for topics discussed often this session, like increasing pay for Iowa judges, as well as spending cuts to Area Education Agencies (AEAs), the provider of special education and other school support services in Iowa.

Budget bills can also include policy components. This year, language restricting on diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the state’s public universities was passed as part of the education spending bill.

Downstream of the Dunning’s Spring waterfall in Decorah; photo by Ralf Broskvar, available via Shutterstock.

Diane Rosenberg is executive director of Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors, where this commentary first appeared.

Given Iowa’s 721 polluted waterways, it’s clear current factory farm rules and regulations don’t adequately safeguard water quality or public health. Stronger regulations on concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are needed to protect water quality from worsening.

Yet a section of Senate File 2370—passed by the Senate along party lines and now pending in the Iowa House—would permanently prohibit the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) from strengthening CAFO regulations. The bill, which Governor Kim Reynolds’ office introduced, would codify the governor’s Executive Order Number 10, issued last year. That order required every state agency to conduct a comprehensive overhaul of the Iowa Administrative Code in order to promote private sector development.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

No problem is so big that we can’t run from it—or at least avoid thinking about it. That’s human nature.

There are many concerns that should command our attention but do not. Too often we hope or assume a serious problem will go away or will spare us.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, too many of us discount whatever the scientists tell us—as if the anonymous pundit on social media knows more than the people who have devoted their lives to studying a particular problem.

But there is something else I have come to realize, unfortunately. Government leaders in Iowa have shown little interest in understanding “the Big C”—the widespread presence of cancer in Iowa. 

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

For all the national and global perspectives in the book, BARONS —subtitled “Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry”— has an “Iowa air.” That tag is not about the odors from farm factories. Nor is it a cheap shot at Jeff and Deb Hansen, who have owned Iowa Select Farms for about 30 years and sell 5 million hogs a year. They are dubbed “The Hog Barons”—one set of the seven barons the book title comprises. 

The “Iowa air” referred to is the persona of the author, Austin Frerick, 32, a seventh-generation Iowan, graduate of Grinnell and now a Thurman Arnold Fellow at Yale University. In the Arnold Project, faculty, students, and scholars collaborate on research dealing with competition policy and antitrust enforcement.

In BARONS, Frerick (like many Bleeding Heartland contributors) worries about what happened to the Iowa he knew as a paper boy delivering the Cedar Rapids Gazette or helping out at his mother’s bakery shop.

Scott Syroka is a former Johnston city council member.

It’s unclear whether Koch Industries would avoid paying utility replacement taxes worth millions of dollars every year if it acquires OCI Global’s Iowa Fertilizer Company plant in Wever (Lee County).

According to Chuck Vandenberg’s February reporting for the Pen City Current, the Iowa Fertilizer Company plant’s current owner, OCI Global, paid between $2 to 3 million in utility replacement taxes in 2023 alone.

To understand why it’s unknown whether Koch Industries would be required to pay these taxes if it acquires the plant, we must look back in the history books.

After deregulation spread across the country in the 1980s, including in the electric and natural gas industries, the Iowa legislature responded in 1998 by passing Senate File 2146, the Property Tax Replacement and Statewide Property Tax Act.

Quaker Oats plant in Cedar Rapids, photographed by David Harmantas (Shutterstock).

Scott Syroka is a former Johnston city council member.

Attorneys for Canadian Pacific Kansas City submitted a 59-page filing to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board on February 26 regarding the proposed acquisition of Iowa Northern Railway by Canadian National.

The Canadian Pacific Kansas City filing highlights the proposed deal’s “national importance” and cites “competitive concerns of significant magnitude” in calling for the Surface Transportation Board to classify Canadian National’s takeover attempt of Iowa Northern as a “Significant” transaction rather than the “Minor” transaction status that Canadian National has sought.

The distinction matters because “Minor” transactions aren’t subject to the same regulatory requirements as “Significant” transactions—meaning the public would have less access to information and less time to review the deal.

Bonnie Ewoldt is a Milford resident and Crawford County landowner.

The Iowa House is considering a bill designed to combat “organized retail theft” of property from stores. Lawmakers supporting the measure said they wanted to deter looting, which has happened in some U.S. cities. Law enforcement has not always intervened. 

Iowans may naively think such lawlessness cannot happen here. But it could. 

Summit Carbon Solutions has been using strong-arm tactics to take farmland for a pressurized CO2 pipeline. Meanwhile, power players in the Iowa Senate, Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver and Senate Commerce Committee Chair Waylon Brown, block all attempts at legislative intervention. 

Wally Taylor is the Legal Chair of the Sierra Club Iowa chapter. He wrote this essay after attending the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ virtual public hearing about the new Chapter 65 regulations on February 19.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has been revising its regulations for animal feeding operations as dictated by Governor Kim Reynolds’ Executive Order 10, issued in early 2023.

Chapter 65 of the Iowa administrative code has long contained confusing and inadequate rules, which are open to manipulation by livestock producers and the DNR.

The DNR tried to revise the regulations recently to provide more protection for Iowa’s waters in areas of karst terrain. But the governor’s “Administrative Rules Coordinator” Nate Ristow blocked the proposed rule, because it would not reduce the “regulatory burden” on livestock producers.

From left: Democratic State Representatives Austin Baeth, Molly Buck, Josh Turek, Elinor Levin, Sharon Steckman, and Adam Zabner. Screenshot from video posted to Facebook on February 8.

“When I joined Environmental Protection, I never envisioned that I would be talking about a raccoon bounty, but here we are,” Democratic State Representative Josh Turek said on February 7, while the House Environmental Protection Committee considered the only bill on the agenda that day.

As they weighed in on the bill, Democrats voiced broader frustrations about the committee’s failure to engage with any of Iowa’s serious environmental challenges.

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa and has worked as an online editor for the past 12 years.

A Gevo official confirmed on February 2 that the company expects to use 300 million gallons of water per year, or 700 gallons per minute, at its planned Lake Preston, South Dakota Net-Zero 1 (NZ1) plant and an adjacent green hydrogen facility known as the Dakota Renewable Hydrogen (DRH) Project.

When asked if the water use estimate provided was for the NZ1 plant, the DRH plant, or both, Heather Manuel, vice president of corporate communications for Gevo, replied, “Both – we have an agreement with Kingbrook Rural Water for our water supply and do not require a permit.”

On February 6, 2023, Summit Carbon Solutions announced its partnership with Colorado-based Gevo, although that arrangement is not yet reflected on the South Dakota pipeline route. Sabrina Zenor, director of stakeholder engagement and corporate communications for Summit, stated on January 25 that Gevo would be added to the proposed CO2 pipeline route when the company resubmits its application to the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission. The commission denied Summit’s initial application last September.

State Auditor Rob Sand has asked federal regulators to block Koch Industries’ planned acquisition of OCI Global’s Nitrogen Iowa fertilizer plant in Lee County.

In a January 30 letter to Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan and Assistant U.S. Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, who leads the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, Sand noted tax incentives totaling some $550 million had supported building the plant, which “was pitched to taxpayers as a project that would encourage future competition and growth for the region.”

Scott Syroka highlighted the problematic sale in a Bleeding Heartland post last month. That article detailed how then Governor Terry Branstad’s administration orchestrated a package including $300 million in federal tax giveaways related to a flood relief program, $133 million in local tax abatements from Lee County over twenty years, and $112 million in state tax credits or forgivable loans.

The auditor’s letter argued that a sale to Koch Industries would likely increase fertilizer costs for farmers. It would also negate the original intent of the deal; the idea that Koch wouldn’t own the new plant justified “the massive commitment of tax dollars in the first place.” Sand said he agreed with comments Branstad made to reporters in 2013, asserting that the Koch brothers “don’t want the competition,” whereas Iowans “want competition.”

Sand is the first Iowa statewide official to contact federal officials about the sale, which OCI Global announced in December.

Photo of happy farmer by Serg Grbanoff, available via Shutterstock.

Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers.

America Needs Farmers.

This statement has become a cultural touchstone. It became popular during the 1980s farm crisis, as a way to raise awareness of the difficulties suffered in the Midwest agricultural industry.

This phrase and branding has seen a bit of a renaissance in the past decade—featured on bumper stickers, commercials, apparel branding, and even partnerships with major universities like the University of Iowa.

America Needs Farmers, or “ANF,” has become less of a slogan for awareness, and more a brand or identity that Midwesterners tout alongside Carhartt or John Deere. The slogan is now almost synonymous with the Iowa Hawkeyes and rural farming, and is controlled by the Iowa Farm Bureau, a 501(c)5 organization representing farmers across Iowa.

Before Iowa politics kicks into high gear with a new legislative session and the caucuses, I want to highlight the investigative reporting, in-depth analysis, and accountability journalism published first or exclusively on this site last year.

Some newspapers, websites, and newsletters put their best original work behind a paywall for subscribers, or limit access to a set number of free articles a month. I’m committed to keeping all Bleeding Heartland content available to everyone, regardless of ability to pay. That includes nearly 500 articles and commentaries from 2023 alone, and thousands more posts in archives going back to 2007.

To receive links to everything recently published here via email, subscribe to the free Evening Heartland newsletter. I also have a free Substack, which is part of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Subscribers receive occasional cross-posts from Bleeding Heartland, as well as audio files and recaps for every episode of KHOI Radio’s “Capitol Week,” a 30-minute show about Iowa politics co-hosted by Dennis Hart and me.

I’m grateful to all readers, but especially to tipsters. Please reach out with story ideas that may be worth pursuing in 2024.

Photo of Allen Bonini at Lincoln’s Tomb in Oak Ridge National Cemetery (Springfield, Illinois) provided by the author and published with permission.

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.

I devoted my entire 44 year professional career trying to protect and improve our environment across three Midwestern states. I tried to do that through the policies, programs and advocacy I’ve been involved with and/or led. Some who know me personally know I rarely back down from a fight or am afraid to call out injustices or wrong-headed decisions by organizational leadership—whether in state, regional or local governments or in corporate America (all of which I’ve served in one or more capacities throughout my career).

A select few of you know I believe “sometimes you have to play hardball.” That sums up my view of where we need to go in terms of the efforts to clean up our water and other natural resources here in Iowa. 

My fellow environmental colleagues, it’s time to recognize you don’t win an alley fight by bringing an olive branch, and you don’t take a knife to a gun fight.

Ralph Rosenberg of Ames is a retired attorney, former state legislator, former director of the Iowa Civil Rights Commission, and former leader of statewide Iowa nonprofit organizations. He and Barbara Wheelock, also of Ames, signed this open letter on behalf of PRO Iowa 24, a group of concerned rural Iowans with progressive values from Greene, Guthrie, Boone, Story, and Dallas counties.

Now is a good time for the public to make their wishes known for 2024 state policies. Tell your legislators to act on behalf of all Iowans, create an economy that works for all Iowans, and use the government to protect the most vulnerable. Republicans can enact each and every one of these items on a bipartisan basis.

Iowa’s Republican legislators, Governor Kim Reynolds, and Senator Chuck Grassley inspired the majority of Bleeding Heartland’s most-read posts during the year that just ended. But putting this list together was trickier than my previous efforts to highlight the site’s articles or commentaries that resonated most with readers.

For fifteen years, I primarily used Google Analytics to track site traffic. Google changed some things this year, prompting me to switch to Fathom Analytics (an “alternative that doesn’t compromise visitor privacy for data”) in July. As far as I could tell during the few days when those services overlapped, they reached similar counts for user visits, page views, and other metrics. But the numbers didn’t completely line up, which means the Google Analytics data I have for posts published during the first half of the year may not be the same numbers Fathom would have produced.

Further complicating this enterprise, I cross-post some of my original reporting and commentary on a free email newsletter, launched on Substack in the summer of 2022 as part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Some of those posts generated thousands of views that would not be tabulated as visits to Bleeding Heartland. I didn’t include Substack statistics while writing this piece; if I had, it would have changed the order of some posts listed below.

Governor Kim Reynolds with her predecessor Terry Branstad in photo originally published on Reynolds’ official Facebook page in September 2020

Scott Syroka is a former Johnston city council member.

Antitrust regulators should block the proposed sale of OCI Global’s Iowa Fertilizer Co. plant in Wever (Lee County) to Koch Industries. The deal would be outrageous, but we must look back to fully understand why.

HOW IOWA TAXPAYERS HELPED FUND OCI’S FERTILIZER PLANT IN WEVER

Then-governor Terry Branstad and Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds offered nearly $550 million in tax giveaways to OCI’s predecessor, Orascom, to build the plant prior to its 2017 ribbon cutting.

That included $133 million in local giveaways such as Lee County property tax abatement over twenty years. Another $112 million in state giveaways like corporate tax credits and forgivable loans. And an estimated $300 million in federal tax giveaways from the get-go thanks to the Iowa Finance Authority approving Orascom for $1.2 billion in Midwestern Disaster Area bonds created by Congress after the 2008 floods.

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa and has worked as an online editor for the past 12 years.

A labyrinth of limited liability companies own numerous animal feeding operations in Clarke County that continue to rely on the city of Osceola’s depleted water supply, even as city residents face restrictions since the Osceola Water Works Board of Trustees declared a water emergency on October 5.

A search of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) animal feeding operation website identifies 27 animal feeding operations in Clarke County. The chart below identifies these facilities, the majority of which appear to house hogs in enclosed structures commonly known as confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa and has worked as an online editor for the past 12 years.

Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and also serves as Director of the Atmosphere/Energy program at Stanford University, where he has worked for 30 years. He’s spent decades studying ethanol and carbon capture and has published two books that extensively explore those subjects as part of his broader research work examining clean, renewable energy solutions: 100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything (2020), No Miracles Needed (2023).

Thus, Jacobson’s work places him in the eye of the storm surrounding Summit Carbon Solutions’ plan to capture and carry “9.5 million metric tonnes per annum (MMTPA) of CO2 collected from the 34 ethanol facilities, although the pipeline has the potential to carry more.”

Environmental Science & Technology, a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Chemical Society, published Jacobson’s most recent study on October 26. That study, called Should Transportation Be Transitioned to Ethanol with Carbon Capture and Pipelines or Electricity? A Case Study, was funded in part by the Sierra Club.

Photo of Neil Hamilton speaking at the Iowa Nature Summit on November 17 provided by the author and published with permission.

Neil Hamilton is the former director of the Drake Agricultural Law Center and professor emeritus at Drake University law school. He delivered these remarks at the Iowa Nature Summit at Drake University on November 17, 2023.

My hope in planning the Summit was our collective work can help change the trajectory and effectiveness of how we advocate for nature in Iowa. I hope you agree we are off to a good start.

Elevating nature in our discussions

One challenge we face is elevating the discussion of nature to the place it deserves in the public discourse. It is too easy for those threatened by our issues to characterize us as just a bunch of nature lovers—people who like to play outdoors while others are trying to make a living. This is a dangerous mind set because if political issues involving nature are reduced to being between Iowa’s pigs and you playing in the river—history shows pigs may win every time.

Our respect for nature is about much more than just enjoyment—as vital as that is. Our respect for nature focuses on the essential role—the foundational role—nature plays in supporting life. Without nature there is no human survival, it is that simple. That is why water quality, soil health, and climate are essential to our future—it is why we need to elevate the importance of nature in our advocacy.

If we want the view of Iowa nature in five years to be better and not just a continuum of little progress and slow decline, what must change? How do we get out of the rut—or ephemeral gully—we find ourselves in today?

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa and has worked as an online editor for the past twelve years.

Summit Agricultural Group operates at least seventeen wells in Kossuth County alone that have not applied for water use permits through the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) Water Allocation Compliance and Online (WACOP) permitting system, Bleeding Heartland has learned.

The DNR confirmed the lack of permit applications in response to questions prompted by landowner Alan Laubenthal’s October 5 testimony at the Iowa Utilities Board’s evidentiary hearing in Fort Dodge on Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed CO2 pipeline.

“The department has not received permit applications for these facilities,” DNR outreach and marketing bureau chief Tammie Krausman confirmed in a November 3 email. “It is the applicant’s responsibility to know if they need a permit and apply according to the requirements. The requirement is 25,000 gallons in a 24-hour period. While facilities are capable of pumping more than 25,000 gallons per day, the permit requirement is based on the actual usage of water.”

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

For many years, an Iowa State University political science professor and I met several times a year for coffee and conversation.

During our coffee klatches, I probed my friend’s thinking on world affairs, on government issues, and on politics in Iowa and across the United States. I suspect he tried to use these get-togethers to give me a something of a graduate-level seminar in American government, absent any lectures. 

Educators these days are frequently accused of trying to indoctrinate their students with a particular point of view. But what I came to realize during those sessions at the Stomping Grounds coffee shop in Ames was fundamental to excellence in teaching: The professor did not tell me what to think. He tried to get me to think more clearly and to analyze with more sophistication and depth. He helped me spot weaknesses in my own opinions and develop a better understanding of factors that may lead other people to see things differently than I did.

After retiring, my friend sold his acreage and left Iowa for a more scenic place to live. Our caffeine intake has declined, but we still stay in touch via email. Last week, the professor’s Stomping Grounds “student” field-tested the professor’s method of posing challenging questions to get people to re-examine their own opinions and see why some people have a different view than other people. 

Rebecca Wolf is Senior Food Policy Analyst at the national advocacy group Food & Water Watch. Get involved in the fight for a fair Farm Bill at foodandwaterwatch.org.

Amidst the Congressional chaos of the past week, one important deadline passed rather inconspicuously. The Farm Bill expired on September 30, the last day of the federal fiscal year. Passed every five years, the Farm Bill is a suite of policies passed on a bipartisan basis to keep our food and farm system running. The longer our legislators delay, the more we flirt with brinkmanship for critical programs that keep people fed and ensure farmers are paid.

Iowa needs a fair Farm Bill. With more factory farms than any other state, millions of acres in mono-cropped corn and soy, and a mounting clean water crisis, Iowa offers a clear case study of the failures of modern corporate agricultural policy. Iowa’s legislative delegation must seize this opportunity to pass bold reforms that support farmers, rural communities, and clean water — not Big Ag.

Every member of Congress from Iowa voted on September 30 for a last-ditch effort to keep the federal government open until November 17. The continuing resolution will maintain fiscal year 2023 spending levels for the first 47 days of the 2024 federal fiscal year, plus $16 billion in disaster relief funds for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is the amount the Biden administration requested. In addition, the bill includes “an extension of a federal flood insurance program and reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration.”

U.S. Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) were among the 126 House Republicans who joined 209 Democrats to approve the measure. (Ninety Republicans and one Democrat voted no.) House leaders brought the funding measure to the floor under a suspension of the rules, which meant it needed a two-thirds majority rather than the usual 50 percent plus one to pass.

Iowa’s Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst were part of the 88-9 majority in the upper chamber that voted to send the bill to President Joe Biden just in time to avert a shutdown as the new fiscal year begins on October 1.

House members considered several other federal budget bills this week and dozens of related amendments—far too many to summarize in one article. As I watched how the Iowa delegation approached the most important votes, a few things stood out to me.

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa and has worked as an online editor for the past 12 years. 

While testifying before the Iowa Utilities Board on September 5, Summit Carbon Solutions chief operating officer James “Jimmy” Powell outlined the company’s need for large amounts of water at each of the sites identified as pipeline “partners” throughout the five-state route proposed for a CO2 pipeline. “We’ll need the water supply at every plant, so we’re working with individual plants,” he said. According to the Summit Carbon website, the pipeline would connect to thirteen ethanol plants in Iowa.

Online records from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office show that twelve Summit-affiliated LLCs filed Certificates of Authority as foreign limited liability companies on the afternoon of August 31. A thirteenth LLC, Saint Ansgar SCS Capture, LLC, filed an application for a Certificate of Authority on July 3, which was approved on the same day.

All are identified as member-managed firms formed in Delaware, and all share an address with Summit Carbon Solutions in Ames. SCS Carbon Removal, LLC is identified as the member or manager firm on all of the applications. Jess Vilsack, general counsel for Summit Carbon Solutions, signed for each of the LLCs.