Chris Jones, a retired University of Iowa researcher who wrote a book titled “The Swine Republic,” is running to be Iowa’s next secretary of agriculture.
“Iowa deserves better from agriculture in terms of the environmental outcomes,” Jones said.
Jones, a Democrat from Iowa City, currently leads the Driftless Water Defenders, a non-profit group focused on water quality issues. “We need to improve our water here. We’ve got this situation in Des Moines with the drinking water. We have other cities that are struggling with nitrate in their drinking water — Iowa City, Cedar Rapids,” Jones said. “We’ve got 6000 private wells in Iowa that are contaminated with nitrate, thousands more with e-coli.”
Jones spoke with Brownfield Ag News last week during the annual conference of the Practical Farmers of Iowa. He said Iowa faces an urgent water crisis. “Over my career I’ve talked with many farmers about this. A lot of farmers feel like they’re pigeon-holed into this corn/soy system and that the practices and decisions that they make that result in these high nitrate and other water impairments, that they feel like they’re locked into those decisions.”
According to the USDA’s most recent report, 94% of the land in Iowa that’s devoted to raising crops is planted with corn and soybeans. “We need some return to oats and we need a return to raising cattle on pasture,” Jones said. “We need to grow some forage crops like clover and hay and alfalfa and all these things could maintain prosperity in the rural landscape, but also give us better environmental outcomes.”
Wade Dooley, a Democrat who farms near Marshalltown, kicked off his campaign for state ag secretary earlier this week. Republican Mike Naig, Iowa’s current Secretary of Agriculture, plans to seek re-election.
Jones is holding a campaign kick-off events today in Des Moines. Jones was a research engineer for the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research at the University of Iowa for eight years before his retirement in May of 2023. Jones graduated from Simpson College in 1983 with a degree in chemistry and biology and earned a doctorate in analytical chemistry from Montana State University.
(Additional reporting by Brent Barnett, Brownfield Ag News)