At the Iowa Farm Table Podcast

This week’s story features Mary Skopec of Lakeside Laboratories, and Jodi Reese and Terry Langan of Nishnabotna Water Defenders. You can listen to the podcast above, or read the story below.

Be sure to check out our other related podcasts on water quality, what we know about the relationship between agriculture and cancer, and ways to help improveour nitrate issues in Iowa.

Mary Skopec: How do you get everybody to get in this boat and row in the same direction? I don’t know but everybody needs to get in that boat.

Beth Hoffman: These are the wise words of a woman I’m going to affectionately call Iowa’s Queen of Water Testing, Mary Skopec. She is the Executive Director of Lakeside Laboratory in Milford, Iowa. And before that, she worked at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, where she, you guessed it, tested water.

It was the early 2000s, when the Iowa legislature appropriated money for water quality monitoring for the first time.

MS: I was able to jump in right away and start developing this statewide monitoring program for wetlands and lakes and rivers and beaches and all of that, and it was phenomenal.

BH: Skopec tested 132 lakes around Iowa three times a year in the early 2000s, which gave the state critical information about our waterways. It might seem crazy to think about it now, but at the time, we knew very little about pollution in our state.

MS: One of the things that we said is we want to know what’s there and what’s not there, because we have no idea.

BH: But a large part of Skopec’s program was to also teach people how to test the water themselves. Because recruiting volunteers to test water, as we will see in this episode, is about much more than just testing water.

I’m Beth Hoffman, journalist, author and farmer. And this is At the Iowa Farm Table, a production of the Iowa Food System Coalition, a group of more than 60 organizations dedicated to making our food system more just and sustainable.

MS: I’d been in every little nook and cranny of the state doing water quality testing with volunteers, and really loved that.

But let’s go back about 60 years to the 1960s. US waterways–lakes, rivers, streams–were in bad shape. For decades, centuries really, we had dumped everything and anything in the water, hoping our industrial messes would all just float away. But in 1969 the industrial waste in a river in Ohio, the Cuyahuga,caught on fire. People were shocked and it was one of the reasons the Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970. Then in 1972, a bipartisan US Congress passed the Clean Water Act. Senator Edmund Muskie, a Democrat from Maine helped make it a reality.

Muskie: As citizens, you know what dirty water is. You know when you cannot swim , you know when those tributaries you used to fish no longer have trout. You know that’s pollution. And I’m not sure you’re interested in the exact quantity of suspended solids or the oxygen demand in the river, but [what] you are interested in is getting an unhealthy environment healthy, getting a dirty river clean. And we share that goal. And the 1972 Clean Water Act is intended to achieve that goal.

BH: Now, today…

MS: Anything that’s coming from a pipe is regulated under the Clean Water Act.

BH: The Act also mandated state governments monitor water sources and make a list of “Impaired Waters.” But once the testing began–scientists started to realize that the pollution was not just coming from pipes running out of wastewater treatment plants or factories.

MS: in the 1980s was when we really started to think about nonpoint source pollution, pollution from farm fields, exposed dirt, and from development in cities.

MS: Environmental groups around the country start saying, “Hey, states, what are you doing to meet the purpose of the Clean Water Act? [00:08:00] How are we going to address this thing that is not regulated?” And it really starts with some water quality monitoring, and that’s where I think in Iowa it was like, “We need to know the state of the state.”

BH: Skopec was one of the people who helped us learn about the extent to which non-point source pollution impacts the state of Iowa’s waters.

MS: We didn’t really know what to be looking for necessarily, so we just cast a very wide net. And through that time, we started to obviously see nitrate rising to the top, is one of those things that we were concerned about.

BH: She began with 60 sites. Then the Des Moines Register pointed out that beaches were not monitored, and the program grew. It was clear that bacteria–blue green algae and ecoli–was also an issue.

MS: We created a lake monitoring program that was looking at 132 lakes every year, three times a year. So those types of things really created a nice data set. Now, as much as that was a big improvement, I mean, there were still gaps in the program, right?

BH: Skopec and the DNR team realized there was just no way that one person, or even one office, would be able to monitor all the water in Iowa for all of the things–nitrates, phosphate, ecoli, etc–that might be in it.

MS: We created “IOWATER” which was a citizen-based water quality monitoring program. 10:45 And that’s where citizens came in, because if we’ve got 157,000 miles of streams, we’re never going to have enough [00:11:00] money to look at all those streams. But if we could have citizens do some level of testing, then communities can engage with improving their own issues.

BH: Skopec spent 20 years at the helm of the Department of Natural Resources’ Iowater program, and trained more than 6000 people to test water. Then she came to her current job at Lakeside Labs, a campus owned by the state of Iowa. It’s used as a science laboratory for University students in state schools.

MS: When you’re working in the DNR, you are trying to improve water quality every day as one person doing your research or doing your job, and Lakeside really helps me amplify that by a hundredfold every year. Because now I feel like I’m able to work with students that are going to- going to go out and do similar work.

BH: But over the years too, something else shifted. Iowa’s pollution problems were brought closer to home.

MS: I think nitrate is an interesting case because I think for a long, long time people were concerned about nitrate because of the Gulf of Mexico, hypoxic zone. I don’t think people in Iowa or the Midwest really resonated with–that’s our problem. It’s not local. It didn’t feel like it was our problem. Things don’t become your problem until they hit home. And so the emergence of cancer related data around nitrate has been a game changer because when it was just causing a little bit of algae growth in the Gulf, people weren’t so concerned. When it’s maybe causing thyroid cancer in your loved one or ovarian cancer, then it starts to be a game changer.

BH: We have done several podcasts about the links between Iowa’s rising cancer rates and nitrates and other chemicals in the water. But after 18 years, In 2023 the Iowa legislature voted to cut funding for the 60 real-time sensors in the University of Iowa network. Private funding was found to run it temporarily, but volunteers around the state have now also stepped in to fill in some of the missing data points.

I am Jodi Reese. I live in Griswold, Iowa. My name is Terry Langan, also of Griswold, Iowa.

BH: Reese and Langan started the Nishnabotna Water Defenders, a volunteer group. But their story starts much more recently. Their town is near the New Cooperative–a cooperative that, according to its website, now owns 85 plants in Iowa. In March of 2024, the Red Oak facility had a major fertilizer spill. Or actually there were three spills at the same plant. Terry Langan explains.

Terry Langan: There was the initial release of the fertilizer, and everything just flowed out all weekend long into the river. Then Monday morning, somebody got there and went, “Oh, no.” They called the city, who actually controls the pipe, and they shut the valve on the pipe and started trying to clean it up. Two weeks later, they got a big rain event, and they were afraid it was gonna flood over into the farm field across the street, so they opened that pipe again. So everything that had gathered that they hadn’t cleaned up, which is still not cleaned up, flushed back into the river. Then they had a really big rain in May, and that washed the berm out totally that they had constructed to contain what was left, and the rest of it went into the river.

MUSIC

TL: The devastation on the river was total. 60 miles of the river were neutralized. All the life was killed. piles of dead bodies. Everybody was around the river, those people couldn’t go outside all summer because of the stench of death.

BH: Clearly, as you just learned, this is a Clean Water Act violation. The fertilizer came directly out of a pipe and into the river, killing at least 750,000 fish. But the response by the cooperative and the state was slow, and for residents of the area, not enough.

TL: A year after the event, Brenna Bird, the attorney general, she slapped them with a $100,000 fine. And then moved along, business as usual. But as it is, the conditions on the ground have not changed from that day to this day.

BH: The plant did not need to install sensors or alarms. No shut off valves were required. And as we have seen across the country, in many different ways, the political will to prosecute polluters may be at a 21st century low.

JR: One week after this spill in New Co-op, in Atlantic, 15 miles north of Griswold, they were refilling the fuel in, at the Casey’s, and it spilled into the river. So there’s a carelessness and a total lack of accountability, to hold the polluters responsible. If you knew there was more of a consequence to your actions, you may pay better attention, and we’re just absolutely lacking consequences.

BH: But communities are not waiting for the government to act. There’s another way to push for change–through public involvement. Mary Skopec has seen it over her years working with volunteers on projects.

MS: The regulatory process is very slow. It’s very cumbersome. You can do testing, put something on the impaired waters list, you create a plan, enact that plan, and we were talking decades for that to happen. Citizens working in their local communities have an opportunity to talk to their local officials. They can work together and really address problems in a much faster way potentially. And so having that citizen monitoring network also really tackling on-the-ground problems in ways that sometimes government just takes a while to get around to.

BH: Jodi Reese knows this is true for her community too. Having people test water is not just a way to collect data. It is a way to let people get close and personal with the waterways in our lives.

JR: We partnered with the Isaac Walton League Nitrate Watch. We ask a person to test surface water around them. And when we first started, we had essentially no points in Southwest Iowa of data. I think we have 44 active Nitrate Watch participants now… but it’s also hoping to get people connected to how what’s happening on the landscape affects our water.

BH: Again, Terry Langan

TL: In my life and experience, the only way to foment change is from the ground up... Somebody said a long time ago, “We create the wind, and the politicians just put their hand in front to see which way the wind is blowing and try to stay ahead of it.” But it’s our duty, it’s our responsibility, as a relative to each other to demand the world we want to live in.

BH: Jodi Reese

JR: What our group is standing for and working toward, like Terry mentioned, it’s changing the wind. And testing nitrates isn’t going to change the wind, but it’s going to hopefully inspire and activate people to come together to demand better.

BH: Groups of volunteers like the Nishnabotna Water Defenders or Nitrate Watch help to fill in the gaps and collect more data. But it is also an entry point for people to get back on the land, to walk the rivers and lakeshores and to DO. It gives people the ability to experience the world around them and engage with it. And testing the water in their own back yard gives volunteers knowledge and authority. They come to KNOW a river better than anyone–and are empowered to speak out about it.

And perhaps, the boat Mary Skopec alluded to is one where we envision what a better, cleaner Iowa is, and row together toward it. Again Terry Langan

TL: Being pretty new to Iowa, it was shocking and really disappointing to see what constant oppression from these systems has done to people’s right to a clean and healthy life. They just don’t believe that they have that. It seems like, well, that happens. Yeah, it happens all the time. Yeah, we used to swim in the river. We used to take our kids down to the river. We used to eat the fish out of the river. You know, the fact that that cannot happen any longer, [00:14:00] that’s theft. That is theft of our natural resources by private industry.

MS: I think people often times are just like, “I can’t do anything. I’m just this one person.” Well, I don’t know. What can you do? I bet there’s something you can do. I bet there’s someone you can talk to. I bet there’s something that you can do today to start [00:56:30] to create that change that you want to see.

BH: A heartfelt thank you to Mary Skopec, Terry Langan, Jodi Reese. You have been listening to At the Iowa Farm Table, a production of the Iowa Food System Coalition. I’m Beth Hoffman. Thanks so much for listening.

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Photo from Lakeside Laboratories.

Music used under Creative Commons licensing. Thanks to Wolfgang Whorle, Ian Post, Alex Collier and Joshua Smoak, Idokay and Stanislav Barantsov .

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

Please note an important mistake on the original post! As a state, Iowa missed out on $200 Million Annually (it is listed here as the total amount) on money that would have been allocated from IWILL had it been funded. That means roughly $3-4 Billion Dollars over the 16 years since voters voted for the fund.

David Thoreson is an adventurer who has spent a large portion of his life at sea.

He has learned critical lessons—in the Arctic and at his home of Okoboji—about how we impact the world around us. And, he knows first hand, we need to make important changes, now.

In this special episode of At the Iowa Farm Table, Beth Hoffman combines Thoreson’s photography (and other images) with the usual audio podcast to create a video experience. In it she looks how and why agriculture in our state needs to improve, and the ways one community has done so.

Below is a transcript of the podcast if you prefer to read.

It profoundly changed my life

David Thoreson: I something was happening–dramatic–but I was not mentally prepared for what I witnessed,

Beth Hoffman: David Thoreson is an Iowan, an explorer and an avid conservationist. He witnessed firsthand something most of us have not.

DT: It profoundly changed my life.

BH Thoreson has experienced climate change in action–a story we will get into detail a little later. But he also knows what solutions to a warming climate look like, because he’s experienced that too–in his community of the Iowa Great Lakes, also known as Okoboji.

I’m Beth Hoffman, journalist, author and farmer. And this is Season III of At the Iowa Farm Table, a production of the Iowa Food System Coalition, a group of more than 60 organizations in Iowa working to make the food system more sustainable and just.

DT: I was a very active kid. I liked being outside…playing by the river all the time, making forts and building caves…And my grandfather loved sailboats and had a big library that was full of nautical books…I started developing a dream to go sail around the world as, really as a boy

.

BH: It took a while for Thoreson to figure out how to get on a sailboat. In the meantime, his adventurous spirit took him around the world as a young man.

DT: I rebuilt a bicycle and toured around South Pacific islands and slept in huts with native village people and went to New Zealand. I rode 1,300 miles, and then hitchhiked through Australia. I kept doing adventures, and then at some point, I came back here to Okoboji in the ‘80s and started a freelance photography business based on conservation and outdoor photography.

BH: Upon his return, Thoreson got more involved with his com b munity. He joined the city council and later, helped start the Dickinson County Water Quality Commission. Such activism was in his blood. His grandfather had been the president of Okoboji Protective Association, one of the oldest environmental groups in Iowa, started in 1905.

DT People would come up here by train, and…they would camp on the lake shore. So you can you can understand that that wasn’t very sanitary as far as human waste. Then there was also the pressure of animals and farming on the lake shore.

BH: People living on the lake realized early on that they needed an organization to deal with the water quality of the lake.

DT: The water quality movement here in the lakes area has been very progressive, even ahead of state and national trends…And so part of the push early on was to form partnerships both with the local farming community and also with our neighbors…because we understood that as long as we could keep these lakes clear, that it drove the economy.

BH: Conservation wasn’t just good for the flora and fauna, it was good for the economy. So the Association created a tax authority to raise money for water quality and recreational initiatives.

Many Iowans have long supported a similar statewide initiative–the Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund (also known as IWILL). Iowa voters overwhelmingly passed a ⅜ cent sales tax increase in 2010 that at this point would have generated more than $200 million for Iowa’s water and land. But the legislature never funded it.

The Okoboji tax authority is a local version and a model for how a statewide program is supposed to work.

DT: We’ve used a lot of the funds to purchase property to restore wetlands, and grasslands, and a lot of prairie around the lakes area.

BH: But what the tax shows is that people can work together for a common goal–clean water. They even work together to make sure animal confinement stays away from the lake.

DT: And we’ve done that strictly by peer pressure…W hen we hear of anything, we kind of get going and we do this in a bipartisan way. It’s something I call the Okoboji Model…When we need to do things to protect the lakes and the water, we work together to do it.

BH: But even though his work at Okoboji was rewarding, that dream of sailing never left him.

DT: I just really wanted to get on the ocean. But I’m from Iowa, you know?...I had heard of this farmer who lived up in Minnesota…His name was Roger Swanson.

So I went up and he said, “Well, meet me in Cape Town a year from now.” ..So, I loaded up my backpack and all my camera gear and eventually found the boat and off I went, sailing across the South Atlantic Ocean. 6,000 miles, 38 days nonstop, was my first adventure on the ocean.

DT: I sailed with him for 16 years. 45,000 miles around the planet and to both poles….And the more I got out there on the ocean, the more I started thinking about weather and climate systems. I used my water quality community knowledge here of Okoboji and watersheds, I met scientists who were working, and then I started photographing and documenting these things.

BH: Thoreson made four documentary films for Iowa PBS about his travels. But it was his work on the last film that changed his life. On that trip he tackled the Northwest Passage–a lane from the Atlantic to the Pacific, along the Arctic Circle.

DT: It had been a goal of mine to get through the Northwest Passage for 15 years.

BH: He tried to sail it in 1994, but the ice blocked his way. Then the winter of 2007 was one of the warmest on record. He decided to try to sail the passage again that summer.

DT: And so when I went up there that year, I expected to see lots of loss of ice But I was not mentally prepared for what I witnessed, to actually see the ice just disintegrate and melt and go away. We were able to go 6,694 miles all the way through in 73 days in one season, which was unheard of. It was a record, you know, like nobody had ever done this.

DT: It was the most profoundly feeling of sadness…what I saw in those 13 years, from 1994 to 2007, I witnessed was a 40% loss of our entire North Pole ice on planet Earth. And if we were looking at another planet out there in our solar system and said, “Wow, look at what’s happening. This planet is losing their entire polar ice cap,” we’d be freaked out. But it’s our planet.

BH: The issue with ice melting is that it took millenia to build up. Thick, sea ice, is white and reflects sunlight–in a process called albedo- which in turn helps cool our planet. It’s what keeps our planet at a temperature good for humans, and keeps our weather patterns stable enough to do basic things like grow food. Now there is very little of it left.

DT: I’m almost in a panic mode every single day. It’s like my burden that I carry because I witnessed a planetary tipping point, and I just want to shout it out as loud as I can to the world, Like, “People,” like, “we’re destroying this beautiful thing, this gift that, that we’ve been given, you know, to live life on this planet.”

BH: Witnessing the destruction of the planet has had a profound impact on Thoreson’s life. And yet so has the positive work he has seen in Okoboji. He has witnessed bi-partisan solutions to improving water quality, creating trails and reestablishing wetlands and prairie. But he also knows how much more we might have accomplished had the public fund IWILL been funded.

DT: Because we never funded that trust fund, IWILL...Everyone comes to the Iowa Great Lakes because we spent millions and millions of dollars to build these amenities here, which is great. I mean, we love it. But the lakes aren’t getting any bigger, and the stress with the number of boats and the people that are out here now is kind of getting maxed out. In a sense, we’re kind of loving the water to death.

BH: Thoreson says towns need to understand that investing in the health of water through practices like buffer strips and cover crops, and making quality parks and trails–it makes areas more desirable, especially for young families who seem to be flocking to the Okoboji area. Since 2010 rural counties around the US that invested in recreational activities grew, while those without them shrunk on average by 20%. Investing in lakes to swim in and trails to walk, it turns out, is not just nice. It is a viable economic strategy.

DT: Outdoor recreation, which many people don’t even know, is a $7 billion industry in the state of Iowa with 80,000 employees. Why don’t we add to that and maybe rein agriculture in some around the edges, and expand our economy in different ways?

BH: On average, an acre of corn in 2026 will make a farmerabout a hundred dollars, at best. That same acre, particularly land around lakes and streams, next to rural towns and along rivers, could be much more valuable to the community if something else was done there.

It’s true–Iowa is an agricultural state. But we also have to learn from our mistakes and ensure that farming in our state takes care of the lakes, our families, and our planet.

Very special thanks to David Thoreson. If you would like to hear more about his adventures, learn more about how and why ice is melting in the Arctic, and how Okoboji has worked to protect Iowa’s Great Lakes region–you can listen to the entire interview on substack or YouTube.

You’ve been listening to At the Iowa Farm Table, a production of the Iowa Food System Coalition. Read the transcript of this interview or send it to a friend on our substack

The full interview will be posted in the next day.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

Welcome back to Season III of At the Iowa Farm Table!

This week Beth Hoffman digs into pesticide drift with Amanda Severson (Grand View Beef), Joel Meyer (Meyer Agri-Air Inc), and Rob Faux (a farmer and communications at Pesticide Action and Agroecology Network). You’ll learn about how the laws around drift are determined and what happens when they are broken. And all in 16 minutes!

The full transcript of the show is included below if you prefer reading to listening. You can also refer to it if you feel like you missed something said in the show. There are also links in the transcript (and in the resources list below) for you to see for yourself where data was found.

The Iowa Food System Coalition has also done a series of interviews with Iowa’s federal and state candidates—and asked them all about what they’d do about pesticide drift. Watch the 2026 Candidate Conversations to hear their responses.

Related Podcasts Mentioned in Episode

* Drenched in Chemicals

* Iowa, Farming and Cancer: What Do We Really Know?

Transcript

[Amanda Severson] I was sitting here at my desk. And there was somebody applying fungicide. I didn’t really think anything of it because they were flying back and forth, and it was loud and distracting, but they were over the field.

[Beth Hoffman] Amanda Severson and her husband Knute own Grand View Beef, an operation in north central Iowa specializing in grass feeding and finishing beef.

[AS] But then all of a sudden, I just watched as the plane looked like it was coming just straight at me, and he turned it off where he was supposed to, but you just kind of watched, like, this l- liquid whoosh come and land in my grass.

[BH] She and her family experienced a pesticide drift incident in the summer of 2026.

[AS] Our kids were actually outside. And I had to tell them, “Sorry, you got to come inside.” And then the next time they went out to the garden, I said, “I’m sorry, but you have to bring your cherry tomatoes in and we have to wash them now.”

[BH] According to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (aka IDALS), there were 257 reported pesticide drift incidents in Iowa in 2025. That’s a number that has not really gone up or down significantly in about a decade. But Amanda Severson and her husband Knute decided NOT to report the incident.

[AS] What Knute and I do here is already incredibly unique. There’s a lot of eyes on us, and not all of them positive, right? So we’ve always just kind of focused on, [00:11:00] let’s tell our story, let’s keep our heads down, do our best, love our neighbors and support them, and those are the ways that we can make small changes… 12:30 you just hate to, like, burn a bridge by being negative.

Short music to transition

[AS] You know, when, when spraying chemicals is the norm in a farm community- It’s really hard to be the one to say, “Are we supposed to be doing that? Is that okay? Can you change this?” Because none of the other neighbors are asking for it, it’s just us. So it gets a little challenging, knowing when to [00:20:00] speak up. 12:30 It’s such a hard call to make.

[BH] The Severson’s are likely not alone. Many of us would rather not make waves with our neighbors, especially those of us who farm differently from the corn and beans most of our neighbors grow. Plus, it takes time and energy to figure out the laws, to do all the paperwork, and pay for the lawyers.

[AS] I did try to look up after that happened, like what was the distance supposed to be and, I mean, because they just kind of [00:15:00] flew on our gravel road and did a pass. And I’m like, are they supposed to be leaving a buffer?.. I should do more research. But I think unfortunately we’ve normalized it. Like,... “Oh, well, we’re the weird ones, so we’re not going to complain. We’ll just keep quiet.”

MUSIC

[BH] I’m Beth Hoffman, journalist, author and farmer. And this is Season III of At the Iowa Farm Table, a production of the Iowa Food System Coalition. This week we’re talking about pesticide drift– how it happens and what can be done about it.

But let’s start at the beginning–what is pesticide drift?

According to IDALS pesticide drift is (quote) “the movement of pesticide dust or droplets through the air at the time of application or soon after, to any site other than the area intended.”

The definition continues “Avoiding ALL off-site movement is the responsibility of the applicator. All pesticide applicators must always read and follow label directions, including checking supplemental labels for additional information. The Label is the Law!”

The label is the law. But having a law and enforcing it are two different things, as we will hear.

[Joel Meyer] The label is designed to give us direction

[BH] That’s Joel Meyer, the president of Meyer Agri-Air Incorporated, an Agricultural Aviation company flying in its 33rd year. He is also a member of state and national industry groups. Meyer described to me what it takes to be able to spray pesticides by air.

[JM] You have to have a commercial pilot’s [00:02:00] license first of all

[BH] Then you have to prove that you can obtain the necessary insurance to fly on pesticides,

[JM] To make sure that we can be insured for what we’re trying to do.

[BH]…and then apply with IDALS for a license. It’s $75 for three years. There is a test…

[JM] They want to know that you know how to wear, your PPE. You need to know how increments of measure of what they [00:05:00] are, from ounce, you know, all the way through the gallons…they want you to know what you can mix together, as far as products. They want to know that you understand wind and drift and how to read the label, how to comply with a label.

[BH] Complying with the label is the basis of all pesticide laws. Labels detail everything from the wind speed a chemical can be applied in and the area (or buffer) between a water source and where spray is applied. Labels specify the size of the droplets that must be used, the height it needs to be flown on at and even the boom size to be used.

[JM] We can’t daydream while we’re sitting in the cockpit of an aircraft. 23 if we’re not certain which way the wind is from, but we continue on and spray anyway, you’re going to be subject to drift. Flying over houses, that is something we’re very sensitive to, you know. But it’s still part of our job to choose the right pattern, to make that it works out right, that you’re going to cover that producer’s field as he is having us do, but we need to do it in a safe manner. That’s, that is what being a good steward’s all about.

MUSIC

[BH] It is of course critical that applicators–in planes and on the ground–apply pesticides safely. And yet, what does “safe” really mean?

[Rob Faux] Now, I want to make this very clear. The key word here is about acceptable risk, not safety.

[BH] Rob Faux is the communications manager for Pesticide Action and Agroecology Network.

[RF] I’m also a steward of a small scale diversified farm in northeast Iowa.

Beth: And you’ve also experienced firsthand the drift situation, correct?

Rob: I have experienced the drift situation multiple times, in my position as a farmer and grower.

[BH] Rob Faux was featured in Season I of At the Iowa Farm Table in an episode called Drenched in Chemicals. He was literally ‘drenched in chemicals’ while doing chores on his farm. He did report the incident, and years later, after lengthy litigation, he received compensation because his entire crop of vegetables and eggs was destroyed for the season.

Since that experience, Faux has become an expert on the laws surrounding drift. And he pointed out to me that the US laws around pesticides do not ensure safety. What they do is try to minimize risk.

[RF] The EPA’s job is to look at the existing research, assess what’s there, and then determine if there is an acceptable risk to benefit ratio to register the product for use.

[BH] I did an entire podcast about how we assess chemicals in the US in order to ensure the risk is minimized–it was called Iowa, Farming and Cancer: What we Really Know. It was one of my favorite shows, and you should definitely check it out.

But here is a very short summary of the process of making a product legal: first a company studies the active ingredient in a product. The company applies for it to be made legal. The EPA assesses the data on the product, which again, is data provided from the company about one ingredient in the product.

So without going into great detail (because it is in the other show) the inherent problems with this scenario are that:

* The only thing studied is the active ingredient, although sometimes inactive ingredients or mixes of chemicals can be harmful, like in the popular herbicide RoundUp

* Farmers rarely spray only one product. Many different products are mixed into tanks and then put onto crops and the land.

* We don’t know what kinds of issues there may be with long term exposure to the mix of chemicals we have in Iowa that are sprayed year after year

But for people like Amanda Severson at Grand View Beef, none of this information was clear or easy to find. Nor is it likely comforting to know that what is being sprayed has not been deemed (quote) “safe.” It is a system where a government agency decided for us that the risk of danger was worth the economic benefits.

[AS] I really just wish there was an easier resource or place for us to go find the information. Even just like a fact sheet on applicators, application, what we could expect, what we should be looking for, who to call if we think [00:27:00] something’s not being done correctly, that type of stuff.

[BH] There is an information page for farmers and consumers on the IDALS website that has some good basic information. But, as I mentioned before, enforcing a law is quite different from having one in the first place. Rob Faux points out that, although the department is responsible for making sure the labels are followed, there are too few people and too much work to do so effectively.

[RF] They are essentially an investigative branch. They need to go out and figure out what actually happened as best as they can by determining if the use label was not followed. For example, if they did a spray application and the wind exceeded the amount that was [00:32:00] listed on the use label, don’t spray if the winds are over 15 miles an hour, for example. and once they determine that, they have a few things they can do.

[BH] IDALS declined to be interviewed for this episode, but their website lists the consequences for drift. It boils down to three main things: IDALS can give an official notice of a violation. They can issue penalties of up to $500, and they can suspend licenses.

But what about those who were sprayed? The IDALS website makes that clear. “Iowa Code Chapter 206 does not contain any provision for compensation to be made to individuals for a loss due to pesticide use.”

MUSIC

[RF] I want to go back to where you said that people don’t want to report a drift incident because they want to be a good neighbor and I want to turn that on its head.

[BH] Again, Rob Faux.

[RF] A good neighbor would come to me and say, “Tomorrow I’m going to be spraying these pesticides on the field that’s next to you. [00:52:00] And according to the use label, the period of time you should stay out of the spray zone, is 48 hours, and I want you to know about that in case there is a problem.” That would be a good neighbor. We need to create the culture of two-way good neighborship.

[BH] Right now, the state of Iowa does not require notification of spraying, which is something that is mandated in other states. Giving notice would give neighbors the chance to at least bring children and pets inside, even if the applicator didn’t know the exact day they would arrive.

Leaving buffers too around schools and other farms–especially those who grow crops grown for human consumption or organic fields–should also be mandated. And stiffer penalties in the state, a fund for those who lose wages and products because of drift, and more resources into the pesticide division to speed up response time to reports.

But Rob Faux also insists that it is important the public report incidents more.

[AS] It feels to folks who have been drifted on in the current system, like, “It’’s not worth my time to report this because nobody’s going to do anything about it.” 42 I will admit there have been a couple times that we feel like we’ve had some drift on our farm, and I didn’t go through the process. And I berate myself for not doing it, because when you make the reports, It provides documentation that there is in fact a real problem. This is a chicken or an egg thing kind of thing. We have to create the evidence to show that the [00:41:00] problem exists in order to convince legislators to create a law that empowers the Pesticide Bureau to do something more than what they do right now.

[BH] But it’s not just the number of reports we need. We also need transparency behind the ights is always saved and could be made available.

[JM] We have to be accountable. I mean, I can tell you right now that every path we take, whether the aircraft is leaving the loading zone or where it’s going, or circling the field doing clearing turns, that is all data that we save, whether the Department of Agriculture needs to see it or the FAA needs to see it or anybody else, that transparency is huge.

[BH] Currently IDALS only lists a single number for each year–the number of agricultural pesticide incidents. So I asked AI for help finding more detailed information. Deep in a legislative analysis of pesticide drift for 2022, was the kind of information IDALS has access to. 548 total investigations/inspections which resulted in 87 advisory notices, 25 civil penalties initiated, 1 license suspended, 166 warning letters, 7 cases referred to EPA, and “124 other actions.” That’s a lot of numbers to take in via a podcast, but suffice it to say that an analysis of this kind–gives us a lot more information to go by.

If we had access to maps of incidents, the names of companies that had their licenses suspended or civil penalties…then maybe we can start understanding the real impacts of drift on our families and communities.

Very special thanks to Amanda Severson, Joel Meyer, and Rob Faux. Erin Jordan of the Gazette has also done great reporting on this–I will link to her work, in the show notes as well. You’ve been listening to At the Iowa Farm Table with me, Beth Hoffman. This podcast is a production of the Iowa Food System Coalition, a group of more than 60 organizations working together to make food and farming in our state more just and sustainable.

Resources

Pesticide Use Investigations and Enforcement—This page is maintained by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and lists information on pesticide drift, including what to do if you experience an incident. IDALS declined to speak to us for this report.

Field Watch— Joel Meyer of Meyer Agricultural recommended this website as a place applicators check before spraying. Farms—particularly orchards, organic farms and others that cannot be sprayed—should register on the app and map land NOT to be sprayed. According to the website, “FieldWatch is a non-profit company with a FREE and VOLUNTARY mapping registry that promotes communication between producers of specialty and row crops, beekeepers, seed companies and pesticide applicators in support of ongoing stewardship activities. With easy-to-use, reliable, secure and FREE mappings tools, FieldWatch is a trusted source of data in North America, promoting sustainability for plants, pollinators, people and planet.”

An example of a label (atrazine) and correspondence with EPA

2026 Candidate Conversations—

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

Jon Bakehouse is a corn and soybean farmer in southwest Iowa. He and his family were working to improve the sustainability of the farm over the years. But an unexpected health scare changed Bakehouse’s perspective of farming, and

About this podcast

This episode is part of a partnership with thePractical Farmers of Iowa, a farmer-led nonprofit with more than 9,000 members that equips farmers to build resilient farms and communities. Through farmer-led education, on-farm research, financial support, technical assistance, business development and solutions-oriented policy work, PFI helps farmers try new ideas, solve problems together and build successful farm businesses.

Every January, at the PFI annual conference in Des Moines, a ‘Conversation Coop’ (a room really) is set up, where attendees tell stories about food and farming. These stories are then stored with StoryCorp–a national story collection site–and at the Library of Congress. I got to thinking–there have to be great stories in that collection, stories that more people should hear. And so, with PFI and the story-teller’s permission, we have edited down the interviews and are sharing them with you here.

To learn more about prairie strips, go to:

https://www.iaagwater.org/prairie-strips-a-beautiful-tool-for-soil-preservation/

https://www.cals.iastate.edu/news/2025/prairie-strips-can-rapidly-improve-soil-health

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

Arlyn Kauffman, a row crop and egg farmer from southern Iowa, took a group of high school students to one of the nation’s largest agricultural shows, where major seed and chemical companies were showcasing their products.

What he learned there changed his life.

This episode is the beginning of an occasional series Beth Hoffman will produce in partnership with Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI).

PFI is a farmer-led nonprofit with more than 9,000 members that equips farmers to build resilient farms and communities. Through farmer-led education, on-farm research, financial support, technical assistance, business development and solutions-oriented policy work, PFI helps farmers try new ideas, solve problems together and build successful farm businesses.

Every January, at the PFI annual conference in Des Moines, a “Conversation Coop” is set up where attendees tell stories about food and farming. These stories are stored with StoryCorps, a national story-collection organization, and at the Library of Congress.

Arlyn Kauffman recorded his story at the Conversation Coop in 2026.

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Stay connected to the latest in Iowa’s food system news. Subscribe to the Iowa Food System Coalition newsletter for timely news, action alerts, and event updates, all focused on supporting local farms and communities.

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Thanks for listening to At the Iowa Farm Table Podcast! This post is public so feel free to share it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

More than 70% of farms in the U.S. have been lost over the past 125 years. Today less than 2% of Americans call farming their profession.

Yet, in a world with a changing climate and uncertain job market, many are looking to farming as a way to get back to the land, grow healthy food for their community, and discover a life full of meaning. But finding land and becoming a full fledged member of the family farm are essential first steps in the plan.

Beth Hoffman explores how securing land for beginning farmers isn’t just about creating business opportunity. It’s about revitalizing rural communities by giving the next generation the opportunity to farm again.

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Voices

Carly McAndrews—Trowel and Error Farm

Kristiana Coutu—Beginning Farmer Center, Iowa State University

Jada Fife—Fife’s Fine Foods and Land Acquisition and Management Coordinator at SILT

Hannah Breckbill—Humble Hands Harvest, creator of Farmers Land Investment Cooperative, and Land Navigator.

Resources

New Census of Agriculture reveals more farms, more farmers in Iowa

Stay in the Loop

Stay connected to the latest in Iowa’s food system news. Subscribe to the Iowa Food System Coalition newsletter for timely news, action alerts, and event updates, all focused on supporting local farms and communities.

Please like and share this podcast if you enjoy it!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

We wanted to send a quick note of appreciation for all of our listeners! Thank you so much for your support.

Please be sure to write a review of this podcast (especially if you listen outside of Substack). And sign up for the Iowa Food System Coalition’s Local Food Challenge taking place this summer.

Have you ever wondered why U.S. tax payers often pay farmers NOT to farm?

In this episode, we frame that question a little differently: have you ever wondered why U.S. tax payers don’t pay more farmers to provide ecosystem services for the health of our landscapes?

150 years ago, prairie got in the way of Iowa’s European settlers. In order to farm, they had to till it up. Now, many Iowans are advocating for us to restore as much of it as we can.

In this episode, Beth dives into the “why” of prairies with one of Iowa’s “Prairie Farmers,” Nicholas Lirio of Hocksey Native Seed.

Voices

Nicolas Lirio—Hocksey Native Seed and the Prairie Farm Podcast

Resources

History of the Conservation Reserve Program

House Farm Bill Falls Short

Environmental Working Group—Conservation Database

Music

Geoff Harvey

Monume

Stay in the Loop

Stay connected to the latest in Iowa’s food system news. Subscribe to the Iowa Food System Coalition newsletter for timely news, action alerts, and event updates, all focused on supporting local farms and communities.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

Iowa has a cancer problem. We are one of the only states in the nation with a growing cancer rate, and have higher levels of certain kinds of cancers than do similar areas of the country.

Many have put the blame on Iowa’s fields, while others say that legal pesticides are safe for us and the environment.

In this episode we go down the rabbit hole to understand—how do chemicals become products on our shelves? Is a legal chemical safe? And what do researchers know about the relationship between chemicals and cancer?

Thanks for listening to At the Iowa Farm Table. Please subscribe to receive our podcasts right to your inbox

Voices

Audrey Tran Lam—Environmental Health Program Director, Center for Energy & Environmental Education, University of Northern Iowa

David Cwiertny—Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Director, Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination, University of Iowa

Seth Watkins—Pinhook Farm

Weary Ramblers— Kathryn Severing Fox and Chad Elliott

Resources

Higher cancer rates in counties with more CAFOs, study finds

U.S. chemical management system must be transformed to prevent harm, argue new policy papers

REACH Regulation—European Commission on Energy, Climate change, Environment

Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors in Iowa—Iowa Environmental Council

EPA contact in Iowa

Cancer in Iowa—Iowa Cancer Registry

Interactive Iowa Maps—Iowa Cancer Registry

International Study Reveals Glyphosate Weed Killers Cause Multiple Types of Cancer

Stay in the Loop

Stay connected to the latest in Iowa’s food system news. Subscribe to the Iowa Food System Coalition newsletter for timely news, action alerts, and event updates, all focused on supporting local farms and communities.

Lyrics to Reduce, Reduce, Reduce! by the Weary Ramblers

Pesticides kill things

That’s just what they do

They wouldn’t be good at their job

If they weren’t bad for you

So we need to spray more sparingly

Only what we really need

Listen to Mother Nature

She loves diversity

Got a few weeds?

That’s alright

A little milkweed and some foxtail

Their just fine

If you’re sprayin’

Just to spray

It does more harm than good

It costs more at the end of the day

We gotta’ start doing something…there’s just too much to lose

Reduce, Reduce, Reduce what we use

Reduce, Reduce, Reduce what we use

Don’t plant your crops on the water’s edge

Give ‘em ‘bout fifty feet

On the edge of every field

Go ahead and leave the trees

Doin’ these two things makes for

A Healthier, happy home

For the plants to grow and for the little critters to roam

Got a few weeds?

That’s alright

A little waterhemp and thistles

Their just fine

If you’re sprayin’

Just to spray

It does more harm than good

It costs more at the end of the day

We gotta’ start doing something…there’s just too much to lose

Reduce, Reduce, Reduce what we use

Reduce, Reduce, Reduce what we use

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

The Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program was slated to bring millions of dollars into Iowa, while supporting new farmers. Contracts were signed, fellows quit their jobs, and we were off to the races. Until suddenly, we weren’t. USDA abruptly pulled the funding in March with two days notice, deferring the dreams of new farmers like Lawrencia Rogers and eliminating the jobs created to help them.

Please “like” this podcast or write a review! Share it with a friend too.

Voices

Lawrencia Rogers—Farmer

Jason Grimm—Executive Director of Iowa Valley RC&D

Katie Das—State Coordinator at the Sustainable Iowa Land Trust (SILT)

Breanna Horsey—Executive Director at SILT

At the Iowa Farm Table is brought to you by the Iowa Food System Coalition. Edited by John Hogeland and Tommy Hexter. Photo: Fellow Lawrencia and Farm Manager Malik doing tractor work at the Johnson County Historic Poor Farm. Courtesy Iowa Valley RC&D.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

In the second episode of our two part mini-series on restaurants, Beth visits with those championing for the transformation of Iowa into a farm-to-table haven. She talks to the chefs and farmers making it a reality, and to those in government supporting the change.

Voices

Suman Hoque of HoQ and Flora in Des Moines, Iowa

Jill Beebout of Blue Gate Farm, Chariton, Iowa

Austin Frerick, Author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry

Sam Gelman of The Webster

Jessica Dunker, President and CEO of Iowa Restaurant Association

Colin Tadlock, Chief of Staff to Iowa Secretary of Agriculture

At the Iowa Farm Table is brought to you by the Iowa Food System Coalition. Edited by John Hogeland and Tommy Hexter. Brian Doubek and Ian Post created the music used in the show.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

How come so much of the food in Iowa seems to taste the same? In this two-part mini-series, Beth Hoffman dives deep into how and why restaurants have evolved (not for the better), and the ways chefs can help reinvigorate the state of Iowa.

Listen to this 12-minute podcast on Substack or any other podcast player.

Voices

Suman Hoque of HOQ and Flora in Des Moines, Iowa.

Jill Beebout of Blue Gate Farm, Chariton, Iowa.

Austin Frerick, Author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry.

At the Iowa Farm Table is brought to you by the Iowa Food System Coalition. Edited by John Hogeland and Tommy Hexter. Brian Doubek and Ian Post created the music used in the show.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

Fruits and vegetables are often not the first thing many SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) participants buy. Produce can be more expensive, and when you are trying to stretch food dollars to feed hungry kids (children make up almost 40% of all SNAP users), processed foods often fills more bellies.

A program implemented in Iowa called Double Up Food Bucks helps stretch SNAP dollars by doubling the money spent on fresh fruits and vegetables. It’s a federally funded program active in Iowa for ten years now, and the federal and private funds spent on the program have successfully put more produce on the table.

Yet also ten years old is the fight to get the state of Iowa to also contribute to the program. This year, the legislature is being asked to contribute $1 million of its $9.7 billion budget on the program, a contribution that would also be matched by the federal government.

Thanks for reading At the Iowa Farm Table Podcast! Please subscribe to receive new episodes right to your inbox.

It makes sense for Iowa to support the program. Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) not only helps get produce into the homes of people on SNAP, it also supports local farmers. DUFB can be used at farmers markets or on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes purchased directly from farms. In several states, locally grown food has remained the focus, even as budgets have doubled. It is also good for Iowa’s economy—people who use it free up funds to spend on other important Iowa-owned businesses.

Listen to this week’s episode of At the Iowa Farm Table to learn more about Double Up Food Bucks, the people who use the program, and why and how it helps get more fruits and vegetables into the hands of those who need it most.

If you like this post, please “like” it! Comments are always encouraged too.

Voices

Noah Stein—SNAP and Double Up Food Bucks participant

Jazzmine Brooks—Healthy Incentives Director atIowa Healthiest State

Paige Chickering—Iowa State Manager for Save the Children Action Network

Natalie Estrem—Market and Programs Supervisor at LSI Global Greens

Resources

Only 1 in 10 Adults Get Enough Fruits or Vegetables

Healthy Incentives Pilot Final Evaluation Report

GusNIP Year 5 Impact Findings

SF 2027 (Double Up Food Bucks Appropriation Bill)

At the Iowa Farm Table is brought to you by the Iowa Food System Coalition. Edited by Tommy Hexter. Brian Doubek and Ian Post created the music used in the show.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

“Food as medicine.” The phrase is everywhere in the news and on social media.

But food and farming impacts not only our bodies. In this episode of At the Iowa Farm Table, we look at the concept of healing our bodies, by choosing better foods and by healing our soils.

“If we’re going to have healthy people, we have to have healthy soils that produce healthy plants. That gives us healthy people,” says Shaffer Ridgeway, farmer and Soil Conservationist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the arm of the US Department of Agriculture that works directly with farmers to help them improve their soil health.

Ridgeway will be part of a new Summit to be held in Iowa on March 2 + 3 in Cedar Falls, called Healing from the Ground Up. You can view the entire speaker lineup and register to attend at the webpage here.

“The goal of this Summit is to create the social movement necessary to build the bridge between producers and consumers,” said Tommy Hexter, the IFSC Executive Director and one of event’s planners. “We will not only talk about the microbes in the soil, or the microbes in your stomach—we’ll also talk about how we get food from the farm to the table in Iowa, in a concerted effort. We all have to figure out how to work together.”

Listen to this podcast that features some of the event’s speakers, discussing why and how healthy soil means healthier people.

Voices

Shaffer Ridgeway—Southern Goods Farm

Jenn Arndt—Roots Nutrition Counseling

Tommy Hexter—Iowa Food System Coalition

Resources

An Alarming Decline in the Nutritional Quality of Foods: The Biggest Challenge for Future Generations’ Health

Corn Era Hybrid Macronutrient and Dry Matter Accumulation in Plant Components | Agronomy Journal

Thanks to Shaffer Ridgeway, Jenn Arndt and Tommy Hexter. And to Jodie Huegerich and Audrey Tran Lam for their thoughtful editing of this episode.

Music by Beatfonics, Ian Post, and Mujo

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

Todd Western III’s family settled in Mahaska County in 1864, a year after Abraham Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation. More than 160 years later, the family still farms the same land.

As one would imagine, the Western family has weathered a lot over the course of their time on the land: price fluctuations, weather changes, and racial discrimination. But it was the sudden death of Western’s father that changed the course of his life and allowed him to find his calling.

Listen to Western tell the story of his family and how his passion for agriculture spurred him on to form the Iowa Farmers of Color.

Voices:

Todd Western III — Iowa Farmer and Senior Donor Advisor at Greater Twin Cities United Way

Resources:

You can find more information about the Iowa Farmers of Color at:

* https://www.iowafarmersofcolor.com/

* https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61564629460814

* Instagram - @iowafarmersofcolor

You can learn more about the class action suit against the US Department of Agriculture by Black Farmers (Pigford v Glickman) here.

Stay in the Loop

Stay connected to the latest in Iowa’s food system news. Subscribe to the IFSC newsletter for timely news, action alerts, and event updates, all focused on supporting local farms and communities. Sign up today and never miss a bite!

🎧 Produced by the Iowa Food System Coalition. Edited by Tommy Hexter.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

Working to change the food system can feel like a slog. Progress is slow, challenges are constant, and wins can be hard to see.

And yet, change has happened. Public understanding has shifted, and a growing movement in Iowa is pushing toward a food system that is more sustainable, more equitable, and more accessible. That progress didn’t happen by accident. It happened because people showed up.

In this episode, we reflect on the moments that inspire people to step into food systems work and to stay. Those moments come from many places: learning, frustration, love for the land, concern for future generations, or simply realizing that things don’t have to stay the way they are.

This work isn’t a sprint or a marathon. It’s a relay race. Each person carries the baton for a while, shaped by those who came before and responsible to those who come next.

When the work feels heavy, this conversation is a reminder that lasting change is built by people who keep showing up together.

Resources

* Find Your Legislators

* Attend Advocacy Training Sessions (Fridays, February 13, 20, & 27)

* Attend Iowa Food & Farm Day on the Hill (March 18, 2026)

* Explore the Iowa Food System Coalition’s food and farm policy priorities for 2026

Special thanks to Threase Harms, Luke Elzinga, Giselle Bruskewitz (Iowa Valley RC&D), Mallory DeVries, Jonathan Lawrence, Kate Gilbert, Chris Jones, and Matt Russell for sharing their time, insight, and inspiration in this episode. Mallory DeVries, Anrica Deb, and Tommy Hexter edited.

Photography from Beth Hoffman, Whippoorwill Creek Farm

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

There’s a word that explains a lot about modern agriculture, even if Merriam-Webster hasn’t caught up yet: chickenization. It’s what happens when animals become “widgets,” farms become factories, and power quietly shifts from thousands of farmers to a handful of corporations.

In this season finale of At the Iowa Farm Table, Beth Hoffman digs into how chicken went from luxury to dollar-menu staple, and what we lost along the way. Journalist and author Christopher Leonard traces the rise of vertically integrated poultry and the contract system that keeps farmers under someone else’s thumb. Former U.S. Senator Tom Harkin reflects on how federal policy helped supercharge “efficiency,” and what that really cost rural communities.

Then we head back to the Midwest to meet two very different kinds of poultry operations charting another path.

We won’t solve chickenization in a 20 minute podcast. But we do ask a pointed question: if cheap meat comes with sick soils, hollowed-out towns, and stressed-out farmers, is it really efficient?

Voices

* Senator Tom Harkin—The Harkin Institute

* Christopher Leonard—The Meat Racket, @cleonardnews, http://www.watchdogwritersgroup.com/ (watch full interview here)

* Jason Grimm—Grimm Family Farm

* Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin—Tree Range Farms (watch full interview here)

Resources

* New Study Highlights Benefits of the Partnership Between Contract Farmers and Chicken Companies—National Chicken Council

* 2024 Americans’ Views on Business Survey

* The Cost of Money and Commercial Poultry Growing

Special thanks to our guests Christopher Leonard, Tom Harkin, Jason Grimm, and Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin for their insight. And to Mallory DeVries and Anrica Deb for their thoughtful editing throughout this episode. Thanks to Meghan Holloran for supporting our social media and promotional work this season.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

This week on At the Iowa Farm Table, learn more about how and where your food is raised!

Beth Hoffman and Amanda Severson chat about their cattle businesses and how they raise meat differently than what you typically buy in the supermarket. They discuss current political trends and how the nutrition of the meat they raise differs from cattle raised on corn.

You can learn more about Amanda Severson and her family at https://www.grandviewbeef.com/ and on instagram @grandviewbeef

Beth Hoffman runs Whippoorwill Creek Farm with her husband—find them at http://iowa-farm.com and @whippoorwill_creek_farm on Instagram.

Thanks for listening to the At the Iowa Farm Table Podcast! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support the work of the Iowa Food System Coalition.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

What’s going on in farm country?

China, which normally buys half of America’s soybean crop, hasn’t bought a bean. Corn prices are dragging below the cost of production. Wheat and hogs? Also in the tank.

Across the Midwest, people are whispering—and in some cases shouting—that we might be headed for another farm crisis, the likes of which Iowa last saw in the 1980s.

To get perspective, I turned to Sarah Vogel. She’s an attorney, advocate, and author of The Farmer’s Lawyer, the memoir that chronicles the landmark Coleman v. Block class action lawsuit. As a young lawyer and single mother in the 1980s, she took on the federal government on behalf of 240,000 farmers facing foreclosure.

Later, she made history again as the first woman ever elected Commissioner of Agriculture in the United States, serving two terms in North Dakota.

After five decades fighting for farmers, Vogel’s perspective on this moment cuts through the noise. We talk about what she’s seeing on the ground, how federal policy is failing rural America, and what it takes to keep fighting for a fair food system.

At the Iowa Farm Table is brought to you by the Iowa Food System Coalition. We invite you to stay connected to the latest in Iowa’s food system news: subscribe to our newsletterfor timely news, action alerts, and event updates, all focused on supporting local farms and communities. Sign up today and never miss a bite!

Edited by Mallory DeVries.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

In recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day (October 13th in Iowa), we hear from two Indigenous women residing in Iowa and learn how shifting our perspective can help bring us back into balance with the natural world.

Featured Voices

* Marianna G. M. Cota, MPH — Ecologist, dreamweaver, heartist, disruptor, folklorist, and public health scholar with Yoeme/Yaqui, Kapampangan/Filipino, and Mexican lineage. Marianna is the dreamer behind INDIGENEXUS, inviting others to develop and maintain relationships with the creative and spiritual aspects of their being.

* Zine: Beauty All Around Us, a community-led project featuring indigenous youth perspectives.

* Sikowis Nobiss, BA, MA — Founder of Great Plains Action Society, which addresses the trauma that Indigenous Peoples and the Earth face through community engagement, civic engagement, mutual aid, rematriation, and healing justice.

* Nobiss works closely with the Honor Native Land Fund, an opportunity for non-Native people living in the Midwest to contribute to the rematriation of land to Indigenous stewardship. Through supporting land return, participants in HNLF acknowledge that we live on Indigenous homelands while taking practical steps toward repair.

* You can also join the Decolonial Repair Network to dive deeper.

Stay in the Loop

Stay connected to the latest in Iowa’s food system news. Subscribe to the Iowa Food System Coalition’s newsletter for timely news, action alerts, and event updates, all focused on supporting local farms and communities. Never miss a bite!

🎧 Produced by the Iowa Food System Coalition. Edited by Mallory DeVries.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com

Iowa schools spend millions feeding kids — in effect, they’re the largest restaurants in the state. But here’s the catch: most of those tax dollars don’t stay in Iowa. When food is trucked in from across the country and contracts go only to national corporations, local farms and rural communities lose out.

In this replay of our very first episode, we dig into the real economics of school lunch. You’ll hear how the now-defunded Local Food for Schools program changed what ended up on kids’ trays, why school districts’ purchasing power shapes what farmers grow, and what’s at stake in bills like HF 851 and SF 525.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://attheiowafarmtable.substack.com