Officials are right – factory farms are bad for Iowa
Mackenzie Aime and Sandra Alper
Special to Iowa City Press-Citizen USA TODAY NETWORK
Just before the new year, the Johnson County Board of Supervisors voted for a ban on factory farms in their 2021 legislative priorities. This week, legislators will introduce statewide bills that, if passed, would establish a moratorium on new and expanding factory farms. The movement to stop factory farms in Iowa is homegrown, with roots here in Johnson County. Over the past few years, Food & Water Watch and 100Grannies for a Livable Future have rallied our fellow Iowans around the urgent need to stop factory farms. It’s time that our state legislators carry the torch on this priority into the General Assembly.
Iowa is in a factory farm crisis. The events of 2020 brought to light many of the consequences of our hyper- consolidated food system, which is dominated by the factory farm industry.
Factory farms render our rivers too dirty and dangerous to serve as public water supplies. For three months in 2020, the Des Moines River was virtually unusable because of high concentrations of microcystin. Microcystin are the toxic result of blue-green algae caused largely by the overuse and misapplication of manure and other fertilizer that run off from factory farms into our rivers and streams. Microcystin pose a serious health threat that includes the potential to cause both kidney and liver damage if ingested, and drinking water utilities are unable to filter this toxin out. Will our rivers eventually be entirely too polluted to serve as a source of drinking water? What will we do then? Our elected officials must take action to address this crisis before it’s too late.
Factory farms also put the health of our communities at risk. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the dangerous conditions that food system workers toil in daily. Widespread reporting has uncovered systematic denials of access to basic safety measures including PPE for meatpacking plant workers. As a result, over 6,000 Iowa meatpackers contracted COVID- 19 — and many have died — while corporations like Tyson and JBS profited. Unsafe conditions are driven, in part, by consolidation in our food supply. Exploding numbers of factory farms across Iowa are a large part of the ongoing consolidation that puts workers at risk. We can and must change this.
What’s more, factory farms are bad business for our state. Since factory farms monopolized Iowa’s ag sector, the state’s lost more than 85% of
its small- and medium- sized hog farms. Those lost farms were economic pillars for many rural communities, and rural voters know this. A recent poll by RuralOrganizing.org shows that 88% of young people and 82% of independents in rural areas support a moratorium on factory farms and corporate monopolies in our food and farm system. Many of those who adapted to the consolidated system and own factory farms became entrenched in debt, struggling to make ends meet while trapped in predatory corporate contracts. Clear momentum is growing around a food system that invests not in the corporate giants whose stranglehold brought us the factory farm crisis, but in the workers and independent farmers that bring food to our tables.
In calling for a ban on factory farms, Johnson County Supervisors have appropriately responded to the demands of their constituents. Johnson County’s state legislators must follow suit. Bills to establish a moratorium on new and expanding factory farms will be introduced in both chambers of the General Assembly this week. Co-sponsoring these bills would honor the wishes of Johnson County constituents as well as the county’s Board of Supervisors. The time for our state legislators to act is now.
We need bold policy solutions that protect our clean water, our health and Iowa’s remaining independent farms. When legislators announce factory farm moratorium bills this week, we will rally with the Iowa voters to stop factory farm expansion and corporate monopolies in our food system. Will you join us?
Mackenzie Aime is an Iowa City resident and organizer with Food & Water Watch and Sandra Alper is a member of 100Grannies for Livable Future