Water quality normally isn’t a red-hot political issue. That’s not so in Iowa this year.
Drinking water quality and the environment rank as the most important issues to Iowa voters after the cost of living, healthcare, and Social Security and Medicare, according to a July survey commissioned by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.
Both gubernatorial candidates in Iowa, Democrat Rob Sand and Republican Zach Lahn, have issued water quality statements. Mike Naig, a Republican running for reelection as Iowa agriculture secretary, frequently discusses water quality during press and campaign events.
When it comes to water quality, however, no one has made it a campaign cornerstone like Naig’s opponent, Chris Jones.
“I’m not outspoken,” he said. “I’m just spoken.”
Jones said the voluntary approach to the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy (INRS) has failed, with million-dollar Band-Aids applied where systemic change is needed.
“Wouldn't it be a much better expenditure of money to try to develop a more sustainable, more resilient and more humane farming system to deliver better environmental outcomes?” he said.
Jones aims to transition the current corn-and-soybean-based system into one that features more crop and livestock diversity. For example, returning some acres currently grown to corn to make ethanol to pasture could spur sustainable beef production, he said.
This transition also will require a carrot-and-stick approach.
“A carrot might be programs that give young farmers access to pastureland or help them buy calves or watering systems,” Jones said. “A stick might be taxing grain that's fed to livestock in confinements.”
He said the stick approach has worked before, such as in the 1985 Farm Bill’s conservation compliance component.
“If you farmed highly erodible land and wanted to participate in the federal farm programs, you had to have a soil conservation plan and adopt various practices on your land to get federal money,” he said.
Estimates indicate that compliance provisions could be responsible for about 295 million tons — approximately 25% — of the 1.2 billion-ton reduction in cropland soil erosion that occurred between 1982 and 1997, according to everyCRSreport.com, which tracks Congressional Research Service reports.
“We know for certainty that worked,” Jones said. “Why can’t we have conservation compliance for nutrients?”
Voluntary approach is working
Naig said the voluntary INRS is working, prompting farmers to adopt conservation practices that improve water quality.
“For the last five years, we have set records for conservation adoption in the state of Iowa,” Naig said. “There has never been more funding, more engagement, more awareness and more actual work getting done. There are literally hundreds of partners across the state that are putting in the work to improve water quality.”
He pointed to a cover crop initiative in the Greater Des Moines Watershed to improve water quality in the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers. It expands the $25-per-acre cover crop cost-share from a 160-acre cap to 500 acres.
As of early September, the program had enrolled more than 300,000 acres, approximately tripling the 109,000 acres enrolled in the watershed’s 22 counties in 2025.
This year also marked the first time that enrollment in state cost-share cover crop programs exceeded 1 million acres, up from 2025’s 700,000 acres, Naig said.
“My focus is on actually getting things done, not talking about it, not writing about it, not telling people what they should be doing,” he added. “Creating a divide is not the right solution.”
Here’s the beef
One area in which Naig and Jones agree is that Iowa needs more cattle.
Boosting Iowa’s beef herd could help improve water quality via grazing, compared with growing corn and soybeans on subpar cropland, said Matt Helmers, an Iowa State University Extension and Outreach agricultural engineer who directs the Iowa Nutrient Research Center.
He co-authored a study that found the average nitrate concentration in tile drainage from a prairie grass-seed plot was well under 1 milligram per liter, even when researchers added fertilizer. Meanwhile, another study he co-authored showed tile drainage from corn and soybeans fields with no fertilizer applied for six years annually still had nitrate concentrations of 8 mg/L. (As a comparison, 10 mg/L is the federal safety standard for drinking water.)
“There could be opportunities for perennial vegetation in areas where corn and soybeans are not as productive or as profitable,” Helmers said.
Naig noted that the Cattle and Conservation Working Lands program could help some farmers make the switch. Launched as a pilot program, it has expanded to 28 counties and so far has engaged about 1,100 Iowa farmers to help convert 16,000 aces of underperforming row-crop ground to pasture ground, he said.
“We have the smallest [national] herd since the 1950s, and Iowa can play a significant role in growing the beef herd,” Naig noted.