(Radio Iowa) – A retired University of Iowa researcher who leads a non-profit group focused on water quality issues is exploring a run for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture. Chris Jones, a Democrat, is the author of The Swine Republic, a collection of essays about agricultural pollution that was published as a book in 2023. “I don’t see any other candidates in either party trying to tackle or embrace these issues that we have in Iowa, you know, with our water and the environment in general,” Jones said. “I think it’s frustrating for people to read about the condition of their environmental day after day after day and politicians won’t address it.” Jones lives near Lansing in the northeast corner of Iowa. He is president of the Driftless Water Defenders, a group formed to focus attention on agricultural runoff into Iowa lakes and streams. Jones says Iowa’s alarming cancer rate — the second highest in the nation and one of only two states where it’s growing — has changed the conversation.

“We know that there’s multiple drivers of disease, right? And so it’s very difficult to pin a disease like cancer onto one thing,” Jones said, “but we also know that we’re sort awash in chemicals here, right? And we know the research is out there that shows nitrate in drinking water is a driver of cancer.” Jones says Iowa’s agriculture sector needs to diversify. “We can’t get the environmental outcomes that we want with only two crops on the landscape. We have two species covering 75% of our land area in Iowa. We’re never going to get good water when that’s the case,” Jones said. “We need a diversity of economy. We’ve got way too much invested in ethanol.” Jones says the ethanol industry produces way too few jobs when compared to the 11-thousand square miles of land planted with corn that’s used to produce ethanol.

Chris Jones

“That’s less than one job per square mile on the best land on earth. That’s ridiculous,” Jones said. “We need to think about something different than ethanol. We need to think about something different about CAFOs.” Iowa has at least four-thousand confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, according to the latest E-P-A data. Jones has formed an exploratory committee which allows him to start raising money for a potential campaign. Jones says he’ll decide in January whether to take the next step and run for office. 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.