A Food & Farm System For All

Iowa CCI members organize and build power for an equitable food and farm system that benefits everyone: family farmers, workers, eaters, and the environment. We’re fighting back against the factory farms that have polluted our water and devastated our communities for decades. 

Factory farms run by giant corporations like Cargill, Smithfield, and Tyson dump over 22 billion gallons of untreated, toxic liquid manure on farm fields across the state. This increases nitrogen and phosphorus levels in our waters, causing Iowa’s water crisis. Iowa’s food and farm system should be in the hands of many diverse, independent family farmers, and local communities should have the final say on if a factory farm can build in our communities.

CCI members are also involved in the fight to protect our land, water, and communities from CO2 pipelines. Bruce Rastetter and Summit Carbon Solutions want to build over 1,000 miles of CO2 pipeline in Iowa. This proposed project would extract an estimated billion gallons of water per year, tear up valuable farm land and destroy our land and soil. All while executives like Rastetter line their pockets with tax-payer dollars – that’s not right!

Iowa CCI members are fighting for:

  • Local organizing campaigns that support clean air and water, and slow down the construction and expansion of factory farms. 

  • Stronger statewide enforcement of existing laws and regulations: stiffer fines and penalties, and Clean Water Act inspections and permits by the Iowa DNR. 

  • Stronger statewide policies, rules and regulations: local control, a moratorium on factory farms, fairer tax policies, a mandatory strategy to clean up our water, and restored funding for water quality testing of our rivers and streams.

  • Protections from CO2 pipelines: statewide legislation giving landowners more say in whether or not a pipeline can build on their land, local zoning ordinances to ensure our communities are safe should a pipeline rupture occur.

How can you help?

More information on the issues CCI members work on: