I talk about Iowa a lot, because it’s the beloved stage where my childhood was played out: The place I go back to in my mind and heart when I need a reprieve from the details and deadlines in front of me.

Today, the State of Iowa stands as a flagship of what can go wrong when fertile land is over-farmed — when chemical companies are allowed to have their way. We, who live elsewhere, should be paying attention to how Iowa farmers and legislators allowed their land to be pillaged at the expense of every resident.

Iowa now has the second-highest cancer rate in the nation, and is well on its way to becoming Number One, according an article in last week’s Des Moines Register (https://tinyurl.com/3hhn9m5a).

The problem lies in the water, Iowa residents believe, where excessive nitrates plague almost every municipal water supply and every private well, at levels that have been proven to cause cancer.

To give you some idea of what’s going on there, Iowa is comprised of almost 84% farmland. In 2025, according to the Register, almost 86,000 farms in Iowa were planted in 13.5 million acres of corn and nearly 10 million acres of soybeans. The same year, almost 11 billion pounds of sprayed fertilizers and a portion of 215 billion pounds of manure produced by Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) were sprayed and land-applied on farms. That’s a lot of doo-doo for corn and soybeans that aren’t even feeding people.

For years, Iowans (and me) had the impression that their state fed the world. Turns out, however, that, these days, most of Iowa’s corn and soybeans fuel the ethanol and livestock-feed industries and are subsidized by tax payers.

That’s right, Iowa residents are paying for the poisoning of their own drinking water.

You might ask, what does this have to do with the Ozarks? A lot, actually.

“Beneath Iowa’s fields lies an intricate system of more than 2 million miles of drainage tile — underground pipes that turn what was once marshy ground into some of the most productive farmland in the world,” states the Register. “The pipes move water quickly into streams, often picking up excess nitrate from fertilizer and manure as it leaches through the ground.”

Here, in the Ozarks, we have karst hydrogeology, which features natural underground conduits which allow groundwater and contaminants to travel as rapidly as one mile per day, then resurface in wells and springs. Water doesn’t just run-off the surface of the land, it sinks through cracks in the soluble bedrock and, from there, into groundwater. In many ways, Ozarkers are more vulnerable to water contamination than Iowa residents.

Northern Missouri, with its vast fertile farm fields, is on a par with Iowa, where corn and soybeans can be produced in excess for the biofuel industries, and funded by government handouts in the form of tax credits. Tax credits: that’s a key phrase; remember it!

Missouri legislators, just like those in Iowa, appear to love catering to the chemical-industry lobbyists who lick their boots to gain favors. The latest travesty is a Missouri trade agreement with Ireland, whose largest export is — wait for this! — chemicals.

In Iowa, in 2022, farmers spent “about $7.3 billion on fertilizer, agricultural chemicals and seed, making Iowa a massive market for agribusiness giants including Koch, Syngenta, Pioneer and its parent company Corteva, and Bayer, which owns Monsanto,” states the Register.

Missouri, home to Monsanto’s (now Bayer) headquarters, is undoubtedly a top market as well.

We, here at the bottom end of Missouri, with our sensitive karst hydrogeology, are a stumbling block to the corporate predators and oily legislators attempting to have their way with our land. They’re hard on our heels with pending permits for the land-application of poultry-processing waste and water-guzzling data centers.

Without much but rocks and beautiful scenery to show for ourselves, we Ozarkers stand to lose even that, if we allow our water to become polluted and diverted by the boot-lickers, the weak-kneed and the power-mongers who operate in Jefferson City.

As usual, I see problems without easy answers.

However, I do have a suggestion. How about we cut back on the liberal tax credits we’re handing out to those who want to make a fast buck and despoil our virtues in the process?

Why are we paying the people who will poison our wells?

Sheila Harris is a long-time Barry County resident and a sales executive and investigative reporter for the Cassville Democrat with a particular interest in environmental topics. She may be reached at [email protected].