branstad

Governor Terry Branstad and Lt. Governor Kim Reynolds stopped at the Van Vark farm in rural Otley earlier today to talk about water quality issues.
They have been traveling around the state over the past few weeks to talk about different issues facing the agriculture industry.
Governor Branstad fielded questions about state-wide water quality initiatives that he signed into law in his previous term, and also discussed his proposal to reallocate funds from the state’s education infrastructure sales tax to finance additional resources to help farmers implement better practices to protect water and soil. The Van Vark farm is located in the Van Zante Creek Water Quality Improvement Project in Marion and Jasper Counties as part of the Clean Water Iowa Initiative.
“The involvement and the support of the farmers in this watershed area and the amount of them that are going to cover crops and use of CRP and wetlands and all of that–it all fits together, and I want to make sure the state is going to be a reliable partner,” Branstad says.
Branstad believes many farmers need the support of the state government, considering depressed prices on corn and soybeans, which have hit the bottom lines of many producers in the state for a few years now.
Roger Van Vark hosted the chat at his farmstead in rural Otley, and tells KNIA/KRLS it was important to have the governor see the impact of the voluntary conservation practices first hand, and he felt the response from Branstad was positive.
“I am putting in CRP acres, filter strips, cover crops, and things like that, and [the governor] is here looking that over and telling us the kind of job that we’re doing and I think he’s impressed with how it’s going,” Van Vark says.
Branstad tells KNIA/KRLS News he was surprised to learn the impact abandoned coal mines also have on water quality, and how prevalent of an issue it is in Marion County.
“I didn’t realize that this county has most of the abandoned surface mines and also the water quality is damaged by having this high acidity in these ponds that livestock can’t even drink out of, so it’s encouraging to see the progress that’s being made on that,” he says.
Local members of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Iowa Department of Agriculture, and farmers living in the Van Zante Watershed were all in attendance. State Senator Ken Rozenboom, who serves on the Natural Resources Committee, spoke during the discussion, and State Senator Amy Sinclair and Representative Greg Heartsill were also at the meeting. Rozenboom claimed there has been much more improvement on the water quality front than many in the state believe, and that responsible, targeted spending from the state government can help farmers continue that progress.
In this year’s session, the governor worked to generate revenues to continue water quality improvements at the state level, but says many legislators remain lukewarm to his proposals to reallocate some of the growth from the state sales tax used for school infrastructure into water management practices. He says it’s all about timing — when the current tax sunsets in 2029, the governor would like to see 5/8th of the renewed tax stay with schools and the remainder be used for farm conservation issues.
“You could do that without raising taxes,” the governor says. “The big objection is legislatures don’t want to be on the record voting for a tax increase.”