"I will stand up for Iowa agriculture, be a voice for hard-working families, and fight for common-sense conservative policies to address the issues facing Iowans and I am asking for your vote in the November 8th election!"

Week 14 (April 13-17) in the Iowa Senate was another busy week as the session winds down. This week, the Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig and the Iowa Nutrient Research & Education Council (INREC) announced the launch of the Nitrogen Soil Sampling Project. The project is initially going to provide free Nitrogen Soil Sampling to farmers upstream of the Des Moines Metro. The testing is going to help farmers be able to dial in their fertilizer application rates so they can have a better understanding of what nutrients are in the soil, and could help farmers to lower the amount of fertilizer that would need to be applied. Iowa State University has been conducting research, and residual nitrogen levels can vary greatly from year-to-year in the spring. These benefits will directly help with our water quality as well. I understand that water quality is at the top of mind for many Iowans. This is initially going to be a three-year program.

In the last five years in continued implementation, Nutrient Reduction Strategy (NRS) through increased funding for infrastructure and record-breaking adoption of agricultural conservation practices.

Major Infrastructure and Funding Milestones

-Infrastructure Growth: In 2025 alone, Iowa initiated 26 wetland projects, the most in a single year, and expanded its “batch and build” agreements–which streamline the installation of bioreactors and saturated buffers–to 28 counties.

-Funding Records: The state supported over $34.3 million in soil and water cost-share programs in 2025, a record amount and a significant increase over previous years.

-Urban Investment: Since 2015, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS) Urban Water Quality Projects invested in 140 urban water quality projects including bioretention cells, permeable pavers, and wetlands to manage city runoff.

Agricultural Practice Adoption

Farmers and landowners have significantly increased voluntary conservation efforts:

-Cover Crops: Iowa now has nearly four million acres of cover crops, up from roughly 600,000 acres a decade ago.

-Edge-of-Field Practices: Over 1,190,000 acres in priority watersheds have adopted practices through the National Water Quality Initiative (NWQI), leading to the removal of at least 16 water bodies from the impaired list [11]. If you remember a few weeks ago, I talked about the Lower Gar Lake that I work on coming off the impaired waters list…there were 15 others that came off that list as well.

-New Technologies: The state began facilitating drainage water recycling projects in 2021, which capture and reuse excess water for irrigation to prevent nutrient loss.

For an example of the strides we are making in water quality, a great milestone of improvement happened on Nov. 19, 2024 by the closing of the state’s last remaining Agricultural Drainage Wells (ADWs), concluding a more than quarter-century of sustained effort to close, 195 of these drainage structures. Improving water quality takes time, commitment, and dedicated funding, but this demonstrates that when there is a strategy and funding in place, this impactful work can get done successfully.

Blind, Visually Impaired Prescription Access

This bill, passed last week, requires on or before January 1, 2027, the state Board of Pharmacy to adopt rules on accessibility measures for blind, visually impaired, or other print disability to access prescription drug labels, bag tags, and medical guides. If asked by an individual with these disabilities, a pharmacy is to provide access to them or refer the individual to a pharmacy that does. These accessibility measures are to be provided at no additional cost to the individual and provide required information to visually impaired persons within a comparable time frame to a person without a disability, only after a reasonably development period for the pharmacy.

State Sen. Annette Sweeney (R-Iowa Falls) represents District 27 which includes Grundy, Hardin, Poweshiek, parts of Tama, and parts of Black Hawk counties. She is Chair of the Natural Resources and Environment Committee.