IARA supports traditional, independent agricultural practices that are RESPONSIBLE, RESPECTFUL, and REGENERATIVE.

Responsible: Every Iowan has the basic human right to clean air, clean water, and safe food; and farmers have a right to make a decent living.

Respectful: Every Iowan has a right to the peaceful enjoyment of their homes and communities.

Regenerative: Future generations of Iowans have a right to a clean, healthy environment and productive, safe agriculture.                                                                                                             

RESPONSIBLE Agriculture:

• Avoids the use of low dose antibiotics for growth enhancement and disease prevention.
• Acknowledges agriculture’s role in the escalating antibiotic resistance crisis.
• Doesn’t concentrate animals in CAFOs that produce putrid, anaerobic manure and where the animals live in cramped, crowded conditions.
• Doesn’t spread toxic, fetid raw hog sewage on rural farmland, creating health, water, and other environmental risks.
• Manages livestock waste with practices that don’t pollute the air with noxious odors or waterways with biological and chemical wastes.
• Raises livestock using humane, pasture-based animal husbandry practices.
• Provides a living wage and fair working conditions for farmers.
• Accepts the costs and responsibility for repairing the harm done to neighbors, communities, and the environment from any breaches of best management practices, and avoids damaging activities.

RESPECTFUL Agriculture:

• Considers the needs and desires of neighbors concerned about their quality of life.
• Accepts a community’s right to reject a CAFO that can threaten public well-being.
• Doesn’t generate air or water pollutants that endanger public health, safety, or quality of life.
• Protects property values and rural economies by engaging in sustainable farming practices.
• Regards animals as sentient beings, not financial commodities. Treats livestock humanely.

REGENERATIVE Agriculture:

• Builds the soil with rotational grazing using pasture-based practices that allow livestock to naturally fertilize fields with their manure.
• Produces nutrient-dense foods that rely on fertile soils for productivity.
• Increases economic opportunities for traditional, independent farming families.
• Revitalizes rural communities by increasing local and regional food production and reestablishing local food infrastructure.

By their very nature, factory farms do not fit the definition of responsible agriculture.