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.