To hear more about Secretary Northey’s thoughts on the 2014 election, click here.
DES MOINES, Iowa – This year Iowan voters will decide who serves as their next state Secretary of Agriculture. Currently the race has only two candidates, incumbent Republican Bill Northey and Democrat and Polk County Soil and Water Conservation District Commissioner Sherrie Taha. After the June 3rd primary election, Northey and Taha will face off in the November 4th general election.
Since he took office in 2007, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey says his administration has had to deal with shrinking resources.
“We’ve been through some challenging times in the last 8 years,” says Northey. “We had some budget cuts in the state government, certainly in the Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. We had to manage through those. We’re about 60 people smaller than we were at that time – we had 390; we’re down to 330 people – so managing
through those times, still doing pretty much everything that we were having to do, or needing to do or that the legislature asks us to do.”
However since Northey believes that overall, the agricultural landscape across the state has improved.
“I think ag always is changing,” Northey says. “I think it’s generally a better place. We’re addressing more of our water quality concerns now, more aggressive there. I think we have technologies that allow us to do a better job protecting that crop from bugs or insects or weeds. So we have things that give us tools to do those things.
“I think we’re recognized, even more to Iowans and others outside of Iowa, as an agriculture state, [that’s] very strong, that does things right, but has great production and feeds not only Iowans, but folks around the country, and around the world.”
Regardless of who wins the November 4th general election, Northey says there’s one struggle that simply comes with the job.
“There’s always interactions with government,” says Northey, “federal government as well as state government. I think we look at rules and regulations that continue to seem like they increase a little bit at a time, from Washington. That’s one of the reasons we’re addressing water quality as aggressively as we are in a voluntary way, to get ahead of some of that and be able to show that we can do more things on our own in a science-based voluntary way.
“But we’re likely to see new rules around “Waters of the U.S.,” and what the extent of the authority of the [Army] Corps of Engineers, and EPA is. We’re likely to see some new rules around the Food Safety Modernization Act, and those rules can affect Iowa through its feed or other products that we use, and add regulations to production.
“Hopefully those things that happen are improvements from where we’re at, but often they certainly make life more complicated for folks, and we need to participate and make sure that they’re as correct as they can be, to have the right impact for what their desired impact is, but also make sure that our producers have opportunities to make choices, and make good decisions, and to have the opportunity to be able to do that, not be pushed by government into bad decisions.”
Should Northey win a 3rd term at the Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, he says there are a few areas he plan to focus on.
“You know, I think we’ve got some pieces that are up and going pretty good. That water quality initiative is something we’ve got some good momentum on; we’ve got vision about where we want to take it, to a higher level.
“I’d love to see more cover crops, more bioreactors, and wetlands that reduce nutrients coming out of our tile lines. I’d love to see a lot more participation in that in the next 4 years, but we’re set up in the right place to be able to get that.
“I think we’ll continue to expand Iowa’s reach into other countries. We export a lot of products – our ag products – but then our manufactured products as well, and our equipment and other things, that we use to produce our crops and livestock here, we export to China and other places in the world.
“I think we have an opportunity to be able to grow that, in part because of the things that we do in state government, mostly because of the things the private sector does, but if we’re working together, I think there’s opportunities.
“And I think we have an opportunity to be able to develop some relationships that may not pay off for a long, long time. I think of India and the opportunity to connect with India. We probably won’t be doing a lot of business with India over the next 4 years, but if we develop some good relationships there, maybe folks that come 10 or 20 years from now will benefit by those relationships that we can develop over the next four years.”
When history judges Northey’s tenure as Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, he says there are a few particular accomplishments he hopes are taken into account.
“I think good management of the department, getting things done, raising the visibility of ag is what we’ve tried to do. I’d argue that if we hand that off to the next set of leaders and they can take it to higher levels, that’s all we want to do.
“I love this job, I love doing it. We’ve got a great agriculture to promote, to encourage, to be able to tell people about, and so I just feel very blessed to have this position, however long it is.”
