Real change occurs in America when civic pressures from outside the centers of influence force insiders to retreat. A compelling example of that type of systemic change is now unfolding in Iowa.

Severe water contamination from crop and livestock production linked to rising high rates of cancer has developed into a key election year issue in Iowa, one of the country’s most important farm states. Never before has industrial agriculture and its mammoth toxic discharges been subject in Iowa or any other state to such intense public scrutiny and condemnation.