University of Iowa engineering researcher Christopher Jones reports that Iowa’s 3.2 mission people and it’s 110 million chickens, pigs, turkeys and cattle annually produce the fecal content equivalent to 168 million people.
[See Donnelle Eller, 50 Shades of Brown: Iowa Ranks No. 1 in, Ahem, No. 2, UI Researcher Calculates, Des Moines Register, 6/10/2019]
This is primarily due to CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), which the agricultural industry feels the state could benefit from more CAFOs.
This fecal production impacts Iowa watersheds. (Other studies of efforts to mitigate the presence of fecal runoff with millions-dollars projects on select small streams--certainly few projects--has demonstrated ongoing presence of fecal material downstream from mitigation projects, e.g., Brushy Creek Lake). In areas where CAFOs are concentrated in Iowa counties, nitrogen in water may be doubled over already problematic agricultural runoff into to watersheds.
See illustration of Iowa watersheds with Christopher Jones overlay of equivalent fecal runoff in highly populated global sites that illustrates just how massively concentrated fecal production in ALL small watershed sections in Iowa.
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