Iowa Moves to Shield Farmers, Ethanol Plants, From Lawsuits Over Emissions

DES MOINES, Iowa—Aaron Lehman has many concerns about the fate of Iowa’s farmers. Climate lawsuits aren’t one.

But state legislators don’t see eye-to-eye with Lehman, president of the Iowa Farmers Union. Instead, they’ve pushed through a bill that shields agricultural operations from lawsuits over the climate impacts of their greenhouse gas emissions. The bill now awaits Gov. Kim Reynolds’ signature.

State Rep. Derek Wulf, a farmer in Hudson, Iowa, introduced the legislation to protect farmers and ranchers from what he called “frivolous lawsuits” over “perceived greenhouse gases” during House debate in February.

There’s little evidence that such climate lawsuits pose a real threat to farmers, in Iowa or elsewhere. In a subcommittee meeting on the bill, Rep. Wulf acknowledged there are no active lawsuits against Iowa farmers or ranchers specifically for climate impacts of greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2018, residents in Northeast Iowa announced plans to sue the Department of Natural Resources for failing to regulate air emissions from hog confinements, but they did not file the lawsuit. Even then, the challenge would have been directed at a state agency and not an individual pork producer.

And while the New York Attorney General and the Environmental Working Group have sued major meat producers Tyson Foods and JBS USA, respectively, over their claims of reaching zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, those cases argued that the companies had misled the public, not that their emissions had caused undue climate harm.

“We are not aware of any farmer or rancher who has been threatened by the types of legal challenges this law claims to protect them from,” wrote Lehman, of the Farmers Union, in an email to Inside Climate News.

Instead, Lehman described the bill as a product of “cynical and short-sighted political forces” that undermine long-standing efforts to engage farmers in the fight against climate change. 

Policymakers should directly invest in local, farmer-based solutions to the global climate crisis, but the latest bill is “the exact opposite” of what that would look like, Lehman wrote.

A Boon for Ethanol?

Instead, ethanol plants, not farmers and ranchers, seem poised to benefit most from the protections in the new legislation, which broadly defines “agricultural sources” as any location where a farm commodity is produced, handled, stored, processed or distributed. That could include anything from cropland and livestock facilities to slaughterhouses and ethanol plants. 

With 42 plants, nearly a quarter of the U.S. fleet, Iowa far outpaces other states in the production of ethanol. Almost 40 percent of all corn grown in Iowa—the nation’s largest producer of the crop—is converted to ethanol in a fermentation process that burns energy and releases carbon dioxide gas.

In the last few years, a handful of those plants have faced legal challenges related to their greenhouse gas emissions.

Last summer, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird sued Quad County Corn Processors, an ethanol plant in Galva, for $6 million in fines amassed over 600 days of Clean Air Act emissions violations. The plant ultimately settled the case, paying the Department of Natural Resources $100,000, which was a fraction of the damages initially sought.

A few years earlier, in 2023, POET Bioprocessing in north-central Iowa paid the DNR the maximum administrative penalty of $10,000 for failing to update its emissions-reducing equipment and repeatedly emitting excess carbon dioxide and other chemicals. 

The fine constituted a routine enforcement action by the state agency, not a lawsuit, but it illustrates the vulnerabilities of ethanol plants to legal challenges over emissions.

The Iowa Renewable Fuels Association and FUELIowa, formerly Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Stores of Iowa, registered in support of the bill. Neither organization responded to multiple requests for comment.

Similar legislation has cropped up in other states. Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed a law just last month that limits liability for damage or injury caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The law is even broader than Iowa’s and covers any individual emitter, not just agricultural operators.

In 2023, Kristi Noem, then-governor of South Dakota, signed a law that made it more difficult to file lawsuits or nuisance complaints against farms over odors or pollution. Florida amended its “Right To Farm Act” to include similar language back in 2021.

The Iowa bill does not prevent lawsuits altogether, but preserves a narrow legal path for plaintiffs who can prove, with “clear and convincing evidence,” that an agricultural operation violated existing laws or permits that set emissions limits. This exception will ensure the bill can’t be used to protect “bad actors,” Wulf said during House debate.

Opponents of the bill argue such language does little to guarantee justice. The exception is “a red herring,” said Iowa Senator Art Staed, during Senate debate last month. “Permits are a floor, not a guarantee of safety,” he said. 

Following President Trump’s reversal of the endangerment finding, which underpinned federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, that floor may not exist much longer, Staed said. “The primary basis for emission limits in permits is off the table. This bill will only contribute to the ongoing race to the bottom as far as climate protections are concerned.”

Environmental watchdog groups share Staed’s concerns that the law could hinder future legal action aimed at reducing emissions, especially given the uncertain future of federal greenhouse gas regulation.

Allowing lawsuits over permit violations is only a meaningful provision if those permits set limits on greenhouse gases, said Dani Replogle, staff attorney for Food & Water Watch. Without the endangerment finding, that may not be the case, she said. “So it takes away a route for people who are injured by climate-related harms to be compensated.”

Anika Jane Beamer

Reporter, Iowa

Anika Jane Beamer covers the environment and climate change in Iowa, with a particular focus on water, soil and CAFOs. A lifelong Midwesterner, she writes about changing ecosystems from one of the most transformed landscapes on the continent. She holds a master’s degree in science writing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as a bachelor’s degree in biology and Spanish from Grinnell College. She is a former Outrider Fellow at Inside Climate News and was named a Taylor-Blakeslee Graduate Fellow by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

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Georgina Gustin

Reporter, Washington, D.C.

Georgina Gustin covers agriculture for Inside Climate News, and has reported on the intersections of farming, food systems and the environment for much of her journalism career. Her work has won numerous awards, including the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, and she was twice named the Glenn Cunningham Agricultural Journalist of the Year, once with ICN colleagues. She has worked as a reporter for The Day in New London, Conn., the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and CQ Roll Call, and her stories have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post and National Geographic’s The Plate, among others. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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