Around 200 people showed up on James Hepp’s farm near Rockwell City Saturday morning. Some were farmers, milling around equipment designed to minimize tilling and fertilizer. But there were also lawmakers, candidates for office, representatives from Des Moines Water Works and advocates for better water quality in the state.
They came for the Lobe Rangers’ first annual field day.
The nonpartisan nonprofit’s name is a nod to the Des Moines Lobe, a flat, tongue-shaped region in north-central Iowa with some of the world’s most fertile soil. Roughly 80% of the land is used for intensive row-crop agriculture…