Somewhere in Iowa right now, a farmer is finishing a 14-hour day that started before sunrise, betting his entire livelihood on weather he can’t control and markets he doesn’t set. Chris Jones thinks he’s got it easy — and Iowa Field Report has obtained the video where he says so himself.
Jones, the Democrat running to be Iowa’s next Secretary of Agriculture — a job that exists specifically to represent farmers — has spent years on the record insulting the people he’s now asking to hire him.
New from @IAFieldReport: Iowa Democrat Chris Jones says farming “isn’t that hard” and says Iowa farmers are “only working a few weeks out of the year.”
This is on video. This is who wants to be Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture. 👇 #iapolitics pic.twitter.com/nPeNKWduo9
— Iowa Field Report.com (@IAFieldReport) August 11, 2026
In a 2021 interview at the Iowa Ideas Conference, hosted by the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Jones dismissed Iowa’s farmers as “wealthy, older white guys,” before getting to the real point: “a lot of them are millionaires. They’re really wealthy guys. They’re making three times as much as the average Iowan.” Then came the line every farmer in the state should tattoo on Jones’ campaign lawn signs: “a lot of this grain farming now is not that hard. They’re only working a few weeks out of the year.”
And he wasn’t done. In his own blog, Jones complained that Iowa thanks its farmers “at every turn” — as if gratitude toward the people who feed the country is the problem. On his own X account, Jones wrote that “a lot of farmers care more about bushels than the suitability of their and their neighbor’s well for drinking,” and that this — you know, trying to make a living — “begs for regulation.” Translation, from the man who wants to be their advocate in Des Moines: your industry is guilty until proven innocent.
Here’s the thing about Chris Jones: he’s not just talk. Pair the insults with his platform — higher taxes on ag inputs, new mandates on how farmers can farm, restrictions on what they can grow, and a push to kill ethanol, one of the biggest markets Iowa agriculture has — and you get a candidate who doesn’t just look down on farmers. He’d like to make their jobs harder, more expensive, and more regulated while he’s at it.
Add it up and Chris Jones isn’t running to serve Iowa farmers. He’s running to lecture them.
Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture is supposed to be the state’s advocate for the people who grow its economy — not someone who spent the last several years telling them their work doesn’t count and their wells are guilty until proven innocent. Iowa farmers don’t need a critic in that office. They need someone who’s actually stood in a field.
Jones’ own words — on video, on his blog, and in his own tweets — are going to be the centerpiece of this race whether his campaign likes it or not. He wrote them. He said them. Iowa farmers are going to remember them.
