Livestock Feedlots and CAFO Siting in Jefferson County, Iowa

How siting actually works here: the Master Matrix, not zoning

Iowa Code 459.304 requires the Iowa DNR to deliver (or have the applicant deliver) a copy of any construction permit application for a confinement feeding operation structure to the county board of supervisors where it would be built. If that county has adopted an annual 'construction evaluation resolution' -- which Jefferson County has done -- the board must evaluate the application using the statewide Master Matrix set out in Iowa Code 459.305, a scoring system covering factors like separation distances from residences and public areas, manure management and land application plans, air-quality mitigation, and community and environmental impacts. The board's formal recommendation can be based on the matrix score or on other comments, and by law the board cannot score matrix criteria selectively -- it must score every applicable criterion. Critically, the DNR makes the final construction-permit decision; a county's recommendation, even a negative one following a failing matrix score, does not automatically block a permit.

This is a materially different process from a zoning-based conditional-use hearing. There is no zoning district that excludes confinements from certain areas of Jefferson County, and no variance process to petition against a proposed site on land-use-compatibility grounds -- the matrix instead measures the proposed facility against fixed statewide numeric and factor-based criteria that apply the same way whether or not the host county has zoning.

Two recent, well-documented proposals: Daniels Site and Hill View Swine 2

The largest confinement ever proposed for Jefferson County, per community reporting, was the 2018 'Daniels Site' -- a roughly 7,497-head finishing hog operation planned about 2.5 miles west of Pleasant Plain in Penn Township by Bill Huber, proprietor of Huber Slats and a partner in Agri-Way Partners (a Wayland-based grain company with an ownership interest in 21 other confinements across Des Moines, Henry, Washington, and Keokuk Counties at the time). The Board of Supervisors held a Master Matrix scoring session on August 13, 2018; residents later pressed supervisors to appeal the DNR's approval of the permit, though the county needed a specific legal basis to do so. The operation was projected to generate more than 2.3 million gallons of manure for land application, some of it reportedly within the Lake Darling watershed (Lake Darling itself sits in neighboring Washington County).

In 2021, 'Hill View Swine 2' -- a roughly 3,720-head operation with two confinement buildings and an on-site facility for composting dead hogs, generating an estimated 900,000 gallons of liquid hog waste annually -- was proposed by Tom and Jacob Adam at 2704 Salina Road in Buchanan Township, roughly 5.5 miles from both Fairfield and Maharishi Vedic City. More than 50 people attended the Master Matrix public hearing at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds; the operation reportedly scored 500 points against a 440-point passing threshold. A buyer should treat these two proposals as illustrative of an active, ongoing pattern rather than isolated, one-off events, and should check current filings for any activity nearer to a specific parcel of interest.

Jefferson County Farmers and Neighbors (JFAN) and how to check current activity

Jefferson County Farmers and Neighbors (JFAN) is a community nonprofit that describes its mission as protecting the county from the harms of factory farms, and it has been active in this role for more than 15 years. JFAN reports monitoring the Iowa DNR and county Auditor's office roughly every two weeks for new confinement filings, and it notifies neighbors within a two-mile radius when a new proposal appears. It also publishes and updates (roughly annually, each fall) a public map of confinements it is aware of in the county, compiled from Manure Management Plans (MMPs) that operators submit to the DNR. A prospective buyer can use JFAN's public map and monitoring posts as one input for understanding nearby confinement activity -- a resource with no exact equivalent in a zoning-based county, where a zoning map alone might not show proposed-but-not-yet-built facilities either. Because JFAN is an advocacy organization actively opposed to large confinement expansion, treat its factual reporting on filings, hearings, and matrix scores as a useful starting point to verify independently (through the Iowa DNR's own AFO/CAFO permit records and the county Auditor's office) rather than as a neutral final word, and understand that its recommendations reflect one side of an actively contested local debate.