Former Iowa state legislator Paul W. Johnson wore a number of hats throughout his life, including chief of what’s now known as the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. Editor Curt Meine, a longtime friend and kindred conservationist spirit of Johnson, has gathered an insightful body of Johnson’s work in We Can Do Better: Collected Writings On Land, Conservation, and Public Policy (Ice Cube Press). Johnson died in 2021, but his wisdom and work continue to resonate, including through Meine’s meticulously and brilliantly crafted selection of essays and other writings.
From the editor’s note: “I first met Paul Johnson in 1988 alongside a hay wagon in a hillside pasture in southwestern Wisconsin. Paul had come…to meet with likeminded farmers and conservationists. His work as a state legislator to safeguard Iowa’s groundwater and promote sustainable agriculture had brought him attention well beyond his own state. At a volatile time in the rural Midwest, when tens of thousands of farms were being lost to foreclosure, his work and voice suggested a different path forward.”
“Dressed that morning in work clothes and sporting his full brown beard…He spoke plainly and in detail about his policy work in Iowa, but also about the finer points of his own farm, its soils and water and his family’s grazing and cropping practices. A dozen of us asked questions and shared stories from our own places and experiences in Wisconsin … compiling this collection has often felt like a continuation of the conversation we began in that Wisconsin pasture and that we carried on for more than three decades.”
Meine charts a chronological path that begins with the mid-1980s farm crisis. These writings document attempts, 40 years ago, to address water contamination, limiting corporate farming and land stewardship.
We Can Do Better ends up tracking the evolution of Iowa’s attempts at addressing conservation. It’s a poignant perspective on the growing conflict between conservation versus corporate profits.
One of the closing chapters is a call to action for us all. “Iowa Agriculture, Climate Change, and SWAPA” (meaning Soil, Water, Air, Plants, Animals) delivers a clear encapsulation of the crisis Iowa, and the world, faces. Johnson makes a powerful charge against those in positions of influence: “Even Abraham Lincoln, a person Republicans claim as the founder of their party, once said that what is morally wrong cannot be politically correct. And yet many leaders — governors, legislators, members of Congress, evangelicals and too many in our farm community — continue to ignore the science of global climate change.”
Johnson’s career provided the foundation for his environmental passion. His job allowed him to research, record and share his discoveries and collect facts in an honest, almost prophetic, way. Meine masterfully distills Johnson’s essays into this stimulating call to action.
We Can Do Better not only provides a deep understanding of who Paul Johnson was, but instills in readers a greater sense of legacy, stewardship and, most importantly, a sense of urgency to respond to the pending crisis of our natural surroundings. Because once our environment is gone, so are we.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s February 2026 issue.
