Bill Northey’s interests ranged from helping farmers find niche outlets for specialty crops through Innovative Growers, a group he co-founded, to advocating for the ethanol industry as president of the Iowa and National Corn Growers Associations. Northey, who also served as Iowa agriculture secretary and USDA undersecretary for farm production and conservation, was active in soil conservation and water-quality improvement efforts.

Northey arranged for his church in Des Moines to provide land for the Global Greens project. The project allowed recent immigrants from Asia, Africa and elsewhere to grow produce for Des Moines-area farmers markets.

Friends recall Northey speaking at a Global Greens fundraiser. He looked out at the recent immigrants in the audience and told them Iowa was built by waves of immigrant farmers. He said the immigrants in the audience are now part of that history.

Conservation was key among Northey’s interests. Early in his farming career, Northey served on his local soil and water conservation district board. Later, as Iowa agriculture secretary, he became a national leader in helping develop ways to manage farm nutrients in the Mississippi River Basin that contribute to hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. He co-chaired the Hypoxia Task Force, a group of state and federal officials that helped develop strategies to reduce nutrient loss from farmland, such as the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy.

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As Iowa agriculture secretary, Northey also helped establish the state’s Water Quality Initiative, a program providing state cost-share funds to farmers and landowners who use cover crops, conservation tillage, no-till, fertilizer management and other practices to reduce nutrient runoff. Not only did Northey explain these programs and practices to the public, but he also used them on his family farm at Spirit Lake in northwest Iowa.