It’s probably not an accomplishment state officials will want to boast about, but Iowa out-performs the rest of the country when it comes to producing sh%$. Not “sh%$” in any metaphorical sense, but literal fecal waste.

Chris Jones, a research engineer and an adjunct associate professor at the University of Iowa, IIHR (UI’s hydroscience and engineering center), has done the math, and published the results on his blog about water quality. Iowa, with a population of 3.2 million, produces more than twice the amount of fecal waste per square mile than California, which has almost 40 million people.

But what’s propelled Iowa to the top of the sh%$ list isn’t people, it’s pigs.

Last year, Iowa hit “peak pig,” with 23.6 million pigs, the most ever recorded in any state. When Iowa set that record in August, North Carolina, the state that ranks second in swine, only had 9.4 million. And pigs, Jones explained on his blog, produce much more waste than humans.

(%$ mine)

Between the chickensh%$ politics of the caucuses, and the real sh%$ of the pigs, I do not want to be downwind of the state.

Rather ironically, this actually mirrors a Will Rogers quip regarding the juxtaposition of the Chicago stockyards and the Democratic Convention made many years ago.