Iowa Senate Advances Bill to Strengthen Rules Against Drones Over Farmland

By Cami Koons

Iowa senators advanced a bill Monday to provide farms 40 acres or larger with state protection against surveillance by drones. 

Lawmakers approved a law in 2024 to prohibit remote-piloted aircraft from flying over animal feeding operations and homesteads and create misdemeanor penalties for those who operate a drone over these areas. 

Senate File 491, would alter the law from protecting only “secured farmstead” — defined as an animal feeding operation and up to 400 feet surrounding it — to a “farmstead,” which is at least 40 contiguous acres used for farming or pasture and generates at least $15,000 in farm commodity sales annually. 

The bill would also prohibit the use of a drone, without the landowner’s permission, within 400 feet of farm animals, farm equipment or structures, including animal feeding operations, farmer residences, manure storage, barns, and other such structures. 

Sen. Dan Zumbach, R-Ryan, said the remote-operated aircraft scare livestock and invade a farmer’s privacy. 

“Farmers don’t want their privacy invaded anymore than you and I,” Zumbach said on the Senate floor Monday, adding that Iowans “don’t want someone else’s drone in our front or back yards.” 

Current law makes it a simple misdemeanor to fly over the restricted areas, and a serious misdemeanor, with fines up to $2,560, if the drone is equipped with “surveillance” devices that capture audio or video.

The senate bill would further specify that surveillance includes the transmission of images or sound that can identify the species of farm animals and the type or use of equipment and structures on a farmstead. 

The bill would keep the same misdemeanor charges, but include the updated language referring to a farmstead instead of “secured farmstead.” Like the existing law, the bill would not protect farmsteads that are within city limits. 

The Sierra Club Iowa Chapter is the only lobbyist registered against the bill. Efforts to pass the initial law were seen as targeting animal-welfare activists who have used the surveillance techniques to document the treatment of animals at feeding operations and dog-breeding facilities.

Iowa commodity groups are registered in favor of the bill, while several groups, including the Iowa Newspaper Association, Iowa Broadcasters Association, and the Iowa Board of Regents, are registered as undecided.

The bill advances to the Iowa House after a 46-3 vote, with Senate Democrats Herman Quirmbach, Tony Bisignano and Liz Bennett dissenting.

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