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Investigate Midwest event in Iowa City draws intimate crowd
A woman whose mother battled dementia finds comfort in Hawkeye tailgating. A drag queen recounts the ups and downs of competition. “Star Trek” bonds an adolescent in a new school. A father introduces his son to a love of NASCAR. A photographer who came from Mexico helps others find their inner luchador.
Who’s Buying Nebraska? Corporations, investors grabbing giant chunks of Nebraska farmland
This story was originally published by the Flatwater Free Press. There’s never a Black Friday discount when a piece of Nebraska farmland hits the market in 2023, be it a fertile field in the Platte River Valley or a vast swath of Sandhills pastureland. The market’s hot. And corporate...
GRAPHIC: USDA has initiated 250 antitrust enforcement actions since 2016
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has initiated 250 cases against companies and individuals for non-compliance with the Packers and Stockyards Act since 2016. The act promotes fair competition in the livestock, meat and poultry markets. Enacted in 1921, the act responded to concerns about anti-competitive practices by the “Big Five”...
DOJ has work cut out for itself in Agri Stats lawsuit
The splashy Department of Justice office of public affairs press release reads “Agri Stats Suppresses Competition by Organizing and Managing Scheme to Share Competitively Sensitive Information Among Protein Processors.”. It’s the latest lawsuit by the DOJ antitrust division trying to reign in what the the feds say is Agri...
‘What we’re up against’: North Dakota towns fight Farm Bureau to keep water clean
Articles in this project are edited by Carey Gillam, managing editor of The New Lede. DEVILS LAKE, North Dakota — When Clark Steinhaus first heard about a plan to build a feeding operation for 2,499 hogs near the shoreline of North Dakota’s largest natural lake, he was alarmed. As chair of Pelican Township’s board of supervisors, Steinhaus worried the manure generated by so many hogs could easily contaminate area waterways, including 160,000-acre Devils Lake and its 375 miles of shoreline.
GRAPHIC: On top of billions in USDA pandemic aid, farmers got $5.8 billion in PPP loans
In 2020, the agricultural sector received about $45 billion — the most ever — in federal assistance. More than half of that came in the form of direct pandemic aid from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to federal data. But a significant amount came from a non-USDA...
Conservation programs offer solutions to climate threats, but are vastly underfunded
When the U.S. Department of Agriculture denied Albert Johnson Sr.’s application for a farm loan in the mid-1980s, he went to a private lender who made him list as collateral all 20 of his cattle and his one bull. “I stood a chance of losing my livestock,” Johnson wrote...
How does climate change threaten where you live?
This story was originally published by Grist. Every four years, the federal government is required to gather up the leading research on how climate change is affecting Americans, boil it all down, and then publish a National Climate Assessment. This report, a collaboration between 13 federal agencies and a wide array of academic researchers, takes stock of just how severe global warming has become and meticulously breaks down its effects by geography — 10 distinct regions in total, encompassing all of the country’s states and territories.
Just another shambolic Farm Bill
The Farm Bill four horsemen – House Agriculture committee chair G.T. Thompson, House Ag committee ranking member David Scott, Senate Agriculture chair Debbie Stabanow and Senate Ag committee ranking member John Boozman – have finally come around to a viewpoint that’s been obvious to all for the last several months: President Joe Biden won’t be signing a new Farm Bill this year, and an extension will be needed to prevent support for dairy and other programs from going belly up early next year.
US regulators order Minnesota to clean up nitrate contaminated water
Responding to pervasive farm-related toxic water pollution, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has directed three state agencies to address the “imminent and substantial endangerment to the health” of thousands of southeast Minnesota residents exposed to high levels of nitrate contamination in their drinking water. In one of the...
Drought on Mississippi River expected to persist through winter
The Mississippi River hovered just a few inches below the low-water mark in Memphis Wednesday afternoon — a notable improvement after months of record drought, but still unusually low for this time of year. Lack of rain brought drought to much of the Mississippi River basin early this summer,...
A fear of the 1980s for farmers and black swan risks for cattle producers
OKLAHOMA CITY — Farmers and ranchers are expressing some anxiety about the downside risks they face with higher loan costs and potential black swan events. When a few Oklahoma farmers and ranchers got the chance Nov. 6 to raise some points about the Farm Bill and rural concerns with House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, they stressed some of the various financial risks facing producers.
Joyce Foundation offers $10K match to Investigate Midwest during NewsMatch
Donors to Investigate Midwest can have their gifts tripled, thanks to a matching gift from The Joyce Foundation. Investigate Midwest, an independent, nonprofit newsroom, learned of the match Wednesday, Nov. 8. The news means a $100 gift from an individual becomes $300. “This is a real boost for our giving...
High court must uphold constitutional ‘taking clause’ to protect property owners
This is a story about a rather unassuming 32-inch high concrete retaining wall in southeast Texas. The wall is the creation of the Texas Department of Transportation. As part of updating I-10, an east-west federal highway between Houston and Beaumont, TxDOT had an idea. An awful idea. A wonderful, AWFUL...
Oklahoma governor says China is buying up the state’s farmland. The data he cites points to other countries.
* Oklahoma has seen some of the nation’s largest growth in foreign-owned land in recent years, leading to a political debate over whether new restrictions should be imposed. * Nationwide, foreign-owned acres have nearly tripled since 2005, now topping 40 million. Dozens of proposals have been made in Congress to limit foreign companies and individuals from buying more land.
GRAPHIC: After a calm summer, avian flu outbreaks spiked in October
Chicken, turkey and other poultry across the country saw a surge in highly pathogenic avian influenza cases, otherwise known as HPAI, last month. In October, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recorded 44 cases. Up until last month, cases had been on the downswing from the large number of outbreaks last year.
Two H-2A workers died in a fire in North Carolina: What you need to know
Full story. Read this story in Spanish . In 2021, two cousins traveled from a Mexican village to rural North Carolina through the H-2A visa program, which brings foreign workers to American fields. The two men perished when the trailer they were living in caught fire. Here’s what you need...
As extreme weather increasingly threatens crops, study finds taxpayers pay the price
Crop insurance payouts surpassed $118 billion between 2001 and 2022 nationally for damage caused by extreme weather like drought, heat and floods. The report, released this week by the advocacy organization Environmental Working Group, points to climate change’s increasing impacts to agriculture. The findings follow a tumultuous growing season,...
Farmer has a few topics on his mind while Biden presses rural agenda
OMAHA (DTN) — If President Joe Biden takes some time to listen on Wednesday, he’s going to learn a little about the need for livestock pricing transparency and the value of tiling land as farmers face more challenges getting into their fields in the spring. Robert “Rusty” Kluver...
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