Normally, Story County soybean farmer Kevin Larson said, he would resolve a dispute with a neighbor privately. Instead, he went to the Iowa Pesticide Bureau in 2017, just like a lot of other Iowans did.
Urban expansion, at least in the few areas where Iowa cities are growing, is eating up some of the state’s best farmland. The urban growth is part of a national trend in which good farmland is lost to new residential neighborhoods.
Small family-run farms that raise organically, without genetically modifying crops or by reducing their use of pesticides and antibiotics, are such a small part of the federal government’s definition of a family farm that they often are lost in the crowd when it comes to government and industry supp
