OK...it's once again time for your audacious commentator to give his hot takes on the agriculture stories that will make news in 2021. This year I've enlisted the help of Homer Simpson who truly knows something about predicting agricultural events before they happened (witness the Simpson take on a
Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest agribusinesses, has yet to make good on its promise to capture a million tons of carbon a year at its Decature, Illinois, facility.
In the history of our planet there have been five previous major mass extinctions. Now there's a sixth mass extinction brewing.... the Holocene extinction. The Holocene is comparable in scope to the one that wiped T-Rex and all his dinosaur brethern off the face of the earth. Until recently a majori
It’s no secret to anyone paying attention that the POTUS is the nation’s science and climate change denier-in-chief. It’s a given undisputed fact at this point. But sometimes behind the scene what government does compared to what the POTUS says are two vastly different things. Four years ago the 201
We heard from more than 200 disaster survivors and people helping them. Here’s what we learned.
The Center for Public Integrity, Columbia Journalism Investigations and our partners in newsrooms
The Center for Public Integrity and Columbia Journalism Investigations collaborated on this project with newsrooms around the country: IowaWatch, California Health Report, Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, City Limits, InvestigateWest, The
We're digging into the stressful toll of wildfires, hurricanes and floods — and now COVID-19 on top of them. We need your help.
Every year, weather-related disasters
Based on a midyear survey, the USDA estimates there were 2.023 million farms in the nation in 2019, a tiny decline of 5,800 farms from the previous year. The change is more dramatic when the time frame is widened — there are 3% fewer farms now than there were in 2014, and the amount of farmland, 897
Missouri agriculture officials are struggling to address a backlog of complaints from farmers who allege that dicamba-based herbicide drift from another farm has damaged their crops. The Missouri Department of Agriculture has about 600 pending pesticide investigations. Some of them date back to 2016
A roundup of news, reports, and research on agribusiness and related issues.
* Do factory farm bans have a political future? | Newfoodeconomy.com
CAFOs have long been a hot-button issue
Despite President Trump's agriculture bailouts, Iowa farmers continue to see their financial condition erode, a cash crunch that had 44% of producers last year struggling to cover their bills, an Iowa State University report shows.
“We are watching these young farmers, beginning farmers, stemming the tide. After watching the drain of our young people leaving agriculture, this is the first sign we’ve had in quite some time—hemp is bringing people back to farming.”