(Radio Iowa) — While many Iowans are spending a large portion of time toiling in their yards with the chore of raking leaves, an environmental expert suggests they leave the leaves alone — at least some of them. Jill Utrup, a biologist with the U-S Fish and Wildlife Service, says create a pile of leaves at the edge or your yard or behind the house and just — leave it. “By not raking your leaves, you’re actually leaving a lot of beneficial habitat for many of our beneficial pollinators,” Utrup says. “One pollinator in particular that we’re concerned with is the rusty patched bumblebee, which is a federally-endangered species.”

If you’re concerned about having a hive of unruly insects in the vicinity of your home, she says not to worry. “Only a single queen will actually overwinter, the rest of her colony will die off and she will overwinter,” Utrup says. “She uses what we’d typically see as an unkept spot, leaf piles and brush piles — that type of thing, is what they’re looking for.”

Don’t worry about getting stung next spring, either. She says this is among the first insects to emerge once the snow melts. The rusty patched bumble bee was designated as endangered in 2017 and special teams fanned out in Iowa and several other Midwestern states during 2018 to search out the insect and determine its status here. Their findings were something of a surprise. “They’re thriving still in people’s backyards, believe it or not,” Utrup says. “Whereas a lot of our endangered species we’re finding in more pristine and intact habitat, the rusty patched is more of a generalist. We’re still learning about its requirements and the threats to the species as well.”

The bees were confirmed in multiple Iowa counties and in several metro areas, including: Ames, Cedar Rapids, Council Bluffs, Davenport, Des Moines, Iowa City, Le Mars, Sioux City and Waterloo. Learn more at www.bumblebeewatch.org.

(Radio Iowa) — An Iowa State University study finds farm equity across the state is on the decline. The study of more than 200 mid-size Iowa farms found 44-percent could be classified as having vulnerable liquidity in December of 2018. That percentage was just 31-percent in December of 2014. I-S-U Extension economist Alejandro Plastina says several factors have led to the fall. “There’s been trade issues as of recently, there’s been uncertainly about crop prices,” Plastina says. “In 2019, pushing liquidity even further down, weather issues prevented planting and delayed planting.”

Those factors combined put a lot of stress on farm operations, he says. The average loss of working capital on Iowa farms and ranches between 2015 and 2017 is about 189-dollars per acre. Plastina says, “Mostly all farms lost substantial amounts of working capital and the slight increase in working capital over 2018 was not enough to compensate the loss in working capital since 2014.” Without government assistance last year, including 646-million dollars in Market Facilitation Program — or M-F-P — payments, he says economic conditions on Iowa farms would have been even worse.”In 2019, we saw a small increase in liquidity from 2017 levels but still, liquidity levels are low compared to the last ten years,” Plastina says. “Most of that increase in liquidity, unfortunately, is not coming from crop revenue or livestock revenue, but from government payments.”

Plastina expects the numbers for 2019 to be poor as well. He’s advising producers to secure their operating loans for the next year or two and to do as much as they can to protect their working capital.