If you are thinking of camping this Memorial Day weekend, but haven’t reserved a spot at a state park yet, finding one could be tough. Iowa D-N-R spokesperson Julie Sparks. “The best thing I can say is for people to go in and look on our reservation site. If they’ve got a favorite park and want to check it out, you’ll be able to tell right away if there are spots available,” Sparks says.

If you do find a site — it’s likely you won’t have electricity. “Nearly all of the sites that are left open are non-electric sites, our standard non-electric sites. When our window for the holidays open, people are right on it and get those electric sites reserved as soon as they can,” Sparks says.

The window she refers too is a three-month lead time when you can start reserving a site for each holiday. Not every site is reserved ahead of time. She says there are 25 percent or more of the campsites in each park that are walk-in status, that you can try to get. “However, on a special holiday weekend like this, people are coming in a day or two early.”

The weather has been cool this year, but the forecast calls for some warmer weather. Sparks says those who have reserved site way ahead of time adjust to the conditions.
“Iowans are tough and they are willing to brave those cooler temperatures,” Sparks says.

Iowa has more than 47-hundred state park campsites.

(Radio Iowa)

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Des Moines Water Works plans to double the size of the nitrate removal facility that treats drinking water from the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers. The Des Moines Register reports the utility’s board this week approved an $800,000 design contract. The utility expects to spend $15 million on the project, and officials say the new equipment and the cost to operate it will require bigger future rate increases.

The utility had sued three northern Iowa counties, accusing them of allowing agricultural drainage districts to send nitrate pollution into the rivers. The lawsuit sought damages for the money the utility has spent to remove the nitrates.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit March 17, saying Iowa’s water quality problems were an issue for the Iowa Legislature.

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is co-sponsoring a bill designed to help keep rural hospitals open. Aaron Lehman, president of the Iowa Farmers Union, says his group backs the legislation which would create a new “rural emergency hospital” classification under Medicare.

“Rural hospitals are so important to us because they provide trauma services and emergency room services that you can’t replicate,” Lehman says. “We need to do whatever we can to help them make ends meet. By making some simple changes to Medicare, we think that’s a great way to start.”

Lehman says the bill takes on added importance because farming is one of the most lethal occupations. “We know there are risks out there in rural Iowa and rural America and farmers are doing their best to change that,” he says, “but we know there’s a long ways to go and we need to be able to access those trauma services.” A study finds 60-percent of trauma deaths in the U-S occur in rural areas where only 15-percent of the population lives.

Lehman says that’s another big reason to pass the legislation. “If you look at the statistics, the number of injuries due to trauma are significantly higher in rural America,” Lehman says. “It’s very important to our folks out there in rural Iowa and across rural America.”

Under Medicare, many rural hospitals are designated as “critical access hospitals,” meaning, they’re required to maintain a certain amount of inpatient beds as well as an emergency room. However, they’re struggling to attract enough inpatients to keep that status.

(Radio Iowa)

w/ Cass County Extension Program Coordinator Kate Olson

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Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey says farmers have been able to catch up quite a bit in their planting with some days of dry weather. But he says some of the corn that’s already emerged may have been in too much water to make it. “They’ll be a little bit of replant where some water has been standing. Most of the rest of the crop it sounds like is up and going,” Northey says. “There’s still some beans to be planted yet….and it is wet enough across Iowa it’s going to take a little while in some places to be able to get back in the field.”

It’s preferred to get the corn all planted by mid-May to avoid any loss in yield. While 92 percent of the corn was planted by the start of this week, Northey says there’s still plenty to be concerned about. “Even just eight percent of the corn means we have a million acres of corn yet to plant — and that’s not in here by the end of May — so we’ll see,” Northey says. “That starts to lose a little yield. Certainly some replants in some bottoms that’ll need to happen, that’ll probably be a little lower yield expectations for producers as well.”

Northey says farmers were busy at the various times when the weather was dry. He says there was one in April, one in early May and then the middle of May, so the planting times have been spread out and it is kind of an experiment in different planting times.

Northey says he’s gotten all his corn planted, but like other farmers, he needs some heat to get it growing. “We do need some warm weather to get it up and going. Most of it has emerged across the state, but it’s still coming yet,” Northey says.

He farms near Spirit Lake and says he still has some beans to get planted.

(Radio Iowa)

A new survey of rural bankers in Iowa and several other Midwest states suggests the ag economy is improving. Creighton University’s “Rural Mainstreet Index” hit a two-year high in May. Economist Ernie Goss conducts the monthly survey and says lender confidence levels on the rural economy for May inched into positive territory for the first time since August 2015. Farm land prices and ag equipment sales were still negative, but they moved in a positive direction.

“It was still not a great report, but we’re talking about many months, in this case 20 straight months, of the overall index being below growth neutral. Moving above growth neutral was certainly good news,” Goss said.

Survey participants said, over the next five years, rising regulatory costs will be their top challenge. The number of rural bankers reporting farm foreclosures was the biggest risk doubled to one in ten, but Goss says it would take even lower commodity prices for that to be a major concern.

“At this point in time, agricultural commodity prices have at least stabilized. They’re not growing, but what we need to see of course is a good 20-to-25 percent increase in grain prices and livestock prices,” Goss said.

Nearly 90 percent of bankers said low commodity prices were the biggest threat to the rural economy, slightly less than last year. Participants surveyed were located in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

(Radio Iowa)

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a sentencing appeal by a father and son whose Iowa-based egg production company caused a massive 2010 salmonella outbreak.

The rejection Monday means Austin “Jack” DeCoster and his son Peter DeCoster will be required to serve prison time for misdemeanor food safety violations. The appeal was denied without comment.

The DeCosters were sentenced to three months in prison by a federal judge in Iowa in 2015 but appealed to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals which upheld the sentences last July. They’ve been free awaiting their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The attorney for the DeCosters and the federal prosecutor who handled the case declined to comment.

The mild spring with frequent rains means tick-borne disease season is underway in Iowa. The Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) reminds Iowans to protect themselves against tick bites. Ticks can carry the organisms that cause diseases like Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and Ehrlichiosis.

The best way to prevent tick bites is to avoid wooded and grassy areas, where ticks are usually found. If you do spend time in these areas:

• Avoid wooded and brushy areas with high grass and leaf litter.
• Walk in the center of trails.
• Use repellent that contains 20 percent or more DEET, picaridin, or IR3535 on exposed skin for protection that lasts several hours.
• Always follow product instructions. Parents should apply this product to their children, avoiding hands, eyes, and mouth.
• Use products that contain permethrin on clothing. Treat clothing and gear, such as boots, pants, socks and tents with products containing 0.5% permethrin. It remains protective through several washings. Pre-treated clothing is available and may be protective longer.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has an online tool to help you select the repellent that is best for you and your family at https://www.epa.gov/insect-repellents/find-insect-repellent-right-you.

If you discover a tick on your body, remove it right away. Folk remedies, such as burning the tick with a match or covering it with petroleum jelly or nail polish, are not effective. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the following instructions for removing a tick:

• Carefully grasp the tick by using tweezers to grip the tick by its mouthparts which are close to the skin. Do not squeeze the tick’s body.
• Pull steadily directly away from your skin. Because removing the tick’s body is your main goal, don’t worry if its mouthparts break off in the process.
• Clean the wound and disinfect the site of the bite.

The most common tick-borne disease is Lyme disease; 232 cases of Lyme disease were reported to IDPH in 2016. Not everyone who gets Lyme disease will have the same symptoms, but the best and earliest sign of infection is a rash that may appear within a few days to a month, usually at the site of the tick bite. The rash will first look like a small, red bump, then expand until it begins to look like a bull’s eye, with a red center and a red ring surrounding a clear area. It is important to contact your healthcare provider immediately if you develop this type of rash or develop flu-like symptoms within a month of having a tick bite or being in an area where ticks are present.

For more information on Lyme disease, visit http://idph.iowa.gov/cade/disease-information/lyme-disease.

• KJAN, Atlantic  .03″
• Elk Horn  .19″
• Manning  .03″
• Red Oak  .02″
• Underwood  .33″
• Oakland  .05″

The Iowa State University Extension Department has released the results of its first horticulture survey since 2000. Arlene Enderton with the extension Outreach Local Foods Program, says the survey includes crops that can be eaten that are grown to sell to others. “It would include sweet corn, any fruits or vegetables, also it included nuts. And it included pumpkins, even though people don’t usually eat them, you could eat them. We also included honey and maple syrup — which are not horticultural products — but they are specialty crops,” according to Enderton.

The top five crops were tomatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers, green beans, and winter squash. Sweet corn was the top crop in the last survey in 2000, followed by tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, and sweet peppers. Enderton says the survey gives them a picture of the types of growers. “We found that the vast majority of them had been growing horticultural crops for less than ten years. So according to the U-S-D-A that would make them beginning farmers, assuming they hadn’t been growing other types of things prior to growing horticulture type crops,” Enderton says. “The median farm size was two acres, which means that half of them are farming on less than two acres and half of them are growing on more than two acres. The largest was eight acres.”

She says grower retirements appear to have impacted the industry. “The average acreage per farmer went down, so we are getting the impression that our farms are smaller today and it appears that some of our larger horticultural farmers may have retired or gone out of business since 2000. We saw a lot fewer of the really large farms — which would be farms that had 20 acres or more,” Enderton says.

She says while farmers are retiring, there appears to be many people stepping in to take over. “One thing that I thought was really encouraging is there is a lot of new farmers. There’s a lot of interest in growing horticultural crops, “Enderton says. “I think that’s a really good thing. I think there’s a potential for a lot of growth.”

About half the growers market their products exclusively through direct-to-consumer markets including farmers markets, farm stands, community supported agriculture, you-pick, and online sales. You can see the full survey on the Iowa Department of Agriculture’s website under the “Hot Topics” section.

(Radio Iowa)