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CLICK HERE for the latest market quotes from the Brownfield Ag News Network!
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A citizen activist group and an environmental organization have filed a petition asking the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to improve the state’s livestock farm permit process. Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement and Food & Water Watch say the permit system established 15 years ago fails to give local officials enough control over where large hog, cattle and chicken farms locate.
The petition filed Tuesday asks the DNR for several changes to the master matrix system including stricter pollution requirements and increased distance requirements from schools, homes, waterways and wells. County officials say permits they reject are nearly always approved by a state governor-appointed board. DNR records show only 2 percent of applications have been denied.
Iowa has 9,000 large-scale animal farms producing 22 billion gallons of manure a year.
ADEL, Iowa (AP) — An executive for a prominent Iowa seed company is alleging he was wrongly fired by Iowa’s richest man and deprived his right to acquire $80 million worth of corporate stock.
Joseph Saluri filed a lawsuit Tuesday against billionaire Harry H. Stine and Stine Seed Company over his termination after 18 years as general counsel and vice president. It alleges Stine fired Saluri in March as part of a conspiracy to enrich others at Saluri’s expense.
Saluri alleges he was fired after trying to exercise his right to increase his ownership in M.S. Technologies, a Stine company that has agreements with Monsanto for soybean trait technologies. He says Stine officials wanted him to waive his right so the ownership could be acquired by Stine’s former son-in-law, but Saluri blocked the deal.
Union County Emergency Management Coordinator JoAnne Duckworth said today (Monday), that the Iowa Department of Natural Resources has identified a microcystin toxin, in Green Valley Lake near Creston, in Union County. Microcystin toxin can make both humans & animals ill.
Persons using the lake should avoid having the water coming into contact with open sores, and the water should not be consumed, either accidentally or intentionally. If swimming in the lake, be sure to shower thoroughly afterward.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – An environmental organization is encouraged by the sightings of two endangered snakes in Iowa. The Des Moines Register reports the two rattlesnakes were spotted earlier this year.
The Nature Conservancy says that for the first time in 15 years, the group confirmed a massasauga rattlesnake in the Lower Cedar Valley Preserve in Muscatine. They’re also known as “swamp rattlers.” Conservancy spokeswoman Shelly Hiemer says there have been concerns about the survival of the snakes, because of heavy flooding in the area the past two years.
The other endangered snake sighted this year was a prairie rattlesnake in the Broken Kettle Grassland Preserve near Sioux City. More good news: The conservancy says she was pregnant. To the conservancy, the sightings of the endangered snakes means their habitats are survivable.
w/ KJAN’s Bob Beebensee and DNR Conservation Officer Grant Gelle
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Officials with Golden Hills Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D) say a planning meeting has been set for 9-a.m. Wednesday, July 19th, at the Oakland Community Center. The purpose of the meeting is to further discuss the creation of a Watershed Management Plan for the East and West Nishnabotna Watersheds.
Project Coordinator Cara Markey-Morgan, says cities, counties, soil and water conservation district representatives, and all other interested parties are welcome to attend to learn more about participating in this important organization. 
For more information about the East and West Nishnabotna watershed meeting, contact Breanna Shea (breanna-shea@uiowa.edu), Kyle Ament (Kyle.Ament@dnr.iowa.gov) or Cara Morgan (cara.morgan@goldenhillsrcd.org).
A delegation from China is scheduled to sign an agreement in Iowa today (Thursday) to buy another big batch of American-grown soybeans. Iowa Ag Secretary Bill Northey says China previously bought a billion bushels of beans from the U.S. “So that’s somewhere north of $10 billion worth of soybeans already this year,” Northey says.
Northey, Governor Reynolds and other commodity group leaders from Iowa will meet the Chinese delegation in downtown Des Moines at 9 a.m. this (Thursday) morning. A midday ceremony is planned to formalize China’s latest purchase of U.S. soybeans. “It’s their way of reminding everybody that they’re going to buy lots of beans and a lot of people don’t even realize it happens,” Northey says.
About half of the soybeans harvested in Iowa LAST year were exported to foreign buyers and Northey says up to 70 percent of those exports went to the Chinese. “Twenty years ago China was either a net exporter or no an importer at all. Now they buy two-thirds of all the soybeans that are traded in the world,” Northey says. “Not just ours, but South American beans as well.”
Northey says the Chinese process soybeans just like we do. The beans are crushed. The oil is taken out and the soybean meal that’s left is incorporated in livestock feed. Northey made his comments during an appearance Wednesday morning at the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale.
(Radio Iowa)
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