The U-S-D-A’s National Agricultural Statistics Service’s (NASS) latest report shows the average amount of money farmers pay to rent land for crop production in Iowa has gone down again in 2016. The report shows that average rent for cropland in the state of Iowa dropped 15 from last year — or about six percent — to 235 dollars an acre. The Deputy Director of NASS for the Upper Midwest Region, Doug Hartwig, says they gather information directly from the producers.

He says they look at 100 percent cash rent, not a hybrid mix, and they break it down by cropland and pasture.Hartwig says the reasons for that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. “Looking out there and seeing what the prices are in the commodities and the livestock, you can probably correlate that back to that as far as lower crop prices are probably going to put pressure on that cash rent value to go down a little bit,” according to Hartwig.

Hartwig says the questionnaires are sent out in February, first by the mail-out/mail-back method. For those forms NASS doesn’t receive back, they do a phone follow-up or allow producers to report the information over the internet. By the time numbers are gathered, Hartwig says it’s usually an 80 percent response rate overall. He says the participation and high response rates allow them to provide accurate numbers for operators and landowners.

While average cropland rent dropped from last year, average pasture rent moved in the other direction — up two dollars from last year to 52 dollars. That’s about a four percent increase. In further detail, the report shows that the south-central region of Iowa averaged the lowest rent for cropland, at 173 dollars an acre, which is 62 dollars below the state average. This region includes Union County, along with Clarke, Decatur, Madison and Ringgold. The next two lowest regions were the southeast and southwest. The southwest region includes Adair County, as well as Adams and Taylor. The average of 216 dollars an acre is notably higher than the south-central, but still lags behind the state average.

The counties closer to the Missouri River showed considerably higher rent numbers. According to the report, the one county in the state with the lowest cropland rent value is Lucas County, coming in at 150 dollars an acre. The northern half of Iowa appeared to bring the overall state average up. Northwest Iowa’s Ida County had the highest average cash rent for non-irrigated cropland, at 281 dollars per acre, followed by Grundy County in northeast Iowa, at 277 dollars an acre. Individual counties are surveyed every two years, while the state average is done every year.

(Radio Iowa)

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Seven Midwest governors have sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency seeking regulation changes intended to increase sales of gasoline blended with a higher percentage of ethanol. The governors of Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota sent a letter Tuesday to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy requesting new standards that would allow stations to sell more gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol rather than the current standard of 10 percent ethanol.

The letter says the current setup “is stifling the widespread adoption” of E15 ethanol blends. The governors — five Republicans and two Democrats — are all from leading ethanol-producing states. The letter was also sent to President Barack Obama.

Thousands of people across the country are expected to participate in the inaugural Bike Your Park Day on Saturday, Sept. 24. This new national event promotes exploration of parks and public lands by bicycle. Iowa’s state parks make beautiful biking destinations for families and friends, especially now, with cooler temperatures and changing seasons. Many state parks connect to more extensive bike trail systems, giving cyclists choices of distance and difficulty.

Worth a consideration next time you want to pedal a park are the following:

Big Creek State Park is one Iowa state parks’ best biking destinations. Located just north of Polk City, the park hosts miles 23-26 of the Neal Smith Trail. Riders can explore the wooded areas, prairies and shorelines in the park or continue on to downtown Des Moines. From the parking lot at Big Creek Beach, riders can go two miles east on 142nd Avenue to access the High Trestle Trail. The park’s location between these trails makes it an ideal park for bicycling opportunities.

George Wyth State Park makes a great biking park because its trails adjoin the Cedar Valley Trail system with more than 100 paved miles. There are many looped routes ranging from 6.2 miles to 50+ miles. The park also has 10 miles of soft trails for biking.

The main “stem” of the Iowa Great Lakes Trail system is a 14-mile, ten-foot-wide, hard surface trail with many arteries to explore Iowa’s Great Lake and the vast array of parks, beaches, lakeshores and other public areas that surround them.

Green Valley State Park’s 3.5-mile paved trail starts in the campground, follows much of the lake’s east side and finishes near the Green Valley Lake dam. The trail connects with 3 miles of other paved trails south of the lake traveling through a wildlife management area, past Southwestern Community College and ending in the town of Creston. Other grass multi-purpose trails in Green Valley State Park also offer bikers a soft-trail experience.

Pine Lake State Park has 2.6 miles of beautiful paved bike trail connecting its cabins and campground to its beach and fishing accesses on the Upper and Lower Pine lakes. Bikers can add about 3 more miles to their ride by starting at Deer Park in the town of Eldora, crossing the Iowa River and heading north on the park’s bike trail to Hwy S56. The road will take riders to two Hardin County areas, where the bike trail picks up and goes through Tower Rock to Pine Ridge Park

Honey Creek State Park and Resort Guests at Honey Creek Resort, on Lake Rathbun, can choose from a variety of bike types to rent or bring their own to enjoy the surrounding beauty of the resort. The whole resort is bike-friendly. On the wooded peninsula across from the resort is Honey Creek State Park with miles of paved roads inviting cyclists to tour the 800-acre park and catch a glimpse of the wildlife it holds.

Discover new parks or experience your favorites in a new way. Whatever the case, celebrate them as great bicycling opportunities, on Bike Your Park Day, Sept. 24.

For more information about Iowa’s state parks visit www.iowadnr.gov/parks To find a nearby Bike Your Park ride, publicize your own ride for others to join, find a Bike Your Park ambassador for answers and suggestions.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources will begin a fish renovation at Three-Mile Lake in Union County on Sep. 20th. DNR staff will treat the watershed streams on Sept. 20-21 with Prentox® PrenfishTM, a plant-based fish toxicant commonly known as Rotenone to eradicate the current fish population, and the lake on Sept. 22nd.

Due to restrictions listed on the Rotenone label, Three-Mile Lake will be closed to public access on Sept. 20th and will remain closed until a sub-sample of fish can survive for a 24-hour period or 14 days post-treatment, whichever occurs first.

The DNR plans to restock the lake this fall with bluegill, blue catfish, and walleye  fingerlings. Adult largemouth bass and other species will be stocked next spring.

MAXWELL, Iowa (AP) – The men and women who are growing what’s expected to be the biggest corn crop the United States has ever seen won’t benefit from the milestone. Prices are so low that for the third consecutive year, most corn farmers will spend more than they earn. It’s a similar story for soybean producers.

That’s left farmers across the country cutting costs, dipping into savings or going further into debt to make it through the year. Federal crop insurance and government payments will offer some help, and most farmers have an off-the-farm job or a spouse who supplements the family’s income.

But the drop in farm profits raises questions about agriculture’s boom-and-bust cycles and why people adhere to what at times is seemingly not a sustainable business model.

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is introducing legislation he says is designed to reform an economic development program which he describes as “out of control” with fraud and national security threats. The program, E-B-Five, was created in 1990 to prompt foreign investors into putting between 500-thousand and a million dollars into capital investment projects in rural America and in other job-starved areas.

Grassley says, “Many of the investments are going to projects in ritzy, well-to-do neighborhoods like those in Manhattan and Miami, instead of rural America and communities that need to boost employment and need help the most.”The program offers “green cards” to the foreign investors but over the decades, Grassley says significant problems have developed with the well-intended effort.

“The government has little ability to detect or prevent fraud,” Grassley says. “We don’t always know where the money for these projects is coming from and the government isn’t doing a good job of vetting the immigrant investors.” Grassley chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and says the E-B-Five program will expire at the end of this month and Congress has to decide whether to pass legislation to continue it or let it vanish.

Grassley says, “I introduced a bill with Senator Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the committee I chair, to put rural America and economically-distressed neighborhoods back on an equal footing with wealthy, urban neighborhoods when competing for investors.”

The legislation would also improve oversight and accountability, according to Grassley, while reducing scams and addressing national security concerns.

(Radio Iowa)

• KJAN, Atlantic  .68″
• 7 miles NNE of Atlantic  .6″
• Massena  .51″
• Elk Horn  1.01″
• Avoca  .7″
• Audubon  .3″
• Neola  1.2″
• Villisca  .85″
• Woodbine  .18″
• Clarinda  .76″
• Glenwood  .46″
• Shenandoah  1.56″
• Hastings  1.12″
• Randolph  1.79″
• Denison  .34″
• Carroll  .1″
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• Underwood  .38″
• Sidney  1.81″
• Guthrie Center  .01″

Iowa beef producers will soon get to vote on a proposal to institute a state beef checkoff program. Iowa Cattlemen’s Association communications director, Katie Olthoff, says they submitted the required paperwork for the referendum earlier this month. She says they needed to get 500 signatures from cattle producers and worked throughout the summer at various events and turned in more than 700 signatures.

The voting will begin next month. “Producers can request an absentee ballot if they would like starting in October. Then they can mail in those ballots any time throughout the month of November,” Olthoff says. “or if they prefer, producers can vote in person at their county extension offices on November 30th.”

The results of the vote would be known in mid-December. The Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship has said they’ll be able to certify the vote on December 14th. “If it passes with a simple majority of 51 percent or more — collections will begin March 1st 2017. It will be a 50-cent per head state checkoff,” Olthoff explains.

She says the checkoff will be mandatory, but producers can request a refund. “We have really worked hard at the Cattleman’s Association to do our legwork and make sure that our producers have been able to give input into how the money would be spent,” according to Olthoff. “That includes a survey that we did last fall among our Cattlemen’s Association members. Eighty percent of the respondents were in support of a state beef checkoff and they outlined several uses for those funds.”

One use the survey supported is research. Olthoff says that is something that currently can’t be done with the federal checkoff, but they think it is important to help producers stay profitable into the future. Olthoff says the national fund has done a lot to promote the industry nationwide and this would be more state specific.

“Beef is What’s For Dinner is part the federal beef checkoff program. It’s been a great way to promote beef,” Olthoff says. “We want some more flexibility in our dollars and we want to enhance what the national programs are doing. That federal beef checkoff has been a-dollar-a-head since 1986. So adding an additional 50 cents at this point is something that several other states are doing. It’s something our Iowa cattle producers have been very interested in.”

The Iowa Cattlemen’s Association says it represents nearly 10-thousand beef-producing families and associated companies dedicated to the future of Iowa’s beef industry.

(Radio Iowa)

Iowa Senator Joni Ernst says she’s worried about the negative impact the E-P-A’s proposed rule on the herbicide atrazine could have on farmers. The agency proposes drastically cutting the amount of the chemical farmers could apply to fields. Ernst says science supports the safe use of atrazine in controlling broadleaf weeds, especially in corn crops. “For over 50 years, it has been proven as a safe and effective way of managing our cropland,” she says. “Over 7,000 studies that prove it is a safe and effective tool to keep in our toolbox.”

Atrazine is one of the most widely used herbicides in the U-S, but it was banned in the European Union in 2004, when groundwater levels exceeded limits. If the E-P-A’s proposed use level becomes the standard, analysts say the herbicide could no longer be used effectively and it would essentially represent a ban on the use of atrazine. Ernst says Congress would oppose that move.

“We will continue to apply pressure to the EPA,” she says. “We can involve other organizations and get people to push those public comments back to the agency. If they go to far, we can look at how do we work around this legislatively.”

The deadline to submit comments to EPA is October 4th. Without atrazine, some estimate farm input costs could increase by 30-to-60 dollars per acre. Farmers would also lose a valuable tool for weed management and conservation.

(Radio Iowa)