WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) today (Wednesday), called for the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) to support commerce on the Missouri River instead of removing 36 of its Aids to Navigation (ATONs) north of Blencoe, Iowa.

Navigation on the Missouri River is an integral part of moving Iowa’s inputs and goods both domestically and worldwide. In recent years, navigation up to Sioux City, Iowa has increased, and planned development projects are expected to further increase traffic in years to come.

“In Iowa, we are proud to feed, fuel, and supply consumers around the globe with products straight from the heartland. Our beautiful rivers are integral to sharing those products with the rest of the world.” said Senator Ernst. “The removal of this infrastructure on the Missouri River threatens the livelihoods of Iowans in our manufacturing and agricultural communities. I urge the Coast Guard to reconsider this decision.”

Read the full letter here.

(Radio Iowa) – The Washington County Board of Supervisors has unanimously approved the first reading of an ordinance that restricts where wind turbines could be built. The vote came Tuesday following a public hearing on the issue Monday. Washington County farmer Greg Coch told K-C-R-G T-V that he supports the ordinance. ”It gives a lot of different people a voice cause a lot of people don’t want them. They don’t want them in their view-scape. They don’t want them in their environment and it gives those people an opportunity to have more of a setback than you would ordinarily see,” Coch said at the public hearing. Coch urged supervisor to pass the ordinance at their meeting Tuesday. Linda Boston was raised on a farm and told K-C-R-G T-V that she’s against the ordinance.

“It’s really not going to help us here immediately, it just helps in the long run. Our carbon footprint. And shouldn’t we be concerned about having the most healthy environment that we can for our world?” Boston said. The ordinance requires a guarantee that new wind turbines would not impact the value of any property within two miles. It also require turbines to be at least one mile away from most gathering places such as schools, libraries, and churches unless there is a written agreement. Supervisor Jack Seward Junior spoke about the ordinance before the vote. ”In my estimate, the whole basis for the industry as it exists today is a political push adopted by “big government” intending to fight “climate change” by removing carbon fuels from the economy,” Seward said. Supervisor Bob Yoder also expressed doubts about the turbines.

“They talk about green energy and I don’t think it’s as environmentally friendly as what they’re billed to be,” Yoder said. Supervisor Marcus Fedler says ordinance provides a way for both sides to give their input. ”So I’m looking forward to hearing from the people and let the people that want these, they still have to provide a reasonable reason why we should discriminate against other folks that don’t have a seat at the table,” Fedler said.

The Washington County Supervisors need to approve the ordinance two more times before it passes.

(Radio Iowa) – American Farm Bureau president Zippy Duvall is warning there may be collateral damage in rural America if President-elect Trump follows through on mass deportations and increases tariffs. Duvall is in Des Moines for the Iowa Farm Bureau’s annual meeting. “We really need this new administration focused on trade,” Duvall says. “I know that the new administration’s talking about tariffs. We don’t support tariffs. We know that when tariffs are put on that other countries take it out on agriculture and we’re real fearful of what might happen in that area.”

The first Trump Administration paid American farmers 28 BILLION dollars in so-called trade disruption payments to compensate for China’s retaliation to Trump’s tariffs. Duvall says expanding ag exports would help farmers get past the financial strain of inflation. Duvall, who spoke to reporters in Des Moines for nearly half an hour, says the Farm Bureau is very interested in learning the details of Trump’s plan to deport people who entered the country illegally.

“A lot of workers across this country are undocumented that’s working on farms, because there’s no other people who want to do that work,” Duvall says, “and so we’ll be working with the administration to try to make sure that we don’t harm the food system in our country and harm our rural communities and our farmers and ranchers as we move forward.”

A recent U-S Labor Department survey found about 44 percent of American farm workers are undocumented immigrants. Duvall says no one wants criminals from other countries here, harming U-S citizens, but he says the Farm Bureau will argue against deporting migrants who are critical to the ag economy. “What we’re planning on doing is making sure that we take that seat with the president and making sure he understands how valuable this workforce is to our farmers and ranchers,” Duvall says, “and make sure that we try to minimize the collateral damage that might go on in that area.”

American Farm Bureau president Zippy Duvall spoke to reporters at the Iowa Farm Bureau’s annual convention on Dec. 10, 2024. (Photo by Brent Barnett/Brownfield)

Duvall says there may be an opportunity reduce regulations on farmers once Trump takes office and the Farm Bureau is lobbying for the total elimination of the federal inheritance tax. Duvall says he’s extremely disappointed a new Farm Bill has stalled, again, in congress. “We right now are focused on not just pushing for a modernized Farm Bill, but pushing for disaster and economic payments,” Duvall says, “to try to bind our farmers over until we can get a new Farm Bill passed.”

Duvall is a farmer from northern Georgia. On Monday, he drove through areas of his state that were hit by Hurricane Helene in late September. “It looks like a bomb went off for 100 miles,” Duvall says. “I mean it’s really, really bad and the crops that were destroyed, the barns that were destroyed, homes and lives that were lost — it really was difficult to look at when you ride up through there.”

Duvall says just about every part of the country has seen some form of natural disaster this year and congress needs to provide disaster assistance to farmers A-S-A-P. Duvall has been the American Farm Bureau’s president since 2016. He’s the keynote speaker at this week’s Iowa Farm Bureau convention.

(Iowa News Service) – A small turtle made popular in the “Kung Fu Panda” movies could soon be added to the endangered species list. Iowa wildlife advocates are working to restore it to its native habitat and give the turtle a better chance for survival. The Blanding’s turtle is popularized in the long-running, lighthearted animated movies but its fate is anything but funny. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will decide in coming months whether to list it on the endangered species list. Officially, fewer than 3,000 Blanding’s turtles are left in Iowa.

Karen Kinkead, Wildlife diversity program coordinator for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, said they are a cryptic species and hard to count but are easy to identify when you spot one. “They’re kind of this drab, olive green-grey color. Their shell is shaped kind of like a helmet. They are sort of nondescript,” Kinkead outlined. “But then you see this bright yellow chin and the way that their lower jaw is formed it makes it look like this is an animal that is always smiling.”

Decades of habitat loss and predation have already put the Blanding’s turtle on the threatened list in Iowa. A partnership between the state DNR, Iowa State University and the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines just hatched nearly five dozen baby Blanding’s turtles researchers will raise until adulthood, then tag with telemetry gear to track them in the wild.

Endangered Blandings Turtle in the wild

Kinkead pointed out the zoo is “head-starting” the turtles by hatching and keeping them in the zoo over the winter, instead of allowing them to hibernate. “They keep them awake and keep feeding them so they grow larger,” Kinkead explained. “Then when they’re released into the wild the next summer, they’re a bigger size.”

Kinkead added being bigger and more mature makes the turtles less vulnerable to predators once they are released.

A new report analyzed nearly 200 manure spills into Iowa waterways from 2013 to 2023 and found the majority occurred in counties with the highest concentrations of animal feeding operations. The Iowa Capital Dispatch says the report, released Monday by Food and Water Watch, builds on an earlier report from the environment-focused nonprofit that found livestock operations in Iowa produce more than 100 billion pounds of manure each year, the most out of any state in the country.

Northwest Iowa had “particular spill concentration” according to the report, which coincides with findings from the Factory Farm Nation report that found the same region was home to “extreme factory farm concentration.” The report analyzes discharge enforcement reports from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, which over the 10-year period reported 179 instances of manure discharge in amounts ranging from 500 gallons to 1 million gallons, though not all instances listed an amount.  The interactive map associated with the report shows 10 “repeat violators” or farming operations that had multiple spills recorded over the period. Four of the repeat violators are in the northwest region.

Food and Water Watch estimates the actual number of spills is much higher, since the producers themselves are required to report spills, which the report calls a “clear conflict of interest.”

“This is NOT a comprehensive map of factory farm spills that occurred in Iowa over the study period,” the report said. “For this reason, this map and accompanying report almost certainly undercount the true cost of factory farm spills into Iowa waterways.”

The report also noted more than 4,000 animal feeding operations in Iowa do not have National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits. These permits, which regulate entities that discharge pollutants into U.S. waters, are only required on animal feeding operations of a certain size, or with other specific conditions, per the federal Clean Water Act.

Food and Water Watch Iowa Organizer Michaelyn Mankel urged the state to implement more stringent regulations. “Corporate polluters must be held accountable for soiling our water — Iowa legislators must pass the Clean Water for Iowa Act to boost pollution monitoring and ensure accurate fines at factory farms,” Mankel said in a statement.

According to the report, farm operations with recorded spills have been fined less than $730,000 cumulatively, over the 10-year reporting period, despite a reported nearly 2 million fish killed. Mankel called the enforcement penalties “barely a slap on the wrist.”

Eldon McAfee, on behalf of Iowa Cattlemen’s Association and Iowa Pork Producers Association, said the organizations “need more time to review the information used in the analysis,” but plan to review the report.

(Radio Iowa) – The first shotgun deer hunting season is underway and the D-N-R wants hunters to help keep chronic wasting disease from spreading. State Wildlife Veterinarian Rachel Ruden says the disease can be spread to deer who come into contact with an infected carcass. “Be aware of how you’re handling your carcass, your deer carcass, especially if you don’t know the test results or that deer hasn’t been tested, we really don’t want those animal parts to end up on the landscape to, you know, cause a new outbreak location,” she says. If you field dress the deer away from where you shot it, she says dispose of the rest of the deer properly.

“We recommend landfill if that’s an option, otherwise, returning to the location of harvest,” she says. Ruden says , there is no evidence that C-W-D has ever transmitted to people, but the current advice from the C-D-C is to not eat venison that has tested positive. “There’s more studies coming online that are looking at which species can actually acquire the disease by consuming infected venison. That’s a much more kind of biologically relevant route, and kind of the route that, of course, we would be concerned about with people and exposure,” she says. Ruden says hogs are the only animals which are confirmed to get C-W-D from eating infected meat.

“Pigs that were fed infected venison were able to develop this disease, so that you know just kind of adds to that air of taking caution and testing your deer before you consume it, and if you know it’s positive to discard it. But of course, that’s up to the consumer at the end of the day,” Ruden says.

The D-N-R recently held an online public meeting about C-W-D. Ruden says the video of that meeting will be posted on the D-N-R website along with other information.

AMES, Iowa (Iowa Capital Dispatch) — National Farmers Union President Rob Larew spoke about the stalled reauthorization of the Farm Bill and strategies to promote agriculture and conservation within the upcoming administration Saturday at the Iowa Farmers Union annual conference. “I am so tired of talking about this farm bill,” Larew said with a laugh to a full conference room at the Quality Inn in Ames.

The Farm Bill is a bipartisan package of legislation, typically reauthorized every five years, regulating and funding food and farm programs from the U.S. Department of Agriculture conservation initiatives to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The 2018 Farm Bill, however, was extended in 2023, expired in fall 2024 and awaits an unknown fate in the rapidly approaching close to the congressional lame-duck session. Larew said coming into 2023, the attitude with the Farm Bill was to take what happened in the pandemic and craft better provisions to protect farmers and the U.S. food system.

“And then nothing happened,” Larew said, and detailed how perspectives changed as Farm Bill deadlines came and went. “Now we are where we are, which is very likely another extension, pushing us into a lot of uncertainty for next year,” Larew said.  The reelected Farmers Union president said a Farm Bill is hard to pass in a normal year, let alone in a year when the legislation is “low on the list” of a new administration’s priorities.  Larew said he hopes the president-elect’s plans to slash government spending does not impact the Farm Bill, and said he will continue to push the message that “you can never balance a budget on the back of a Farm Bill.”

Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence.

Panelists speak about the Farm Bill at the Iowa Farmers Union annual conference. From left are Cheryl Tevis, Rob Larew, and Chris Clayton. (Photo by Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

Larew spoke as part of the “Farm Bill Limbo” panel at the 2024 convention, titled “Fairness in Farming,” along with DTN Progressive Farmer Ag Policy Editor Chris Clayton and Cheryl Tevis, an ag-focused writer with the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. The other panelists expressed similar concerns toward changes to agriculture policy that could come from the upcoming administration, including tariffs, mass deportations, decreasing the abilities of USDA, and the conflicting interests of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is slated to run the Department of Health and Human Services and Brooke Rollins,who Trump plans to nominate as secretary of Agriculture. Tevis said she’s “not holding (her) breath” that Congress will agree on the “fragile marriage of convenience” that is the Farm Bill before the end of the year.

Before the panel, Iowa Farmers Union members shared stories of their participation in USDA programs, like cover crops subsidies, conservation easements, energy programs that allowed them to update freezers and install solar panels and local food procurement funding. Iowa Farmers Union President Aaron Lehman opened the Saturday sessions with an overview of the union’s accomplishments in 2024, including another year of membership growth consistent with what the union has seen over the past 12 years.  Lehman commended union staff and members for their organized opposition to the sale of a nitrogen fertilizer plant to Koch Industries in the spring, a successful Farmers Union Day at the state fair and continued efforts to promote local food and conservation.

Lehman also highlighted the union’s efforts to oppose a lawsuit aimed at dismantling a federal provision that protects wetlands. Iowa Farmers Union, along with Iowa Environmental Council and several other groups, were approved Tuesday as intervenors in the lawsuit over the swampbuster provision. “We are responsible for those things being put into law,” Lehman said. “The Department of Justice and the USDA should be defending themselves when they are challenged … but it’s important for us to be there at the table too, because we’re not sure where this new administration will defend themselves.” Lehman championed union efforts at the Statehouse to secure “the first ever state-funded procurement of local food” which was accomplished in collaboration with the Iowa Food System Coalition.

Union members were invited to the local food policy summit on Friday to talk about the work of the Iowa Food System Coalition and 2025 plans to grow the Iowa local food economy.  Lehman said union members can be “proud” that they were “the only farm group opposed to a pesticide liability shield for pesticide companies.” Lehman said the group plans to oppose the Bayer-led bill about pesticide labeling again in 2025. Lehman said there is much more to be done in the coming year.  “We won’t get it just by working at the Statehouse,” Lehman said. “We have to work together in the countryside. We have to work at it around tables in our communities and on our farms in order to make a real difference from the ground up.”

(Radio Iowa) – The southern part of the state took a little longer to finish up the harvest this year compared to the north. Iowa State Extension field agronomist, Aaron Saeugling covers the southwest corner of the state, and says a wet spring is to blame. “Clearly, a lot of that was delayed planting. We had a pretty good stretch of rain in May, and so I had a lot of corn that was planted the last week of May, in the first two weeks of June, and so that delays harvest.” he says. He says a delay in southern counties has less of an impact that in the north. “We have a longer window in the fall than northern Iowa in terms of harvest. And so occasionally, if you have later higher moisture corn, they’ll kind of hold off combining,” Saeugling says. “So it’s not unusual for us to combine corn at Thanksgiving, and in northern Iowa, that’s they don’t like to do that, because Mother Nature can come.”

Saeugling covers Pottawattamie, Cass, Adair, Mills, Montgomery, Adams, Union, Fremont, Page and Ringgold counties. He says the late start and later harvest didn’t seem to impact harvest results. “You know, ironically, they still pulled some pretty good yields. There were isolated pockets, kind of depending on, you know, when the dry spell came through. I mean, we were, we were in the Drought Monitor at certain parts of the summer,” he says. “So depending if that corn was, you know, silken tasseling at the wrong time, those fields were probably impacted a little more than others, but I have other places that corn yields were exceptionally good.” Northeast Iowa saw a relatively wet summer, but I-S-U field agronomist Terry Basol says things dried out to allow for a quick harvest and dry crops.

“The moisture was low enough so that there wasn’t as much drying needed. That helped the economics, especially considering the lower commodity prices over the past few years. Every little bit certainly helps the growers,” Basol says. Basol says dry weather had a secondary impact as lower river levels impacted shipping. “There’s a fair amount of fertilizer that comes up from the Gulf to Iowa, Minnesota, and the other states along the river, so that’s another thing to keep an eye on, as well,” he says.

This marks the third fall in a row the southern Mississippi has been below average levels.

(Grant Winterer, Iowa Public Radio, contributed to this story.)

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa food pantries and food banks could lose a major source of food if the current Farm Bill isn’t extended. Michelle Book is C-E-O of the Food Bank of Iowa, which distributes food to pantries and other feeding organizations in 55 Iowa counties.

“Of 2.5 million pounds that we distributed in November, 1.25 million of that came from USDA,” Book says. “We have 37 trucks that will arrive at the Food Bank of Iowa to unload in December and 24 of those are USDA loads, so it’s critically important that we continue to be supported in that way by the USDA.”

The U-S Department of Agriculture provides about half of the food the Food Bank of Iowa distributes. Book says it’s not only canned fruits and vegetables, but meat, and sometimes fresh produce. “The USDA Commodity Food started in the 1980s with the blocks of orange cheese and today the variety of just astounding,” Book says. “Over the course of my time at the Food Bank of Iowa, we’ve received leg of lamb and white fish, a lot of frozen fruits and vegetables. We get a lot of dairy from the USDA.”

Book, who’s been C-E-O of the Food Bank of Iowa for nearly nine years, says she’s concerned budget-cutting talks in D.C. might lead to a new Farm Bill that provides less emergency food. “That food has proven to be, over the last few years, very healthy, nutritious food. It helps the food banks serve neighbors in need,” Book says. “It also helps our local agricultural producers as well, keeping prices up, but we are concerned that we’ll see a lack of USDA food coming our way in upcoming years.”

Book made her comments during an appearance this weekend on the “Iowa Press” program on Iowa P-B-S.