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(Radio Iowa) – Grass and field fires remained a big problem this past weekend in western Iowa and bordering states where things remain very dry. Sergeant Bluff fire chief, Anthony Gaul says his firefighters worked several hours responding to calls Saturday, and every area department was busy:
“There were so many fires going on that departments had to travel 20 and 25 miles to help manage incidents because there was nobody else available,” he says. Gaul says the local area damage total from the weekend fires will be more than seven figures as the burn ban in Woodbury County remains in place.
“One community wants to opt-out of it but the amount of dollars that were lost in Woodbury and Plymouth and then across the river and those counties if you add it up is over one million dollars. I know Plymouth County had a piece of apparatus burn up,” Gaul says. Chief Gaul says the strong winds of up to 60 miles an hour at times contributed to the fires.
“One of the fires in Woodbury County was caused by a downed power line which we can’t control that. But others have mentioned hey, we’ve had some rain and yes, we have had some rain but with that wind, it has dried everything out and there is so much out there that’s just ready and able to burn that. We can’t ask enough to stop, not do it,” Gaul says. He says you need to think twice before starting any kind of fire outdoors when conditions are as windy and dry as they have been. Even if you are using a burn barrel.
“We’ve had quite a few incidents caused by burn barrels which can be legal throughout the burn ban but there are requirements that you can’t have more than a one inch opening with a grating,” according to Gaul. He says there are code requirements for burn barrels on the State Fire Marshal’s website.
There are ten active burn bans in the state as of Monday — with all of them along the western edge of the state.
(Radio Iowa) – A new map by University of Iowa researchers shows nearly 450-thousand acres of Iowa farmland is under constant flood threat. Researcher Enes Yildirim says he developed the statewide map to help farmers compare their flood risk with their crop productivity.
“There are lots of regions very fertile, but also under flood threat, so those regions might need extra precaution, let’s say maybe a levee or some sort of other flood mitigation,” Vildirim says. Four wetlands zones in Iowa have the highest risk. They are part of four river valleys — the Middle Cedar, North Raccoon, South Skunk and West Nishnabotna.
Cropland in those areas have a 50 percent chance of flooding each year according to Yildirim’s research. He hopes policymakers will consider adding more flood protection to those areas or converting them into wetlands. “It will be helpful for maintaining the food production and also it will be helpful for cities to get less extreme floods,” he says. The University of Iowa research indicates floods lead to the destruction of around 230 million dollars worth of crops in Iowa each year.
Yildirim anticipates that number will grow as floods become more frequent within the state.
(Reporting by Iowa Public Radio’s Kendall Crawford)
(Southwest Iowa) – Connections Area Agency officials say they are pleased to announce that the state is continuing the Farmers Market voucher program for older Iowans. With this program, seniors meeting income requirements can obtain vouchers that they can use at participating area Farmers Markets to buy $30.00 worth of fresh, locally grown produce. This year Connections will be asking individuals to call in to request an application. Beginning May 2nd, you may call 800-432-9209 x8888 and leave a message with their name and phone number. All calls will be returned within five business days in the order they are received. Applications will then be mailed out every Thursday with an addressed return envelope. Once we receive completed applications, vouchers will be mailed out to applicant starting on June 1st, 2022. Please note applications not completed will not receive vouchers until all information is provided.
Program Criteria:
When a staff member returns your call, please indicate whether you are applying as an individual or a married couple.
Outline of Process:
This method is the only way to obtain Farmers’ Market vouchers in 2022.
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Connections Area Agency is one of six Area Agencies on Aging in Iowa, and part of a nationwide network. With a mission of enhancing the quality of life for elders in 20 counties through education, planning and coordination of services, Connections Area Agency on Aging is the premier agency for assisting elders, caregivers, and their families to access the information and services needed for independence and life transitions. Offices are located in Council Bluffs, Creston and Sioux City. For more information, contact Connections AAA at 800-432-9209 or at www.connectionsaaa.org
(Radio Iowa) – While we’re more than a month into spring already, weather and soil conditions have been far from ideal for Iowa farmers to do much in the way of spring planting. Angie Rieck-Hinz, a field agronomist with the Iowa State University Extension in north central Iowa, says a few farmers have started the process, but not many. “We want to be patient,” Rieck-Hinz says. “Our soil temperatures are still not where we would like them to be for planting. The rest of the soil conditions aren’t too bad. It’s not overly wet.” Temperatures this week have rollercoastered from the 20s to the 60s and just last weekend, parts of Iowa got more than four inches of snow.
The spring season officially arrived back on March 20th so Rieck-Hinz says it’s no surprise farmers are getting itchy to fire up the tractors. “We’ve had such nice springs the last couple of years,” she says. “In fact, 2018 was the last time we hadn’t had major corn planting progress by the third week of April, so I can understand why everybody’s a little antsy.” Recent rains have helped to recharge soil moisture levels in parts of the state that were slipping into drought conditions a year ago.
“We’ve been through two relatively dry summers now,” she says. “Our soil moisture availability is a little bit higher now. That’ll help us going into the spring if it dries out a little bit more. Otherwise, things look pretty positive going forward in time.” Rieck-Hinz says farmers need to wait for good conditions before putting corn into the ground so it has a good chance of getting -out- of the ground, adding, even emergence leads to a more consistent yield.
DES MOINES, Iowa (April 24, 2022) – The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Sunday, confirmed a positive case of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in Kossuth County, Iowa. The virus was found in a non-commercial backyard flock.
It’s the 18th case of HPAI in Iowa since March 1st.
DES MOINES, Iowa (April 21, 2022) – The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) have confirmed a positive case of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in Bremer County, Iowa. The virus was found in a commercial turkey flock.
“While this is our first detection of HPAI in Iowa in the last two weeks, we have continued to take the threat of this virus seriously and encourage producers to remain alert,” said Mike Naig, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture. “Our Department, USDA, farmers and industry stakeholders have and will continue to focus on exercising preparedness and response plans to protect Iowa’s livestock and agriculture-based economy.”
Flock owners should prevent contact between their birds and wild birds and report sick birds or unusual deaths to state/federal officials. Biosecurity resources and best practices are available at iowaagriculture.gov/biosecurity. If producers suspect signs of HPAI in their flocks, they should contact their veterinarian immediately. Possible cases must also be reported to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship at (515) 281-5305.
(Radio Iowa) – Iowa has a global reputation for its fertile soil and all of the agricultural products we raise on it — and a new book is both a memoir and a call to action to preserve and respect that valuable ground. Professor Neil Hamilton, who recently retired after 36 years directing the Agricultural Law Center at Drake University, says he allows the land to tell its own story in his book, “The Land Remains.” “I use the Back Forty as a narrator to help us think about how the land may look at history and may look at our activities and how the land may think about its future,” Hamilton says. “I don’t think we hear from the land very often, and so that was a device I tried to use to help tell the story.”
Hamilton grew up in southern Iowa’s Adams County near Lenox. In recent years, he sold the final piece of his family farm to a young neighbor farmer, enabling the agricultural cycle to continue. “That land that I grew up on had been in our family since the 1870s,” Hamilton says. “So the land has this type of resilience. Our opportunity is how we use it and how we shape it and I think I say in the book, how we treat the land is really a portrait of the owner.” While the book tells the history of Iowa land conservation, Hamilton says it’s also an analysis of contemporary issues dealing with soil health, water quality, public lands, and future challenges.
“At a personal level, it’s really asking people who are landowners or who want to become landowners to think about how they use their land,” Hamilton says. “So if there’s a call to action, it’s for us, perhaps, to be more sensitive and thoughtful and taking the long-term view recognizing that the land is resilient and how we shape it today is also going to determine its future.” One message of the book is to have optimism, he says, as we can find hope and resiliency from the land by examining how new attitudes can address past abuses. Hamilton notes how demand for better food is creating opportunities for better land stewardship — and new farmers.
The book is available through many Iowa bookstores and the publisher, Ice Cube Press, based in North Liberty.
(Radio Iowa) – One of the governor’s priority proposals for the 2022 legislature is an Iowa Renewable Fuels Standard and it passed the Iowa House in early February. A key lawmaker says negotiations in the Senate are focused on responding to concerns about the scope of the plan. The House bill would require Iowa gas stations to sell fuel with 15 percent ethanol — E-15 — if they have compatible equipment now AND stations installing new pumps would have to choose equipment in the future that can handle higher blends of ethanol. Senator Dan Dawson of Council Bluffs is the Republican leading negotiations on the bill in the Senate.
“We want to support ethanol. We want to make sure that Iowa has a voice in the national stage when we talk about renewable energies here, but there’s a lot of details that need to be worked out,” Dawson says. “I don’t think anyone is against ethanol, but…how it actually gets to the end user, there’s a lot of rungs along there and those are important rungs that we need to make sure we hear all the voices.” The governor originally proposed a state Renewable Fuels Standard last year and offered a reworked plan this year that won bipartisan approval in the House.
Senator Pam Jochum of Dubuque says she and other Democrats in the Senate have been looking much more closely at the bill now. “When you consider what happened in the House, it went from start to finish in nine days and that is a very fast moving bill and I’m not so sure they all had time to really digest everything that the bill contained,” Jochum says. “…We’re getting a lot more feedback from people like independent, small gas station owners in more of our rural and smaller towns that are saying: ‘Whoa!'”
Jochum says any small station that has to install a new underground tank and fuel pump in the future would have to spend in the neighborhood of 300-thousand dollars on an ethanol-compatible system and that’s a financial stumbling block. Dawson says there’s an opportunity to do something to expand use of E-15, but it’s still not clear what the final product might be.
“We want to make sure we get this done right,” Dawson says, “and the impacts on some these gas stations, you know, the retailers out there, needs to be heard.” Dawson and Jochum made their comments during a recent appearance on “Iowa Press” on Iowa P-B-S.
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