(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds says Iowa officials need to close a loophole that could let foreign interests town Iowa farmland.  “We absolutely cannot let foreign governments undermine the agricultural dominance our farmers have worked so hard to build,” Reynolds said. Reynolds is calling on the Iowa Secretary of State’s office to review land purchase documents, to see if foreign governments or individuals are involved in U-S based companies or trusts that have purchased farmland. “Fortunately, I’m proud to say that Iowa already has some of the strongest laws in the country on foreign ownership of land,” Reynolds said. “In fact, we’ve seen other states look to us for a model for their own policies, but as China’s our laws should, too.”

Under current law, foreigners may own now more than 320 acres of Iowa farmland. Reynolds has proposed a bill that calls on the Iowa Secretary of State to compile a public report to show the extent of foreign ownership of farmland in Iowa.  “With this bill, Iowa will continue to lead the nation and keep American soil in American hands,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds made her comments this (Thursday) morning at the Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit. G-O-P presidential candidates Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley are speaking to the group, too.

(Radio Iowa) – The last opportunity for hunters to take a deer this season will focus on unclaimed deer tags in individual counties. Iowa D-N-R state deer biologist Jace Elliott says this final season helps with population control. “Starting January 11th through January 21st, we have January antlerless seasons being held in select counties based on the availability of those county antlerless tags on the 11th,” he says. The D-N-R held its first excess tag season last year. “Those tags can be purchased for use during that January anterless season. It has to be purchased in person at a vendor just because if you purchased it online, the tag may not come to you in time to utilize for the season,” Elliot says. “They must be purchased in person at a vendor, a list of which can be found on our D-N-R website.”

Elliott says the rules change a little bit on the type of gun you can use to encourage hunters to participate. “The Excess Tag January Season allows the use of centerfire rifles between 22 and 50 caliber, that can be used to harvest deer that normally many of those calibers couldn’t normally be used during our firearm season,” he says. “So there’s a little bit of incentive there for hunters to go out and take advantage of these extra seasons.” Elliott says hunters have had success in recent weeks.

“In terms of our overall harvest this season, we’re trending along pretty closely with our five year average. We’re within five percent of the harvest at this time last year, which was a very good year for our deer harvest in Iowa,” Elliott says. “I would expect finishing up at about the same spot, which is between 105 and 110-thousand deer.”

He says the anterless season is a little quieter and longer, and offers a great opportunity to get a deer for your freezer late into the winter.

(Des Moines, Iowa) – A federal appeals court has upheld two state laws that established new penalties for trespassing on farmland or in livestock confinements. The laws makes it a crime to lie on a job application in order to gain access to an agricultural facility. The laws also forbid the use of a camera while trespassing on agricultural properties. Critics say it’s a violation of the free speech rights of those who seek to expose environmental hazards or the abuse of livestock. Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig says the laws safeguard Iowa’s ag community and protect our food security.

(Radio Iowa) – Some Iowans are itching to forget about winter and instead think ahead to springtime and planning out their gardens. The Iowa State University Extension is offering a series of free home gardening webinars starting next week. Alicia Herzog, I-S-U’s Master Gardener Program coordinator, says the course is designed to educate and inspire. “We have ten of these webinar sessions. They’re about an hour each,” Herzog says. “We planned for them to go from 6 to 7 PM Central Time. If they wanted to go through the whole series, it would start January 9th and it goes through March 12th, so ten weeks, every single Tuesday from 6 to 7 PM.” People can sign up for the webinars as late as the day of the event, and they can take any one — or all — of the online classes.

“This is just an educational webinar series that we offer as continuing education for our master gardeners,” Herzog says, “and also just as a free resource to the public, to anyone who’s interested in gardening and wanting to become a better gardener this year.” Attendees can register to join through Zoom or Facebook Live. The ten courses will offer a wide range of gardening topics, with the January classes focused primarily on edibles.

“We’ll talk about tomatoes and dealing with disorders and diseases of those, grape pruning and canopy management, which is one that has been requested many times,” Herzog says. “Also a common one for any gardener is identifying and managing fruit and vegetable insect pests in your garden, and then seed saving for the home gardener.” Other topics will include soil health, cover crops, climate extremes and composting, as well as tips on designing your home garden. The first of the ten classes will be held next Tuesday night.

Register here: https://go.iastate.edu/UOOQEJ

(Radio Iowa) – The final tallies are in, and state climatologist Justin Glisan says 2023 is going down as one of Iowa’s warmest and driest years in more than 150 years of record keeping. Glisan says when you average out the temperatures over 365 days, it’s rare for Iowa’s year-long average temperature to vary by even one-degree above or below the previous year, but that changed during 2023. “We were over two degrees above average,” Glisan says, “so that was looking at the rankings that we have, it’ll be in the top 20 warmest years on record, again going back to 1872.”

As 2023 concluded, he says it ended 182 consecutive weeks of at least D-1 moderate drought in some part of the state. That’s more than three-and-a-half years of continuous drought and some sections of the state have very dry conditions. “We have widespread drought, a large D-3, which is on that scale of D-0 to D-4 for extreme drought, a large swath in eastern Iowa,” Glisan says. “Precipitation deficits within that D-3 region, anywhere from 12 to 18 inches below average just for the year.”

Justin Glisan (Photo courtesy Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship)

The only corner of the state that recorded above-average precipitation during 2023 was northwest Iowa, which saw between one and three inches more than the norm. However, he says the rest of the state was exceptionally dry. “Overall, if you look at the statewide average, about 27 inches, with the average just a little over 35-and-a-half inches,” Glisan says, “so about nine inches below average, and looking at the rankings, it’ll be in the top 25 driest years on record.”

After three consecutive La Nina winters, we’re now in an El Nino pattern, which Glisan says tends to bring the Midwest warmer temperatures in addition to wetter conditions. Glisan says Iowa had a bit of a snow drought last month. “Climatologically December is the snowiest month for Iowa,” Glisan says. “The preliminary statewide average is 1.4 inches. That’s 6.5 inches below average.” Despite the lack of snow, December was one of four months out of 2023 that wound up with ABOVE average precipitation. “A majority of our precipitation was rainfall and that rainfall was gradual over several days and it was able to soak in,” Glisan says. That’s because December temperatures were above average, keeping the ground from freezing solid.

Glisan says there is a storm system in the Pacific Ocean that’s headed east and the long-term forecast indicates it may bring rain and snow to Iowa as early as this weekend. Glisan cautions, though, that the storm system could weaken as it makes landfall on the west coast and moves across the Rockies.

(Shelby, Iowa) – The Carstens 1880 Farmstead, Inc. will hold its annual meeting on Tuesday, January 9, 2024 at the Shelby Community Hall in Shelby at 7:00 pm.  Carstens’ Board President Charlie Leaders, of Minden, says “Everyone is invited to come to the meeting and hear about what’s happening at the farm.”

Members of Carstens Farm will be voting for three positions on the board of directors. The following board members’ terms are ending as of the date of the meeting:  David Dittmer of Minden, Doug Martin of Shelby and Dale Schroder of Avoca will be up for re-election for another term.  All are running for another term.  Continuing board members are Ben Ausdemore, Charlie Leaders and Gerald McCool of Minden, Bill Johnson and Stan Kern of Shelby, Harvey Ferris of Missouri Valley, Rick Newland of Persia and Terry Torneten of Harlan.  Results of the election will be announced following the meeting. Leaders says “We will take ideas for projects in 2024. We’ve got several projects planned that we’ll talk about. Building upkeep and repair are always projects we work on. Reports will be given on the 2023 Carstens Farm Days show. I hope to see many members as well as the general public at the meeting because we want to continue to grow our membership.”

Via carstensfarm.com

Carstens 1880 Farmstead, Inc. members as well as members of the public are welcome and encouraged to attend.  Those attending will have the opportunity to renew their memberships or to purchase new memberships. Memberships from the public are important for sustaining the farm’s operations. New or renewing members should note that membership rates remain the same as last year: $25 for family; $15 for an individual. Visit the farm’s website for membership information.

Carstens 1880 Farmstead, Inc., a non-profit group of local volunteers, oversees the working farmstead museum exhibit located south of Shelby, Iowa.  The farmstead hosts several thousand people annually during Carstens Farm Days which is held the first weekend after Labor Day.  For more information visit www.carstensfarm.com

w/Kate Olson.

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(Radio Iowa) – An eastern Iowa program works to connect immigrant farmers with plots of land to farm. Emmaly Renshaw is executive director of Feed Iowa First, which was launched in Linn County. The three-year community farming program aims to remove barriers to farmers who are growing what are considered culturally-relevant foods.  “They’re individuals who want to produce for food access for both their families and their communities,” Renshaw says, “but they’re not necessarily looking at making their farming like a main income again.” Renshaw says in Iowa, crops like yuka, casava and hot peppers can be in low supply, or priced as luxury foods.

By sourcing immigrants from Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with land, Feed Iowa First aims to make these crops more readily available. Renshaw says the program’s farmers are barely meeting demand.  “We were able to move about a thousand pounds of habanero in about three days,” she says, “and so for us that just helps us begin to understand how big these food gaps are.”

Even if immigrants come to Iowa with agricultural skills and experience, with farmland prices are a premium, she says it’s very difficult for them to get back into the field.

(Radio Iowa) – A University of Iowa engineering professor says extreme drought poses concerns about water quality as well as the water supply. David Cwiertny is a professor of civil and environmental engineering. “Lots of communities are looking at how they can augment their existing supply or have alternative supplies,” he says, “which is why we really need to take good care of the resources that we have or have impaired supplies that can’t work.” Cwiertny is director of the University of Iowa’s Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination. The center was established in 1987 by the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act.

Des Moines Water Works CEO Ted Corrogan, left, and UI civil and environmental engineering professor David Cwiertny on the Iowa Press set. (Photo courtesy of Iowa PBS.)

“When we have a drought…we still have the same types/amounts of chemicals that we’re putting into that water, but less water there leads to higher concentrations and sometimes greater need for treatment,” Cwiertny says, “which also stresses how water systems need to provide for their communities.” Cwiertny says beyond regional water systems that serve communities and rural residents, 300-thousand Iowans rely solely on a private well for their water.

“Many of those are shallow inside, say, the alluvial plains near rivers and creeks. As those start to dry up, then you have homeowners on their own because those fall outside of most state and federal oversight –needing secure water supplies,” Cwiertny says. “We hear anecdotal tales of residents in northwest Iowa who’ve had their wells run dry and we’re just beginning to think about what that means for the quality and the reliability of well water for private well consumers.”

Cwiertney made his comments during a recent appearance on Iowa Press on Iowa P-B-S.