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CLICK HERE for the latest market quotes from the Iowa Agribusiness Network!
CLICK HERE for the latest market quotes from the Brownfield Ag News Network!
Members of the City of Atlantic’s Park and Recreation Board will meet 5:15-p.m. Monday (April 19), via Zoom. Action items and/or New Business during the meeting, will include:
In the Director’s Report, Atlantic Parks and Rec Director Bryant Rasmussen will discuss:
(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig is dismissing a national environmental group’s report that cited ag run-off in ranking Iowa’s Raccoon River as one of the nation’s most-endangered rivers. “That so-called report was a bit of propaganda, I think. It was obviously a Washington, D.C based advocacy organization,” Naig says. “They can go out and say what they want to, but what they talked about related to Iowa is not based in fact. We’re moving in the right direction.”
The American Rivers report described the farm chemicals and manure that drain into the Raccoon River as a grave threat to using the river as a source for drinking water. Naig says there’s recently been an acceleration of the voluntary nutrient reduction strategy state officials unveiled in 2013 to promote rather than require conservation practices on Iowa farms. “We’ve got a long ways to go and I don’t sugar coat that at all…The strategy calls for a 45% reduction in nitrogen and phosphorus loss off of the Iowa landscape,” Naig says. “That’s a big number, not easily achieved. It’s going to time and focus, but the evidence is moving in the right direction.”
About two million acres of Iowa farmland is now planted with oats, rye and other so-called cover crops that hold soils in place. Naig says it took 15 years to reconstruct 100 wetlands and another 50 are currently under development. The number of filtration systems called “bioreactors” in Iowa will double after one project in Polk County is completed later this year. Meanwhile, the C-E-O of the drinking water system for half a million central Iowans says there will be a catastrophe if the state doesn’t find a way to more quickly reduce ag pollution in the Raccoon River.
Naig says the Des Moines Water Works is providing safe drinking water now and every indication is it will be able to do so in the future. “Last year, 2020 — a year unlike any other in terms of disruption to all of our lives, we set a record in terms of conservation adoption in the state of Iowa,” Naig says. “Even in that environment, more farmers, more landowners, more focus, more resources, more partners doing more on the ground than at any other time in our state’s history.”
Naig made his comments during taping of “Iowa Press” which airs tonight (Friday) at 7:30 on Iowa P-B-S.
(Radio Iowa) – The challenges of the pandemic are reinforcing the importance of the trucking industry, especially in states like Iowa, where 18-wheelers move a host of commodities. Mitch Schulte, executive director of the Iowa State Dairy Association, says he’s hopeful the Iowa legislature will pass a bill this session allowing overweight milk tankers to travel on interstates instead of forcing them onto congested state and county roads.
“It’s more efficient for us,” Schulte says. “Instead of getting off the interstate, pulling into small towns and communities and stopping all the time, our semis can stay on that interstate and keep moving. It is safer if you can stay on the interstate rather than drive through residential areas.” As dairy producers work to be more sustainable, Schulte is calling on lawmakers to pass a measure allowing anaerobic digesters on dairy operations.
“We should be able to use that digester to help us be more environmentally friendly but also take up less of a footprint on the land,” Schulte says. “Because at the end of the day, we want to produce more milk and more products using less land and less water, and these digesters help us do that.” Schulte is urging the association’s members and supporters to contact legislators and weigh in on the digester legislation.
“I encourage you to reach out to your local politician, your local representative,” he says, “and let them know the importance of sustainabililty and utilizing technology such as anaerobic digesters out in the dairy community.” Schulte says dairy producers are also interested in seeing lawmakers approve legislation to expand broadband into underserved and unserved areas of the state.
(Radio Iowa) – The Department of Natural Resources is investigating two manure spills in northern Iowa that have killed fish and the spill of a food product that’s described as a pollutant once it reaches a stream. D-N-R staff estimate several hundred thousand gallons of liquid manure from the Rock Bottom Dairy spilled into Mud Creek northwest of Rock Rapids in Lyon County. The manure laden-water is moving slowly downstream, according to the D-N-R, and the agency is warning farmers in the area who use the creek to water their livestock that conditions may not improve for the next few days. The D-N-R also is investigating a manure spill in Kossuth County, near West Bend. It was caused when a hose used by company that applies liquid manure on land came loose, flopped into Lotts Creek, and spilled about 10-thousand gallons of manure. Investigators say it’s impractical to pump the manure back out of the creek. The manure is flowing toward the East Fork of the Des Moines River, but according to the D-N-R it is not expected to impact drinking water supplies.
State officials have ordered a McDonald’s distribution center in Mason City to remove milk-colored water from a stream that’s near a popular biking and hiking trail in Mason City. Employees of the company told investigators a milk shake ingredient had spilled and they used hoses to direct it into a storm water intake on Monday morning. The D-N-R says the milky water isn’t likely to pose a danger to humans or pets who come into contact with it.
(Radio Iowa) – The environmental group American Rivers lists two waterways that either border Iowa or flow through the state on its annual list of the nation’s ten most endangered rivers. Olivia Dorothy, director of the group’s Upper Mississippi River Basin, says the 2019 flooding on the Lower Missouri River brought massive levee breaches. It’s concerning, she says, because the river is too constricted and there’s not enough room for water that comes downriver during floods. “We need to take strategic action to set back levees,” Dorothy says, “to give the river a little bit more room to flood so that we know the water is going to basically go into areas of the flood plain where people and critical infrastructure aren’t located.”
This is the second year in a row the Lower Missouri River has made the group’s most-endangered list. “We are again calling on Congress and the states along the Lower Missouri River to work together to set up a framework to prioritize areas where levees can be set back and where we can do critical habitat restoration which is much needed for a lot of species, including the pallid sturgeon,” she says. That fish is threatened, she says, in part due to a lack of access to quality habitat. The Raccoon River is on this year’s most-endangered list for the first time. Its three forks run for 226 miles across western and central Iowa.
Dorothy says the Raccoon is most threatened by pollution due to agricultural runoff, which she attributes to “industrial agriculture.” “In the Raccoon watershed, we have a lot of confined feeding operations, we have a lot of confined factory farms,” Dorothy says. “They spread manure in excess across the watershed on farms for fertilizer. A lot of times, that fertilizer is running off and getting into our drinking water.” It’s forced cities like Des Moines to install expensive nitrate removal equipment, while she says it’s continuing to threaten the drinking water in rural areas, especially for people who use wells. Dorothy says nitrogen is particularly toxic to children, infants and pregnant women.
“We are calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to step in in Iowa and step up their enforcement actions,” she says, “and really start regulating these factory farms that we know are being installed in excess throughout the state of Iowa but especially in the Raccoon watershed.” The full report is online at AmericanRivers.org. Dorothy encourages Iowans to log on and learn more, and find links so they can contact federal agencies and officials to demand action to protect our rivers — and people.
(Radio Iowa) – A plan emerging from the Iowa House would provide 750-thousand dollars in grants to help small meat lockers with fewer than 50 employees expand. In addition to the money, a bill that’s passed the House would set up a task force to study creation of an artisanal butchery program at a community college or Iowa State University. Representative Phil Thompson of Jefferson says the pandemic highlighted the need for small-scale, local meat processing.
“Many of us remember walking into our grocery stores, only to find empty meat cases,” Thompson says. “…We saw outbreaks and closures of some of our larger meatpacking plants and a supply chain that struggled to keep up with demand.” The proposed state grants could be used to buy more space or equipment, like refrigerators and freezers, for meat lockers. The money is included in a separate bill for the Iowa Economic Development Authority — the state agency that would hand out the grants.
Representative Chris Hall of Sioux City says there’s a definite need, since many Iowa meat lockers aren’t taking orders until 2022 or 2023. “Past that, I think that it speaks to a greater interest in our state and many other places the where people are looking to find a connection to local agriculture,” Hall says, “and to know where their food comes from.” Representative Chad Ingels, a farmer from Randalia, is the bill’s sponsor.
“It came from a lot of discussions with farmers that wanted more opportunities to sell directly to consumers and consumers that wanted more opportunities to buy directly from farmers,” Ingels says. “These conversations were happening before 2020. Last year just kind of brought it all to a head.”
Nebraska’s legislature is considering a different route to expanding consumer access to local protein. Nebraska’s bill would let consumers buy shares in live animals, the livestock would be slaughtered and processed by a custom butcher and the meat would not be subject to federal inspection.
(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Senator Joni Ernst is co-sponsoring legislation designed to foster more disclosure of the prices paid for cattle, as well as a bill to block federal agencies from promoting a “meatless” diet among employees. Ernst, a Republican who grew up on a farm near Red Oak, says these issues are important to her since her family raised hogs. “Here in Iowa, folks, we are all about the meat,” Ernst says. “Farming and ranching is not only critical to our jobs, our economy, our culture and our way of life here in Iowa, it’s also in our DNA.”
Ernst is co-sponsoring a bill that would give independent cattle producers more data about what meatpackers are paying for cattle. Since packers often buy directly from feedlots, cattle prices aren’t well represented in public sales. The bill would set up a system already used to help track hog prices. Ernst warns getting the bill through the Senate will be difficult. “What we’ll see is a little bit of pushback coming from different areas of the United States,” she says. “…You see those beef producers maybe in Texas or Oklahoma that have a different thought on how it should be handled.”
Ernst and a Kansas senator are co-sponsoring a bill that would ban federal agencies from excluding meat from the menu in government cafeterias and dining halls. “When I hear calls from the liberal left, everyone from out-of-touch politicians to Hollywood elite encouraging people to ban meat and the quality agriculture products we produce here in Iowa it makes me sizzle,” Ernst says.
Ernst is calling this bill the TASTEE Act, which stands for Telling Agencies to Stop Tweaking What Employees Eat Act. Ernst says it’s one way supporters of animal agriculture can start pushing back against the so-called Green New Deal and prevent another episode like the U-S-D-A newsletter reference to “meatless Mondays” that was retracted in 2012.
Atlantic Trees Forever has announced spring tree vouchers are now available. Spokesperson Dolly Bergmann said tree vouchers are a great way to help with the cost of a tree to plant. The vouchers are worth $30 off the cost of a tree, and can be obtained at Pymosa Farms, north of Atlantic. Bergmann adds, there are a limited number of vouchers available. Those at Pymosa Farms can help you determine what kind of tree would work best in the location you would like to plant a tree.
Pymosa Farms is located at 50979 Buck Creek Road, Atlantic, but Bergmann suggests calling owner Tim Reavis, at 402-659-1213 before driving out to the farm to ensure someone is available to help you.
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