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KJAN News can be heard at five minutes after every hour right after Fox News 24 hours a day!
Keep up-to-date with Fox News Radio, Radio Iowa, Brownfield & the Iowa Agribusiness Networks!
(Greenfield, Iowa) – The Adair County Board of Supervisors, today (Wednesday), agreed to hire a former custodian as a part-time custodian. Rich Wallace had retired as full-time custodian in January of this year (2024). Auditor Mandy Berg and Maintenance Director/Custodian Scott Roberts, both said Wallace has been helping out as needed since his retirement.
The Board agreed to make Wallace’ pay of $22.58/hour retroactive to May 21st. He’ll be asked to help out as needed. In other business, the Adair County Supervisors acknowledged the receipt of two Manure Management Plans, Rose Acres Winterset Egg Farm and Prestige Farms in Anita (Nichols’ Hog Farm). The Board approved two appointments to the Compensation Board, pending their being willing to hold those seats again. Both appointments were of former Comp Board members. Auditor Mandy Berg…
The Supervisors accepted a bid from Murphy Heavy Contracting out of Anita, in the amount of $92,610 for the County Road G-61 pipe repair/revetment project. Hungry Canyons Alliance will pay for a portion of that amount. There were two bidders out six requested quotes for the work. And, the Board authorized Chairman Jerry Walker to sign the final voucher for an FY25 Farm-to-Market road rock contract with Schildberg’s, in the amount of $251,436.95.
Adair County Engineer Nick Kauffman updated the Board on some of the various county road projects that are currently underway.
Kauffman said they’re still waiting on culvert liners for one of the projects, and they’ll be using a grinder to work out some bumps in certain roads to smooth them out.
(Creston, Iowa) – The Creston Police Department reports officers detained, and then released on a citation, a man who allegedly allowed an animal to run at-large. 48-year-old Mustafa Bin Beyyette, of Creston, was detained at his residence in the 500 block of S. Vine St. at around 1:18-p.m., Tuesday, in Creston, until he was issued his citation on a Promise to Appear in Court.
(Harlan, Iowa) – Officials with Practical Farmers of Iowa, a nonprofit organization with more than 8,000 members that equips farmers to build resilient farms and communities, says Rosmann Family Farms in Harlan (at 1222 Ironwood Rd.), will host a Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) field day on August 10th. The event – which takes place from 3-until 5-p.m., covers pasture management with rotational grazing and cover crops, is free to attend and open to the public. Attendees can RSVP by visiting the event page or calling PFI at (515)-232-5661. More information about the field day is below and full details can be found on the event’s webpage.
David Rosmann operates Rosmann Family Farms in Harlan, along with his wife Becky and their children, his parents, and brother. Their 700-acre certified organic farm is a mixture of field crops, pasture, popcorn, small grains and hay as well as cattle and hogs.
The Rosmanns (Photo supplied by PFI)
Strong proponents of rotational grazing, the Rosmanns pay close attention to the health of their pastures at all stages of their grazing calendar. At the Aug. 10th field day, you’ll learn about the systems-based approach the Rosmanns take that can work on any farm, showcasing grazing, row crops, small grains and cover crops.
David will discuss the cool- and warm-season planting mixes that accompany each grazing period, as well as cattle maintenance and using hogs for fertilizer. He’ll share how the farm lowers its overall inputs by composting manure. You’ll also hear how the Rosmanns seed rotational cover crops, such as hybrid rye, for livestock feed and as a supplement for cattle and hogs.
(Adair, Iowa) – An accident early this (Wednesday) morning, north of Adair, has resulted in the death of numerous hogs. Authorities said the accident happened on White Pole Road near the intersection with Frontier Road. A semi tractor-trailer loaded with hogs overturned into a ditch. Authorities and others remained on the scene as of 8:10-a.m.
Additional details are currently not available.
DES MOINES, Iowa – State Treasurer Roby Smith is recognizing National Purple Heart Day by asking for Iowans’ help to reunite a Purple Heart held in Great Iowa Treasure Hunt, the State’s program for returning lost and unclaimed property. “I don’t think I can adequately put into words the magnitude of emotions I felt holding a Purple Heart for the first time,” said Smith. “Those same emotions inspire me to reunite Garold Hayes’ family with the Purple Heart found in his abandoned safe deposit box. I call out to Iowans to help us return this medal to the care of his family.” Hayes died in Sept. 2015 at the age of 76.
National Purple Heart Day is celebrated on August 7 each year to honor recipients of a Purple Heart, one of the oldest military decorations. The men and women who receive these decorations were injured or killed in service to our country. “It is unclear if Garold was the Purple Heart recipient or was safekeeping it for a loved one, but nonetheless, it deserves to be in the hands of the rightful owner,” Smith said. “If you recognize this name, please tell the family to contact my office.”
A Purple Heart – The Purple Heart medal is presented to service members who have been wounded or killed as a result of enemy action while serving in the U.S. military.
Each year, millions of dollars and hundreds of safe deposit boxes are turned over after financial institutions and businesses lose contact with the owner. In addition to tangible items like safe deposit box contents, monetary items like forgotten checking and savings accounts, stocks, uncashed checks, life insurance policies and utility refunds are also turned over to the State as unclaimed.
Anyone can search for their name at GreatIowaTreasureHunt.gov. It’s secure, free and easy to use. Connect with the Treasurer on Facebook, Instagram and X to stay up-to-date on all areas of the office.
(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Lottery now has the numbers for the final month of the fiscal year and sales hit a record of nearly 489-point-nine million dollars. Lottery spokesperson Mary Neubauer says they also set a record for payouts to players of nearly 313 million dollars. “Iowa Lottery players claimed 14 prizes of at least 500-thousand during fiscal year 2024, including three prizes of two million dollars,” she says. The Lottery sales for the fiscal year that ended June 30th were one-point-seven percent above last year. Proceeds to the state were more than 100 million dollars. “That ended up being the Lottery’s second best number ever in that category so the lottery raised almost 107 million dollars this year for state causes,” Neubauer says.
Neubauer says the proceeds to the state fell short of a record as scratch tickets were the top seller and they have a smaller margin than other games. Powerball jackpots were a big factor in the record sales. “That game saw its jackpot atop the one billion dollar mark three different times in the year, and that combined with the addition of the new double play option in that game drove Powerball sales up almost 18 percent over the last year,” she says. Two Hy-Vee stores in Cedar Rapids led the top ten list for sales, with each topping the one million dollar mark. “They’ve been at the top of the lotteries list for a few years now they just take great pride in their lottery sales, they know they’re at the top of the game and they want to stay there,” Neubauer says. “And so we love to see that, like the competition even that they have within their own company.”
Another Hy-Vee in Council Bluffs was third on the list and The Albia Road BP station in Ottumwa was fourth in sales.
(Des Moines, Iowa) – Two racehorse owners at Polk County’s Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino are suing the national nonprofit horseracing organization that collects taxes and fees from owners. The Iowa Capital Dispatch reports Joseph A. Kelly of Des Moines, a thoroughbred racehorse owner who owns three horses that race at Prairie Meadows, and Douglas L. Anderson of Arkansas, who owns two horses that race at Prairie Meadows, are suing the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. HISA is a nonprofit corporation based in Lexington, Kentucky, to which the federal government has delegated the power to assess taxes and fees against all trainers, owners, breeders, jockeys, racetracks, veterinarians, and other people by a state racing commission.
The lawsuit has its origins in one element of an omnibus budget bill approved by Congress in December 2020 and which, according to the lawsuit, provided for a “takeover of the thoroughbred horseracing industry by a private organization.” The legislation, known as the Horseracing Safety and Integrity Act, took authority from state regulatory bodies, such as the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission, and transferred it to the privately operated, self-regulating, nonprofit HISA. “Despite wielding the power of the federal government, HISA is not funded by it,” the lawsuit notes. “Instead, this private, independent corporation — whose board of directors is not appointed by the president or any elected official — is funded entirely by ‘assessments’ on either the states or on the thoroughbred horseracing industry.”
The assessments, which take the shape of fees or taxes, are used to cover HISA’s budgetary expenses. HISA is charged with developing and implementing a national horseracing anti-doping program and a racetrack-safety program. In 2022, HISA notified the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission that it was imposing fees on Iowa totaling $953,400. The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission opted not to provide HISA with that funding, in part because its budget doesn’t provide for such an expense. HISA then turned to Prairie Meadows, Iowa’s only horseracing track, and informed the administrators there that the burden of paying the fee would be shared equally by “the track and the horsemen” there – although no definition of “horsemen” was provided.
It was expected that the Iowa Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association would pay the horsemen’s half of the fee. In 2023, HISA told the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission the state’s second round of fees would total $1,187,942. Again, the commission opted not to make that payment, so the obligation fell to Prairie Meadows and its horsemen. By then, the Iowa Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association had already offered to “assist” Prairie Meadows with the payment of such fees but only after what it called the exhaustion of all legal options to “fully stop the outright unconstitutional takeover of horseracing in Iowa.”
Horse racing at Prairie Meadows (photo from the OFFICIAL Prairie Meadows Backside Information Page)
With the benevolent association still withholding payment of the 2023 and 2024 horsemen’s share of the assessments, HISA wrote to Prairie Meadows representatives and said they were “frustrated and angry” with the stalemate. HISA allegedly stated that if the benevolent association did not pay the horsemen’s share, HISA would force Prairie Meadows to impose a “starter’s fee” on all owners as a condition of having their horses run at the track, with the revenue passed on to HISA. On July 3, 2024, HISA informed Prairie Meadows that because the issue remained unresolved, it would begin imposing the starter fee. As part of their petition to the court, Anderson and Kelly say they are “now forced to bring this lawsuit” to stop HISA from imposing that fee and collecting the revenue.
The two owners note that in a letter to Iowa officials, HISA reported that the proposed fee is intended to cover the cost of defending the lawsuits that have been filed challenging the constitutionality of HISA’s actions. To date, HISA has spent more than $2 million on such litigation. HISA, Anderson and Kelly argue, is now passing its legal costs “onto the very people” who filed the lawsuits against HISA. The two men are asking the court to “stop the unconstitutional assessments and bring HISA’s unlawful reign to an end.”
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has twice declared that portions of the Horseracing Safety and Integrity Act are unconstitutional, while the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has upheld the law in the face of broad constitutional challenges. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, where Iowa is located, currently has the issue under consideration.
(Council Bluffs, Iowa) – An Iowa company is suing its marketing partner for $7 million in damages caused by alleged errors in attempting to sell fuel-grade ethanol produced in Iowa and Nebraska. The Iowa Capital Dispatch reports Southwest Iowa Renewable Energy, or SIRE, is a Council Bluffs-based company that has hundreds of member ethanol producers in Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and 18 other states. It is suing a Missouri company, Bunge North America, with whom it partnered to sell SIRE-produced ethanol.
SIRE is a dry-mill grain processing facility that each year produces millions of gallons of fuel-grade ethanol from grain that originates in southwest Iowa and southeast Nebraska. Bunge is an agronomic business focused on the purchase, storage and eventual sale of products, including ethanol, within North America. In the ethanol market, it’s common practice for ethanol producers such as SIRE, to contract with ethanol marketers tasked with finding buyers who are willing to purchase the commodity at the highest possible price and then negotiating with rail lines and trucking companies to achieve the lowest possible rates for shipping the ethanol. In order to do all of that, the lawsuit alleges, ethanol marketers must have expertise related to complicated and ever-changing federal and state renewable fuel standards.
In 2020, SIRE contracted with Bunge to market and sell all of SIRE’s ethanol in return for a monthly fee. The lawsuit claims that until November 2022, Bunge successfully marketed SIRE’s ethanol though a single Bunge employee, Jeremy Ragan, who was conversant with ethanol buyers and well versed in SIRE’s objectives. However, at the end of November 2022, Ragan informed SIRE that Bunge had terminated his employment. In the weeks that followed, the lawsuit claims, Bunge had inexperienced workers trying to market SIRE’s ethanol but who sold the product at old or incorrect values. In addition, the lawsuit accuses Bunge of failing to submit the necessary paperwork order for it to sell SIRE’s ethanol in California.
SIRE ethanol plant (company Facebook photo)
The lawsuit alleges that those and “other deficiencies and errors have resulted in SIRE losing profits on, at times, a daily basis … Bunge’s deficient marketing services have cost SIRE at least $7 million dollars between October 1, 2022, through December 31, 2023. SIRE’s damages have continued to accrue daily.” The lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, seeks “at least $7 million,” plus interest, for breach of contract and unjust enrichment.
(Radio Iowa) – Iowa State University researchers estimate a viral disease cost the U-S pork industry more than one-billion dollars each year between 2016 and 2020. Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome or PRRS (PURS) can be deadly for pigs, and it can reduce a sow’s ability to give birth to healthy piglets. Derald Holtkamp, an I-S-U professor in veterinary diagnostic and production animal medicine, says it’s hard to stay ahead of PRRS because it mutates so quickly. “Several times we thought we had the PRRS virus kind of sorted out,” Holtkamp says. “We thought we had solutions to control it and within a few years, we are made to look stupid again. It just has this ability to continually evolve.”
Piglets (ISU photo)
Researchers say the economic impact in 2020 was 80-percent higher than it was a decade ago, mostly due to higher rates of pig herds getting infected and poorer productivity in infected herds. “The only way to really slow that down or prevent it is with biosecurity,” Holtkamp says. “We have to get better as an industry of preventing that virus from moving from one farm to the next or prevent it from getting into farms.” That includes taking extra precautions, Holtkamp says, like sanitizing livestock trailers.
(story contributed by Rachel Cramer, Iowa Public Radio)
(Radio Iowa) – The Waterloo School Board voted 5-2 Monday in favor of a $165 million plan that would build a new high school onto the existing Central Middle School to combine East and West High Schools.
Students in tenth through 12th grade would go to the new high school and eighth and ninth graders would go to the current West and East High buildings. KCRG TV reports many people spoke against the plan, citing the timing of the project and the economic impact they believe it will have. One man says recent layoffs at John Deere is one issue.“It’s too much at this time. You’ve got people here in Waterloo losing their jobs every day….a lot of those jobs are high end jobs the engineers at Deere….and this is just another burden on those folks and myself.”
Waterloo Superintendent Jared Smith, tells KCRG TV this new high school will help students better access the district’s career focused classes and draw new students to the district. “There’s a barrier right now let’s be honest, that kids don’t want to leave their home high school.. so having a school where all high school were all students 10 thru 12 have direct access to the career center removes all the barriers,” Smith says.
Waterloo Superintendent Jared Smith. (KCRG TV photo)
When asked if he had any comments on the objections to the plan raised at the meeting Smith said “The community who showed up and shared some concerns those are fair comments, those are fair concerns, those are concerns we have been talking through for the last year, the last several years.” Smith says they know Waterloo has been hit hard recently with the developments at John Deere and some other businesses closing, but he says the timing is never gonna be right.
The proposal would use a one-cent sales tax to allow the district to raise the revenue without having a bond issue vote. Voters living in the Waterloo Community School District who are opposed to the plan have until August 12th to present a petition to the school board with signatures from more than 30 percent of active voters to force a vote on this decision. Construction is expected to be started in the Spring of 2025, and the school is expected to be open in time for the 2028-2029 school year.
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