Agriculture | ModeShift

“What We’re Up Against” – Pelican Township and Other North Dakota Towns Fight Farm Bureau to Keep Water Clean

by Keith SchneiderNovember 1, 2023November 2, 20230

DEVILS LAKE, ND – When Clark Steinhaus first heard about a plan to build a feeding operation for 2,499 hogs near the shoreline of North Dakota’s largest natural lake, he was alarmed. As chair of Pelican Township’s board of supervisors, Steinhaus worried the manure generated by so many hogs could easily contaminate area waterways, including 160,000-acre Devils Lake and its 375 miles of shoreline. His concerns were not surprising given the fact that each year, …

Toxic Farm Nutrients and Cancer in Minnesota

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 14, 2023December 7, 20230

BERNE, MINN. — On a hot afternoon in mid-July, Brian Bennerotte, who was raised on a farm in the hill country south of Minneapolis in the 1960s and 1970s, made a pilgrimage of sorts to County Road B in Dodge County in his home state. Running straight as a gun barrel east and west, the gravel and dirt road crosses what was once rolling prairie before being steadily converted into crop and livestock farms in …

Offering Up Advice For Farmers, Universities Add To US Water Pollution

by Keith SchneiderAugust 25, 2023December 7, 20230

WINONA, MN. — Corn drapes every curve and rise here in Winona County, Minnesota – seemingly endless fields of grain that contribute to the food, fuel and finances of a robust US agricultural economy. But the bucolic landscape belies a dark and dangerous truth: Much of the groundwater in the porous limestone beneath Winona County is contaminated with some of the nation’s highest levels of nitrates — harmful pollutants released into the environment by the …

Big Ag Pollutes America’s Waters and Makes Money Doing It

by Keith SchneiderJuly 26, 2023December 7, 20230

It’s been 33 years since an Iowa State University agronomist named Fred Blackmer thought he’d struck gold for Midwestern corn farmers. Using a fairly simple three-step method, Blackmer developed an analytical tool that could accurately tell farmers exactly how much fertilizer their fields needed to produce abundant harvests each season. The analytics Blackmer perfected showed not only how much fertilizer the corn crops would need to meet production targets, but also exposed how much could …

In Iowa, A Tale of Academic Intimidation and Contaminated Water

by Keith SchneiderMay 25, 2023December 7, 20233

IOWA CITY, IOWA — There’s no mystery that fertilizer and manure running off farm fields are the primary cause of Iowa’s wretched water quality. Farm fields laden with synthetic fertilizers and manure produce bounties of over 2 billion bushels of corn each year. Data from the Iowa Water Quality Information System, the state’s advanced monitoring network, shows those same fields also produce a torrent of run-off that contaminates virtually every mile of streams and rivers …

Chris Jones, Author of “The Swine Republic,” Unexpectedly Resigns Post at University of Iowa

by Keith SchneiderApril 9, 2023February 26, 202410

In the realm of the important-but-obscure, a place I’ve resided for most of my professional life, Chris Jones is a hero. A research engineer at the University of Iowa, Jones studies and writes with masterful expertise about agriculture, the environment, and water. Put those three elements together, and consider that state and federal law essentially immunizes crop and livestock farms from responsibly managing their nitrogen and phosphorus wastes. The result is a disturbing but familiar …

Ethanol and Methane Put US Farms at Center of US Energy Strategy

by Keith SchneiderApril 4, 2023April 4, 20231

With the exception of federal and state programs to convert corn into ethanol and soybeans into biodiesel to fuel cars and trucks the United States has never regarded farming as a primary energy producer. That changed when Congress passed the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act last August. The law provides $140 billion in tax incentives, direct loans, and grants to replace fossil fuels with cleaner renewable energy that lowers emissions of carbon dioxide. …

New Climate Law Includes Provisions That Will Make Midwest Water Pollution Worse

by Keith SchneiderFebruary 8, 2023February 8, 20231

Earlier this year I was awarded an investigative fellowship from the Alicia Patterson Foundation to pursue the causes and serious consequences of farm-related nutrient pollution in the nine-state Corn Belt at the center of the country. The project, undertaken with the collaboration of Circle of Blue, The New Lede, and The Guardian, builds on what I learned in 2022 reporting for Circle of Blue on phosphorus contamination for “Danger Looms Where Algae Blooms.” When I …

Opposition to CAFOs Mounts Across the Nation

by Keith SchneiderNovember 17, 2022November 17, 20220

For decades, Americans mostly turned a blind eye to the industrial-scale livestock production operations that churn out cheap supplies of meat and dairy for the masses. Occasional opposition to local pollution problems and the casual animal cruelty that characterize conventional US dairy, hog, and poultry production did little to alter practices that are embedded in the rural landscape. That may be changing. A wave of frontline resistance is now breaking across the Upper Midwest and …

Agriculture’s Toxic Nutrient Pollution — A National Scandal

by Keith SchneiderNovember 13, 2022December 7, 20230

In 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identified phosphorus and nitrogen discharges from U.S. farmland as the single greatest challenge to our nation’s water quality. That assessment followed years of confirming high concentrations of farm nutrients in surface and groundwater reserves, and dozens of peer-reviewed epidemiology studies that cited both compounds as a threat to public health. The agency proposed to identify those responsible and develop strategies to reduce nutrient pollution. That plan died the following year. …