Harvest Public Media
For Some Female Farmers, Stepping Up Means Looking for Support
Aubrey Fletcher knew she wanted to work on a dairy farm ever since she was a little girl. “I do remember my mom asking, ‘Are you sure that’s what you want to do?’” Fletcher recalls. Fletcher knew the work was tough, she grew up milking cows every day. After college she and her husband wanted to return…
The Struggle for Security
In the small, rural city of Liberal, Kansas, a neighborhood of old trailer homes sits just off the main street. The small trailer at the end of the block, with faded yellow paint and creaky front steps, is the place 17-year-old Diego now calls home. Late at night, Diego sits on his bed, thumbing through…
There’s A Plague Of Locusts In Argentina. Could We See The Bugs Here?
The normally dry northern region of Argentina has a problem of biblical proportions. Farmers there are struggling with a massive outbreak of locusts. Dark clouds of the green-brown bugs cast shadows when they fly overhead and when they land, they cover the ground. “It is really, really, amazing when you see the locusts because you…
New Research: Humans Transfer Disruptive Bee Virus
The persistent decline of honeybees has scientists scrambling to understand what’s causing the problem and how to correct it. Humans may be part of the problem. U.S. beekeepers report losing about a third of their colonies each year and the figure increased from 2014 to 2015. Two new studies are helping shed some light on the problem,…
Citrus Fruit Grown in the Midwest… In Winter
The middle of winter is when the stream of locally grown fruits and vegetables in the Midwest begins to freeze up. Nicole Saville knows first-hand. Saville is the produce manager at Open Harvest, a grocery coop in Lincoln, Neb. The store promotes food grown by local farmers, but this time of year there just isn’t…
Could Genetically Engineered Animals be Coming to a Plate Near You?
Tucked away in a University of Missouri research building, a family of pigs is kept upright and mostly happy by a handful of researchers. Two new litters recently joined the assembly of pudgy, snorting, pink piglets. While they look like an ordinary collection of pigs one might find in hog barns all over the country,…
The Rising Energy Costs Of Convenience In The Kitchen
To make or not to make a homemade pie? That is a classic holiday dilemma. Do you take the easy way out and buy a fairly decent frozen pie, or do you risk making your own, resulting in a potentially burnt and lumpy version? While there is something special about that homemade option, every cook…
The Other Natural Gas: Making Energy From Waste
Every day, a facility on the outskirts of Grand Junction, Colorado takes in eight million gallons of what people have flushed down their toilets and washed down their sinks. The water coming out the other end of the Persigo Wastewater Treatment Plant is cleaner than the Colorado River it flows into. The organic solids strained from…
Dietary Guidelines Deliver Win for Midwest Meat Industry
New federal guidelines for healthy eating announced Thursday do not urge Americans to eat less meat, delivering a big win to Midwest meat farmers and ranchers. Initial recommendations by scientific advisors suggested Americans could be more environmentally friendly by cutting back on meat. Although the final version of the dietary guidelines issued every five years by the U.S. Departments…
USDA’s MIDAS Computer Program Tarnished; Overdue, Over Budget
Blake Hurst rides ten feet above his soybean field in northern Missouri, looking more like he’s playing a video game than driving a $350,000 high-tech piece of machinery. As he rolls across the land in his John Deere combine, joystick in hand, three computer monitors offer him a host of information. He knows how much…