By Roger Wolf —-   Today, erratic and extreme water events have been the norm rather than the exception for Iowans. Water wasn’t kind to Iowa, with memorable flooding in 1993, 2008, 2010 and 2011 impacting upstream and downstream communities. In 2012, historic widespread drought across Iowa had us hoping wells wouldn’t be dry or [...]

  By Rep. Chuck Isenhart —- To help observe Earth Day 2013, Iowa can take major strides toward a clean water future when the Iowa House votes on the Agriculture and Natural Resources budget bill. According to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, Iowa has 628 impaired waterways (more than half of all those assessed), [...]

DES MOINES — Iowa, it seems, has become a destination for companies that want to produce ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Gov. Terry Branstad has announced two such deals, one in Lee County and one in Woodbury County, each requiring more than a billion dollars in corporate investment in the past 12 months. There’s also talk of [...]

  I was five years old when Paul Harvey stood up at the national convention and first delivered the “So God Made a Farmer” speech to a bunch of FFA kids. The job description he laid out should have been enough to send them all running: Hundred-hour workweeks; make-do lifestyle; the kind of humble, hardscrabble [...]

  By Larry Stone —-   Iowans are confused and divided about the draft report, “Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy,” from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. The agencies, working behind closed doors with the Iowa Farm Bureau, spent two years drafting the report in response to U. [...]

DuPont Co. on Tuesday posted a 70 percent drop in fourth-quarter earnings on flat sales and higher costs that reduced profit margins. For the quarter that ended on Dec. 31, DuPont reported net income of $111 million, or 12 cents a share, compared with $373 million, or 40 cents a share, in the same period last year. [...]

Farmers could stand to lose as much as any segment of the economy if political leaders don’t avert the fast-approaching “fiscal cliff.” The impact on farmers of potential changes to the estate tax is “extremely dramatic,” compared with other fiscal cliff effects, which include income and payroll tax rate increases, said Dave Miller, director of [...]

  By Bob Watson —-   In the Des Moines Register’s recent series on the dead zone in the Gulf, corporate agriculture apologists repeated their excuses for not addressing agriculture’s major role in the pollution causing that dead zone. According to apologists, most erosion and pollution from Iowa may not really be from the 30 [...]

  DES MOINES – The head of Iowa’s anti-pollution efforts Wednesday asked Gov. Terry Branstad to provide $1.3 million to fund 11 state inspectors beginning next July to beef up enforcement and stave off federal threats to take over the activities from state regulators. Chuck Gipp, director of the state Department of Natural Resources, said [...]