Lutheran Services of Iowa farm assistant Donna Wilterdink gives transplants to Cubwa Rajabu, who is cultivating a plot at Global Greens Farm.
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At Global Greens Farm in West Des Moines, Iowa, Bel Chhetri (in foreground) works the land with his grandparents and a friend. They emigrated from Nepal.
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Chantal Gatimatare and her daughter Charlotte carry a tray of cabbage transplants, which they hope will, along with other vegetables, both feed their family and bring in some income.
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Originally from Burundi, Beuline Bucumi (left) and Bizimana Charles look through the seeds Bucumi will plant. Both of these Des Moines residents will raise crops at Global Greens Farm.
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The historic barn in the background will soon have coolers to keep harvested produce fresh until market day. Chantal Gatimatare begins working her 50-foot by 50-foot plot.
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Angelica Hakuzimana, who is from Rwanda, gets her land ready for planting.
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These boys, all born in Tanzania as their parents were en route from Burundi to the United States, joined the adults in a gardening song as the soil was turned in preparation for planting.
On a small farm in suburban West Des Moines, Iowa, even the barn is a refugee—an historic structure relocated from nearby Valley High School. The farmers, most of them refugees, are just starting to hoe the land, each one working a 50-foot by 50-foot plot where they’ll grow corn, beans, cabbage, eggplant, onions, tomatoes and peppers.
Maybe it was your offbeat neighbor cooing at his gardenias; maybe your grandmother analyzed baseball with her cucumbers. It seems a bit silly, but researchers say farmers should maybe take notice.
How does a new craft brewer stand apart from the pack? A few have hitched their brewery onto the local food bandwagon, sourcing the ingredients that form beer’s DNA straight from the fields around them.
Last year, more than 400 breweries opened nationwide. It shouldn’t surprise that the craft beer industry is growing at a tremendous rate. In some states, like Colorado, there are so many craft breweries they’re starting to blend together.
The volunteer crew members pulled on their life jackets and climbed into a flat-bottomed aluminum boat at a ramp near Nebraska City, Neb. They came out early on a cold, gray April morning hoping to catch an endangered pallid sturgeon.
Iowa farmer John Berdo stands atop one of the terraces that helps control water flow on his crop fields. Terraces are one of many conservation measures Berdo employs.
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Trees help prevent soil erosion on adjacent farmland. John Berdo planted this stand with funds from USDA's Conservation Reserve Program.
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Environmental specialist Sean McCoy of the Iowa Department of Agriculture says this newly landscaped wetland in central Iowa's Onion Creek Watershed will keep nutrients from 500 acres of farmland out of waterways.
At a basin in central Iowa’s Onion Creek Watershed, Sean McCoy pulls a state truck up near a brand-new wetland. It looks like a construction zone, with lots of bare earth.
Credit Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media
Eliminating certain foods from a diet can be risky, says Paula Vandelicht, a nutritionist at a Hy-Vee grocery store in Columbia, Mo. Among other things, she advises customers about the shortcomings of a gluten-free diet.
Six months ago, Kara Welter drastically changed her diet by eliminating food that contains wheat, rye or barley.
“I don’t eat gluten,” said Welter, a 41-year-old marketing executive in Kansas City. “I happened to just try it because I was having stomach issues for years. And it turns out within three days, I stopped having stomach issues.”
Welter’s gluten decision stemmed from what she read online. Medical tests showed that she did not have a gluten sensitivity or celiac disease, the disorder that causes the immune system to reject the gluten.
These Berkshire pigs move between their feeding and water troughs, at the open end of their hoop house on Randy Hilleman’s farm in State Center, Iowa.
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Iowa farmer Randy Hilleman raises Berkshire pigs as part of the Eden Farms producers’ group. He says the fattier breed can fetch a better price than leaner pigs, but only when marketed to the right customers.
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A Berkshire pig at the gate that’s at the open end of a hoop house on Randy Hilleman’s farm in State Center, Iowa.
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Nick Jones, general manager of Eden Farms in Des Moines, Iowa, keeps track of sales on a window in his office.
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Herb Eckhouse, the owner of La Quercia in Norwalk, Iowa, knows the farmers who raise the pigs that ultimately become prosciutto and other cured meats. Here, Eckhouse poses with drying hams.
And when the hog market plunged to 8 cents a pound in 1998, Iowa producer Randy Hilleman decided it was time to make a change. Hilleman raises Berkshire pigs, a breed that’s fattier than traditional pigs and costs a little more to raise. Back then, that was hurting him.
“If we took them into Marshalltown, [Iowa] to the big packing plant, we would get docked because they’re too fat,” Hilleman said. “What they pay on is lean, and we like to have some fat on ours.”
The window in Tom Burrus’ office gives him a good look at the wide expanse of Illinois River bottomland where his company produces seed corn for farmers across Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and Wisconsin. Hanging on his wall are sketches of his grandfather and others who’ve had a part in the Burrus Seed Co. since it was founded 1935. The 63-year-old company president knows he is a rare independent in a land of giants.
Walmart's "Great Value" brand is an example of private label food. After acquiring Ralcorp, ConAgra is now the largest private label food supplier in the U.S.
You may not think much about store brands as you shop for groceries, but it’s a business worth nearly $60 billion per year. ConAgra, a company based in Omaha, Neb., made a splash recently in what the industry calls private label food when it paid $6.8 billion to buy Ralcorp, based in St. Louis, Mo. The merger created the biggest private label food company in the country.
Every major grocer has its own private label brand. Walmart has Great Value. Kroger stores sell Private Selection. Costco has Kirkland. Almost everything at Trader Joe’s seems to carry the store's name.
At Mark Tjelmeland’s farm near McCallsburg, this henhouse opens up to three acres of pasture for the chickens.
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Mark Tjelmeland collects eggs in the henhouse where his 700 birds lay them.
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The hens on Mark Tjelmeland’s farm lay eggs in nest boxes. A new bill would require all egg operations to provide hens with a place for nesting.
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Iowa State University professor and Egg Industry Center director Hongwei Xin works on a Power Point presentation. He’s sharing results of his study on the environmental impact of the egg industry.
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The hens in Hongwei Xin’s basement lab at Iowa State University in Ames have perches, one of the requirements of new cages proposed in an egg industry-supported federal bill.
Mark Tjelmeland wears Carhartt overalls over a faded blue work shirt and his face is framed by a baseball cap from the local farmers’ cooperative and a curly white beard. He shows me around his homestead in McCallsburg, Iowa, about 20 miles northeast of Ames. This third-generation farmer grows traditional corn and soybeans on one of his farms. But on this one, he’s got a four-crop rotation of certified organic corn, soybeans, oats and hay. And three acres of pasture for his 700 laying hens.
At a Fort Collins, Colo., grocery store, Kristin Mastre paused for a minute in front a large bin of Russet and red potatoes. She picked out a few handfuls and continued on, her two boys, Carter, 4, and Logan, 7, in tow.
“Today is definitely a staples kind of day,” Mastre said, pointing to the potatoes in her shopping cart. Mastre, who does nearly all the cooking and grocery shopping for her family, is a big potato consumer.
Fourth-generation farmer Kent Peppler will have a hard time securing irrigation water this year. The ongoing drought has forced cities to hold on to their supplies, which means Peppler will have to fallow some of his fields in Mead, Colo.
Farmers throughout the Great Plains are preparing for what could be a tough, dry growing season. Limited irrigation resources pose a particular problem in Colorado.
From his farm’s headquarters in Nevada, Iowa, Mark Kenney can see his childhood home and farm. Not pictured, but also within sight, is the original piece of farmland Kenney’s great-great grandfather bought, which is still part of the family farm.
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Small-scale farmer Matt Russell also has an off-farm job. His tax deadline will remain April 15 until his farm accounts for more than two-thirds of his gross income.
Farmers will be filing their taxes on April 15 this year—just like most other Americans. But usually farmers have to file and pay by March first. It’s just one of many ways that taxes are different for farmers.
Roger McEowen runs the Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation at Iowa State University. He offers trainings for lawyers and accountants all over the country to ready them for preparing farm tax returns.
“Farm tax, in many instances, is totally different from taxation with respect to nonfarmers,” McEowen said.
