Sorted by date Results 26 - 40 of 40
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican senator said Tuesday he may seek to block President Donald Trump's nominees for key posts at the Environmental Protection Agency unless the administration backs off a proposed reduction in the volume of biofuels blended into gasoline and diesel. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said he plans to speak with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt about the Renewable Fuel Standard. Pruitt has proposed targets for 2017 and 2018 set slightly below current levels following a push by oil companies to ease mandates for using ethanol f...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An odd thing has happened in wheat country — a lot of farmers aren't planting wheat. Thanks to a global grain glut that has caused prices and profits to plunge, this year farmers planted the fewest acres of wheat since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began keeping records nearly a century ago. Instead of planting the crop that gave the wheat belt its identity, many farmers are opting this year for crops that might be less iconic but are suddenly in demand, such as chickpeas and lentils, used in hummus and healthy sna...
Des Moines, Iowa (AP) — For a decade, computer programmer Eddie Tipton reliably showed up for work at the central Iowa office of the Multi-State Lottery Association and earned the confidence of his co-workers, a team of technicians entrusted to build computers used to randomly pick numbers for some of the most popular lottery games in the U.S. Little did they know that while they worked to uphold the integrity of lotteries, Tipton had secretly installed software that allowed him to pick winning numbers and was collecting money from jackpots in...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An increasing number of people have been sickened by eating papaya now traced to a farm located in southern Mexico, U.S. public health officials said in an update on the outbreak first reported more than two weeks ago. Salmonella has now sickened 109 people in 16 states and 35 were serious enough to be hospitalized, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on its web page dedicated to the outbreak. One person in New York City died. Papaya traced to the Carica de Campeche farm in Campeche, Mexico, a...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Drought conditions worsened in several states over the past week from extreme heat and weeks with little rain, raising the prospect that grocery staples such as bread and beans could cost more as the region that produces those commodities is hardest hit. Drought conditions have begun to stress corn, soybeans, wheat and livestock in some areas, according to the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor released Thursday by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Nearly 11 percent of the continental United States is in moderate drought o...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A father and son whose Iowa-based egg production company caused a massive 2010 salmonella outbreak have exhausted their appeals and a federal judge has ordered them to begin serving prison sentences. The U.S. Supreme Court declined in May to hear the appeals of Austin "Jack" DeCoster and his son, Peter DeCoster, without comment. Both have been sentenced by U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett to serve three months in prison. The sentences jarred the food and drug manufacturing industry because it's rare that corporate o...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa could be the first state in the nation with no health insurance company willing to offer policies on its Affordable Care Act exchange next year unless President Donald Trump's administration approves a stopgap proposal, Iowa Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen said Monday. Ommen said he and officials from two major Iowa insurance carriers met last week with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services officials in Washington to pitch a proposal that would save the Iowa market from collapsing. Several counties in M...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Farm groups and some members of Congress from farm states are decrying proposed cuts to crop insurance and other safety net programs for farmers included in President Donald Trump's budget. The proposed cuts come even as farmers are facing their fourth straight year of falling income, and could particularly affect farm states such as Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska that helped Trump win the November election. "Clearly, this budget fails agriculture and rural America," American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall s...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A rule designed to protect the legal rights of farmers who grow chickens and hogs for the nation's largest meat processing corporations, was delayed Wednesday by President Donald Trump's administration, halting by at least six months an initiative rolled out by President Barack Obama in his final days in office. The rule was first proposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2010 but was met with resistance in Congress and by the meat processing industry. It was delayed until the USDA released it in December. S...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The amber waves of grain are about to turn into bean pods as farmers report they'll plant millions of acres in soybeans instead of wheat this year as a global glut of the grain has made it unprofitable to grow. In its annual prospective plantings report released Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said wheat acres will be the lowest on record this year at 46.1 million acres and soybean planting will be at a record high of 89.5 million acres. The United States has more than 1 billion bushels of surplus wheat in s...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Former chicken farmers in five states have filed a federal lawsuit accusing a handful of giant poultry processing companies that dominate the industry of treating farmers who raise the chickens like indentured servants and colluding to fix prices paid to them. The farmers located in Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas allege that the contract grower system created by Tyson Foods, Pilgrim's Pride, Perdue Farms, Koch Foods, and Sanderson Farms pushed them deep into debt to build and maintain chicken b...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An insatiable demand for bacon depleted frozen pork belly supplies in the U.S. to a record low level for December, but the pork industry is confident it can keep up with demand and avoid any serious shortages. Bottom line: A pound of bacon may cost a little more as winter wears on, but prices should stabilize by summer. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported last week that pork bellies in cold storage fell to 17.7 million pounds last month, the lowest December inventory since records began in 1957. In comparison, m...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Workers were expected to complete cleaning up Thursday about 140,000 gallons of diesel fuel that spewed from a broken pipeline onto an Iowa farm, the largest U.S. diesel spill since 2010, federal authorities said. Vacuum trucks were sucking up the fuel that spilled onto an acre of grass and tilled farmland when the pipeline broke. About 18 percent of the liquid had been removed, and no fuel entered rivers or streams, Iowa Department of Natural Resources spokesman Jeff Vansteenburg early on Thursday. No farm field d...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP, Oct. 5, 2016) — Warehouses, distribution centers and grocery stores are overflowing with some food staples, such as milk, eggs and frozen fruits and vegetables, the result of increased production and decreased exports. Take dairy, for example: With the most milk ever produced in the U.S. — about 24 billion gallons — that means there are record amounts of butter and cheese. The glut of food means lower prices for consumers. Here's a short explanation of how the surplus came about and where it all goes: ___ WHY IS THERE SO M...
MAXWELL, Iowa (AP, posted Sept. 13, 2016) — Pale green and 8 feet tall, tightly packed corn stalks reach to the horizon throughout the Midwest in what is likely to be the biggest harvest the U.S. has ever seen. Aside from a sense of pride in breaking the previous record by nearly a billion bushels, farmers won't benefit. They'll lose money on virtually every cob. It'll be the third consecutive year in which most corn farmers will spend more than they'll earn. The growing has been too good and the resulting glut of corn depressed prices to a dec...
