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Environment

EPA sidesteps normal public process to approve BASF’s cancer-linked pesticide

By Johnathan Hettinger | April 3, 2020

This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that soybean farmers in 25 states are now able to spray a pesticide that the agency has determined is likely to cause cancer and drift hundreds of feet from where it is applied.

Coronavirus

Reporter’s Diary: Some meatpacking workers are staying home over virus fears
By Sky Chadde | April 2, 2020
Sky Chadde is the Midwest Center’s Gannett Agricultural Data Fellow. He can be reached at sky.chadde@investigatemidwest.org This post is embargoed for republication until April 13, 2020.
Reporter’s Diary: Illinois Farm Bureau encourages farmers, ag business be considered essential business
By Claire Hettinger | April 2, 2020
Claire Hettinger is the 2019 Illinois Humanities Engagement Fellow for the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. Have a story idea, question or tip? Reach her at claire.hettinger@investigatemidwest.org. On March 27, 2020, Congress signed a more than $2 trillion federal stimulus bill that gives billons of dollars in assistance to the U.S. Department of Agriculture programs. According to an analysis by PennState Extension: The CARES Act dedicates $9.5 billion in assistance to agricultural producers and an additional $14 billion in funding to the USDA to create an aid package for farmers who have seen a crash in commodity prices due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reporter’s Diary: For emergency Covid-19 runs, Trump admin suspends rule ensuring truckers can sleep
By Sky Chadde | March 25, 2020
A livestock truck leaves the Rantoul Foods plant in Rantoul, Il on Tuesday, December 18, 2018. photo by Darrell Hoemann/The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting Sky Chadde is the Midwest Center’s Gannett Agricultural Data Fellow.

Dicamba on Trial

Bayer seeks to strike $265 million award in first dicamba-related trial
By Johnathan Hettinger
Bayer has filed post-trial motions in the Missouri Bader Farms case, asking for the $265 million verdict to be overturned in the first dicamba-related case to go to trial.The weedkiller dicamba is at the heart of hundreds of lawsuits against the company from farmers who claim the pesticide drifted and significantly damaged their crops, once it was widely sprayed as early as 2015. In February, a Missouri jury awarded the state’s largest peach farm, Bader Farms, $15 million in actual damages and $250 million in punitive damages in a lawsuit that blamed dicamba for significant damages to its orchard. In motions filed on Friday, Bayer argues that there was no evidence presented to show that its XtendiMax with VaporGrip dicamba herbicide caused the damage at Bader Farms. The motions ask for a new trial and the striking, or at least lowering, of damages. The motions are a likely first step toward an appeal.“It is well-established law that plaintiffs must prove the defendant manufactured or sold the injury-causing product in order to prove actual causation in a product liability case, and the Court should have upheld this requirement during the trial,” said Bayer spokeswoman Susan Luke said. The Missouri jury sided with Bader Farms, which claimed it is no longer a sustainable business because off-target movement of dicamba harmed its orchards and that the companies intentionally created the problem in order to increase profits.
In 2020, ag community has ‘to prove to society’ it can safely spray dicamba
By Johnathan Hettinger/Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
Decisions made in the next year will be critical for the future use of the herbicide dicamba, a weed killer that has skyrocketed in use in recent years but has been blamed for extensive crop damage. This fall, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will decide whether the benefits of having the herbicide available to farmers for combatting weed resistance issues outweighs the harm to other farmers whose crops are damaged and to the environment.
For dicamba lawsuits, Bader verdict is just the beginning
By Johnathan Hettinger
The $265 million verdict issued last week against German agribusiness giants Bayer and BASF is just the beginning of a new legal battle between the companies and thousands of farmers. Since 2017, Monsanto and BASF officials have denied that its new dicamba weed killers are prone to moving off the genetically modified soybean and cotton fields where they are sprayed and onto neighboring fields, despite complaints from farmers, feedback from pesticide applicators, studies from university academics and the finding of state regulators.

Wellness on the Farm

SEEDS OF DESPAIR: Isolated, and with limited access to mental-health care, hundreds are dying by suicide.
By Katie Wedell USA TODAY NETWORK Lucille Sherman USA TODAY NETWORK Sky Chadde Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
This story is embargoed for republication until March 16, 2020. This story is a collaboration between the USA TODAY Network and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.
Seeking a Cure: Mental health access scarce in rural, farming communities
By Claire Hettinger and Pam Dempsey/Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
Claire Hettinger is the 2019 Illinois Humanities Engagement Fellow for the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. Have a story idea, question or tip? Reach her at claire.hettinger@investigatemidwest.org. With farmers facing increasing stress and depression, Midwestern states and national farm groups are making more efforts to better provide services to alleviate the high rate of suicide among the agriculture industry. Yet in rural areas, this care is more of a challenge. Rural hospitals -- often the primary source of health care services in these areas -- are closing or merging.
Relocating USDA agencies delayed millions in grants. One was for a suicide prevention network for farmers.
By Sky Chadde/Gannett Ag Data Fellow
Sky Chadde is the Midwest Center’s Gannett Agricultural Data Fellow. He can be reached at sky.chadde@investigatemidwest.org This story is embargoed for republication until Feb 22, 2020.

Government

Nearly two years after ICE came to town, trauma still haunts these Iowa families
By Christopher Walljasper
Editor’s note: This story was produced with support from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s National Fellowship and by the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism. Luis bent over his front porch, one knee on a piece of plywood as he muscled an old hand saw through a cut in the wood on a warm day in early February.
Crop insurance, farm safety programs get big cuts under Trump’s budget
By Christopher Walljasper/Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
Crop insurance and other farm support programs are set to receive big cuts in President Trump’s proposed 2021 budget. The President's proposed 2021 budget, released on February 10, slashes spending on crop insurance, commodity purchases and emergency aid to farmers facing natural disasters - three sources that contributed to nearly a third of farm income in 2019.
After suing feds for contempt, Kraft Foods attempts second settlement in wheat market manipulation case
By Christopher Walljasper/Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Kraft Foods Group, Inc. have reached a tentative second out-of-court agreement in an ongoing saga that stemmed from the food company’s alleged wheat futures market manipulation nearly a decade ago. Meeting in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on February 13, lawyers for both the CFTC and Kraft Foods said they had reached a tentative new settlement to bring the five-year-old case to a close. In the original case, first filed in April 2015, the CFTC claimed Kraft Foods Group, Inc. and Mondelez Global LLC (then one company) had manipulated the wheat market by purchasing $90 million in December 2011 wheat futures, signalling to the market it was buying wheat from the Chicago Board of Trade, rather than the cash market, traditionally where the company gets its wheat.

Agribusiness

Big ag companies say business continues amid coronavirus pandemic
By Johnathan Hettinger
Farmers across the U.S. are prepping for planting season, amid concerns about how the Covid-19 pandemic could disrupt the supply chain, lead to labor shortages and influence price manipulation. Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, raised these concerns in a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday. The letter discussed the need for farm laborers, as the State Department is not processing any non-emergency visas and the unique markets farmers are facing during the outbreak.
As sales of the pesticide chlorpyrifos ends in California, maker Corteva announces it will stop producing it.
By Sky Chadde/Gannett Ag Data Fellow
Sky Chadde is the Midwest Center’s Gannett Agricultural Data Fellow. He can be reached at sky.chadde@investigatemidwest.org This story is embargoed for republication until Feb 18, 2020.
EPA fines Frontier Ag over Clean Air Act violations
By Claire Hettinger / Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
Claire Hettinger is the 2019 Illinois Humanities Engagement Fellow for the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. Have a story idea, question or tip? Reach her at claire.hettinger@investigatemidwest.org. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, fined a Kansas-based agribusiness supplier more than $70,000 late last month for violating the Clean Air Act in Oct.

Environment

Despite federal, state efforts, dicamba complaints continue
By Johnathan Hettinger/Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
For the third straight year, a volatile pesticide is damaging crops across the Midwest and South, despite federal and state efforts to lessen the drift. Since 2017, farmers have sprayed an increasing amount of the weed killer, called dicamba, on soybean and cotton crops genetically engineered by agribusiness company Monsanto to withstand being sprayed by the herbicide.
Knowing what’s safe to eat in game fish varies state to state in Midwest
By Sophia Schillinger and Sabine Martin /IowaWatch and the Cedar Falls Tiger Hi-Line
On a chilly April morning, Gunwoo Yoon, his wife and two sons joined about 100 other anglers at Prairie Lakes in Cedar Falls. They were fishing for trout, and plenty were available as the Iowa Department of National Resources did its annual stocking of the lake.
Breaking down the use of glyphosate in the U.S.
By Pam Dempsey
Glyphosate is the most used pesticide on U.S. agricultural crops, with the nation using an estimated 287 million pounds in 2016, according to an analysis by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. And sales continue to grow, with market researchers predicting the glyphosate market to grow to $8.5 billion to $10 billion annually by 2021 up from $5 billion now.

Investigate Midwest The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting

Environment

EPA sidesteps normal public process to approve BASF’s cancer-linked pesticide

By Johnathan Hettinger | April 3, 2020

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