Pesticide drift Archives - Investigate MidwestInvestigate Midwest

Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting

This was the next step on our pesticide drift project

By Claire Hettinger / Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting | November 11, 2019

Last week, we hosted a discussion regarding our pesticide drift sensor project. Twenty-five people from various industries including scientists from the University of Illinois, local public health officials, the Champaign County Farm Bureau, and environmental focus groups gathered at the Champaign-Urbana Public Health Department as we presented our findings from the project and asked for their input.

#agalerts

#AgAlerts: Small towns struggle; pesticide buffer zones; farm bankruptcies up

By Cynthia Voelkl/Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting | November 5, 2019

The current large farms, utilizing far fewer farms than in the past has created population loss that threatens scores of small towns that sprouted on the prairie in a different time, when larger numbers of small farmers depended on them.

Agribusiness

Despite federal, state efforts, dicamba complaints continue

By Johnathan Hettinger/Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting | August 27, 2019

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.

Government

Years later, little action on recommendations for Iowa’s pesticide inspections

By Lauren Wade/Iowa Watch | January 23, 2019

Problems the Iowa State Auditor’s office identified in a 2012 audit and subsequent reports and recommendations for investigating Iowa’s pesticide use violations still linger years later.

Dicamba in the fields

EPA extends registration for continued use of pesticide dicamba into 2020

By Kaolin Sewell/The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting | November 8, 2018

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has extended use of pest control substance, dicamba, until December 20, 2020. What are the new regulations for extended use of the herbicide?

Health

Pesticide buffer zones crop up in other states but none in Midwest

By Anna Casey | January 17, 2018

Hundreds of rural schools in Midwest states nestle against fields of corn and soybeans that are routinely sprayed with pesticides that could drift onto school grounds.

Health experts say those pesticides might pose risks to children, and nine states in other regions of the country have been concerned enough to pass laws requiring buffer zones. But states in the Midwest do not require any kind of buffer zone between schools and crop fields and seldom require any notification that pesticides are about to be sprayed, a review of laws by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

Pesticides

Iowa Watch: Drifting pesticides put neighboring farms at risk

By Lauren Mills/IowaWatch | September 15, 2016

Iowa’s organic farms, vineyards, apiaries and other non-conventional farms surrounded by row crops treated with pesticides are at risk of being hit with drifting spray that can leave their farms’ futures uncertain.