Iowa State University

Farmland in Iowa is worth an average $9,751 an acre – the highest value since Iowa State University began the annual survey in 1941. Values skyrocketed by 29 percent this year, fueled by high commodity prices, better than expected crop yields and large pandemic relief payments, said associate professor Wendong Zhang.

An Iowa State University survey said the average acre of Iowa farmland rose in value by 2 percent in 2017, to $7,326, ending the first three-year decline in values since the agricultural crisis of the mid-1980s.

Wendy Wintersteen is two days into her new job: president of Iowa State University. Wintersteen, who had been ISU’s dean of agriculture and life sciences, is the first woman to head the university of nearly 37,000 students in Ames, Iowa.

Half the seats in Midwest ag schools are filled by female students, but it’s the men in the classes who are likely to return home to run the farm. One communications teacher at Iowa State observed the difference first-hand when she assigned a film project and found that none of her female students planned on returning to manage their family’s farm, writes Harvest Public Media.

Along with corn and hay, cattle at Iowa State University's Beef Nutrition Farm are consuming small doses of bacteria as part of their daily rations. It's part of research into alternatives to the antibiotics that are a common tool in livestock health, says Harvest Public Media.

It would cost $2.7 billion a year to reduce by two-thirds the size of the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico through reductions in nutrient runoff, says a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Iowa farmland values fell by 9 percent this year, the largest decline since 1986 during the agricultural recession, pulled down by falling commodity prices, said an Iowa State University survey.

A combined $9.6 million will go into grants to support production of advanced biofuels and the bio-economy, said the Agriculture Department. The largest block of money, $5.6 million, was divided among...

Farmers are far less likely than scientists to say climate change is occurring and that people are a driving force in it, says a study by Purdue and Iowa State universities.

For the most part, farmers put their cropland to more intense use rather than convert forests and grasslands because of demand for biofuels in recent years, says a study by the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development.

Proximity to an urban center may be key for maintaining rural population, say three Iowa State University researchers.

Increasingly, veterinarians prefer to practice in cities rather than rural areas, says a paper at the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development.

The Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State Univ releases a report on crop insurance selection by growers.