Iowa

Days after a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by the Des Moines Water Works against farm runoff, the City Council voted to support a bill in the Iowa House allowing regionalization of the water utility, said the Des Moines Register. The chief executive of the Water Works says the regionalization bill, sponsored by a legislator who is a hog farmer, is retaliation for the lawsuit, which wanted to apply water pollution laws to agricultural runoff.

A U.S. district judge rejected the legal underpinnings of the Des Moines Water Works' lawsuit that sought to hold drainage districts in northwestern Iowa responsible for nutrient runoff from farms. The judge dismissed the case, ending the chances for a precedent-setting interpretation of clean-water laws. Agricultural runoff generally is exempt from the water pollution laws, but the Des Moines utility argued that the drainage districts were identifiable "point" sources of pollution and should be required to meet clean-water standards.

The Des Moines Water Works won national attention with its lawsuit to force regulation of nutrient runoff from farms. Now, the Republican-controlled Iowa House is considering a bill to dismantle the Water Works board and replace it with a regional utility, says Iowa Public Radio.

With 15 Swiss and Normandy milk cows, central Iowa dairy farmer Kevin Dietzel is a small operator with a business plan — "add value to that milk by making cheese" — aimed at the growing demand for upscale local foods, says Harvest Public Media. "We have to do something that's a little bit more original and is also going to be worth that money," says Dietzel, who makes small batches of cheese on the farm.

After meeting President-elect Donald Trump, Gov. Terry Branstad of Iowa, a leading farm state, was noncommittal about taking a role in the incoming Republican administration. Branstad has been mentioned as potential U.S. ambassador to China and Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Des Moines on Thursday as part of his "thank you" to voters tour.

With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in carrying out Iowa's Nutrient Reduction Strategy, which calls for a 45 percent cut in nitrogen and phosphorus levels in waterways, "a new and controversial debate is looming," says the Des Moines Register. Environmentalists and scientists want to rely on water-quality monitoring to determine progress while farm groups say the best way is to tally conservation practices put in place on the land.

Democrats' chances of defeating Senate Judiciary chair Charles Grassley, a longtime Agriculture Committee member, were never great and are fading like the shortening days of autumn, says Sabato's Crystal Ball. "With Trump now positioned as a slight favorite to win the Hawkeye State, there is no sign that Grassley is in any danger," says the political website, rating the race as "safe Republican."

Some young and beginning farmers say they have lost access to cropland because the owners could get a higher rental rate from USDA's Conservation Reserve than they could by renting it, said Iowa Sens Charles Grassley and Joni Ernst in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The senators said they have heard complaints from Iowans over the past few months about USDA's operation of the reserve, which pays landowners an annual rent to idle farmland for 10 years or longer.

Legal fees are already approaching $2 million in the potentially landmark suit by the Des Moines Water Works against three counties in northwest Iowa over nitrate pollution in the Raccoon River, says the Des Moines Register. The Iowa Farm Bureau and Iowa Corn Growers Association offered financial aid to Buena Vista, Sac and Calhoun counties following their decision to sever a relationship with the private nonprofit Agricultural Legal Defense Fund.

Cities are creating jobs faster than rural areas with a 13.3 percent growth rate in the past year, compared to 4.8 percent in rural counties, says a Daily Yonder analysis of Labor Department statistics. "Unemployment remains a bigger problem in rural counties than metro areas," says the Yonder, which tried to gauge local conditions in battleground states.

Two Republican-held House seats in the heavily agricultural Central Valley of California could be ripe for picking by Democrats if voters are riled by GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump's criticism of Hispanics and immigrants, says the Los Angeles Times. Rep. David Valadao, a member of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees USDA and FDA funding, represents a district that is 71 percent Latino, and Agriculture Committee member Jeff Denham has a district that is 26 percent Latino.

A tiny percentage of Iowa farmers are turning to diversified vegetable and fruit production to augment or replace their fields of corn and soybeans, the Des Moines Register reports. The paper says that the chance for farmers "to diversify their crop mix, receive more income and avoid the price volatility that has squeezed profitability recently for corn and soybean producers can be enticing."

With corn and soybean prices plummeting, and pressure to reduce runoff from fields mounting, some Iowa farmers are turning to oats as a possible solution to both problems, says Harvest Public Media.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who served two terms as governor of Iowa, says Democrats can make inroads in traditionally Republican rural America this fall due to misgivings among voters about GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. Appearing on "The Axe Files,"a podcast produced by CNN and the University of Chicago, Vilsack said Democrats have a "unique opportunity" but have to act on it to benefit.

Iowa owes its incredibly productive soil to the prairie—the same prairie that farmers have spent decades ripping out, says The Washington Post. Midwestern growers were long instructed to destroy native grasslands in order to make room for row crops. But a new program called STRIPS (Science-based Trials of Rowcrops Integrated with Prairie Strips) hopes to convince the state’s farmers that they can decrease soil erosion and fertilizer runoff by planting native grasslands in between their regular crops.

The Midwest lost 1.06 percent of its farmland in the two decades ending in 2021; development accounted for half of the loss, said three Ohio State University analysts on Monday. "The role of large urban areas is paramount, as 81 percent of land lost to development in the eight states occurred within metropolitan statistical areas," which are regions with a core city of at least 50,000 people and strong ties to its surrounding communities.