Eli Hoff is a Gary Marx Journalism Fund intern. In the mid-2000s, a poultry researcher approached James MacDonald, then a branch chief for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research ...

For decades, the industry has recruited immigrants and refugees to perform the dangerous job of cutting America’s meat. Now, a small but growing number of plants are employing visa workers.

Each state has different laws regulating foreign ownership of agricultural land. Here's a state-by-state breakdown of current and former laws: ...

Federal and state authorities would investigate the incidents, but how they came to their attention highlights flaws in Illinois’ monitoring of human exposure to pesticides — and shortcomings once ...

On May 16, 60-mile-per-hour wind gusts swept across central Illinois, developing into a dust storm near Bloomington and Champaign, which reduced visibility to zero, damaged some soy and corn crops, ...

This story was updated Dec. 18, 2024, for clarification and to correct misspellings. DEXTER, Missouri – On an early August morning in 2023, Shawn Hinkle received a call from one of his technicians at ...

Climate change exacerbates drought conditions, and makes feeding beef cattle more complicated for producers.

“We can’t sit back and say, ‘Wow. Somebody may not like this,’” said Kamyar Enshayan, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Education at the University of Northern Iowa. “Knowing what we ...

This story was originally published by Sentient Media. When Brent Hershey entered the hog business, he was told that every pork producer in America uses gestation crates on their farm. Gestation ...

When a poultry farm tests positive for bird flu, the clock starts. Within the first 72 hours, farmers start depopulating, an industry term for killing contaminated flocks. Despite the sweltering heat ...

EPA data shows meatpacking plants disproportionately pollute low-income, communities of color. Postville, Iowa, has long dealt with the fallout.

The price of fertilizer has been on a steady increase since the late 1980s. This price increase has led American farmers to worry about a reliance on the global supply chain and launched federal ...