June 27, 2024 The Midwest Center For Investigative Reporting
Special project: Farm to Trouble
By Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water desk newsrooms
This week, we are bringing you Farm to Trouble, a multi-part series from the Ag & Water Desk and multiple local newsrooms. This project examines the slow progress to reduce the harmful and dangerous agricultural runoff into the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River watershed. The resulting Gulf "dead zone" threatens wildlife and fisheries — and it's not shrinking, despite more than a quarter-century of federal effort and billions in investment.
The series includes five stories, a radio feature, photos and data visualizations. These look at the entrenched farming practices and political shortfalls behind the dead zone problem; its impacts on communities up and down the river; and new strategies from the Chesapeake Bay watershed that could help turn the tide for the Mississippi River and the Gulf.
The entire package can be found here.
Meet Investigate Midwest's summer 2024 interns
We would be remiss if we didn't take a few moments to introduce you to our summer 2024 interns. Mitchell Lierman is our Gary Marx Journalism Fund Fellow, and Evelyn Lewis is our Dow Jones News Fund Data Intern.
Here they are, in their own words:
I'm Evy Lewis, and I am a double major in journalism and English at the Missouri School of Journalism, and I’ll be graduating in December of this year. I’ve worked for the past year with the Watchdog Writers’ Group as an undergraduate researcher.
My interest in journalism goes hand-in-hand with my interest in politics. I believe free access to trustworthy and well-sourced news is absolutely necessary to hold governments and corporations to account. And, as readers, it allows us to broaden our own understanding of the world and learn about the experiences of people who have very different lives from us.
I’m excited to work for Investigate Midwest this summer. The team’s in-depth, undercovered investigative work is exactly what I have always wanted to do as a journalist, and it will also allow me to expand my own horizons by learning about how to report on agricultural industries.
Howdy! My name is Mitch Lierman, and I’m writing out of my hometown in West Point, Nebraska, before I head back to my graduate program at Indiana University.
I’ve been reporting since I started my high school journalism program in 2018, which propelled me to study journalism and theater production at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. I’ve spent the last year reporting across local, state and national projects as a master’s fellow at the Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism at IU’s Media School.
In addition to my stints reporting, I’ve spent time working as a sound tech for a nonprofit theater in upstate New York, a cameraman and video mixer for a local hockey rink, and a substitute robotics teacher in a Title I middle school.
My foundations in journalism support my passion for math and science communication, and I’m eager to dive into making sense of our complicated world as I learn from the experienced data-driven team here at Investigate Midwest.
OPINION: Is Bayer looking for a new exit ramp
in the Roundup lawsuits?
By Dave Dickey, Columnist
It can be argued that Bayer's acquisition of Monsanto in 2018 is among the worst in corporate history, ranking right up there with Bank of America's ill-fated acquisition of Countrywide Financial and Time Warner's massive losses in the wake of buying America Online.
The boat anchor around Bayer's neck is glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup weed and grass killer. Groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson opened the litigation floodgates against glyphosate back in 2018 when he convinced a California jury that the weed killer contributed to his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Since the Johnson verdict, Bayer's case load has swelled to more than 100,000. Could they now be considering the Texas two-step?
Read more.
ICYMI: Former Tyson contract growers say in lawsuit
company's sale to Cal-Maine renders farms nearly worthless
By John McCracken, Investigate Midwest
Farmers who raised chickens for Tyson Foods have filed a class action lawsuit against the meat company, alleging that the company broke its promise not to engage in antitrust behavior.
The complaint filed in the Circuit Court of Stoddard County, Missouri, earlier this month, alleges that Tyson Foods promised local and state officials that it would sell its Dexter, Missouri, meatpacking complex to a competitor after the company closed two plants in the state in 2023.
Instead, Tyson Foods sold the Dexter property in March to Cal-Maine Foods, the nation’s largest egg production company.
“Our lawsuit alleges that due to the anti-competitive behavior of the defendants, those families will never again be able to perform the one job they spent millions of dollars to do,” said Rusell Oliver, the Missouri attorney representing the poultry growers. “This fact renders the value of those farms (that were once worth millions) to nearly nothing.”
Read more here.
GRAPHIC: Insurance spending between corn,
other crops at widest-ever gap in 2023
By Mitchell Lierman, Gary Marx Journalism Fund fellow
Impacted by drought and export disruptions caused by the war in Ukraine, insurance spending for corn versus that for other crops in 2023 widened the gap.
Increases in annual total corn premiums outpaced other highly-insured crops over the past five years. These policy premiums are paid for, in part, by government subsidies, which on average covered 62% of the crop insurance costs for farmers in 2022, according to the Government Accountability Office.
View the graphic.
News from our partners
Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota Cope With Extreme Flooding After Torrential Rains. By Chris Clayton, DTN
Hive Mentality: Drone swarms are on the horizon. By Emma Glassman-Hughes, Ambrook Research
‘Precision ag’ promised a farming revolution. It’s coming, just slowly. By Eric Schmid, St. Louis Public Radio
Investigate Midwest is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Our mission is to serve the public as a watchdog over influential corporations and institutions through in-depth and data-driven investigative journalism.
