Aug. 21, 2025 The Midwest Center For Investigative Reporting
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Pesticides, cancer and rural Missouri’s health crisis
One of the most significant issues in agriculture over the last quarter century has been the emerging link between pesticide use and numerous health challenges, including cancer.
It’s spurred lawsuits and legislative battles. Rural voices have advocated in favor of stronger regulations. Large pesticide corporations have fought back.
This year, Investigate Midwest launched a reporting project diving into this critical issue. You’ll see many more stories from us, and we’ve even invited readers to participate.
This week, in partnership with students at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, we published a series of stories looking at this emerging public health crisis in one particular corner of Missouri.
Unyielding is a six-story series that explores how the counties with the highest use of pesticides per square mile are all located in Missouri’s Bootheel. Many of these counties also have some of the state’s highest cancer rates, while their healthcare options are dwindling.
The series also includes profiles of two residents with cancer — a small-town hairdresser who is leaning on her community and a farmer who has removed all pesticides from his farm.
This intimate look at how one Missouri community is dealing with widespread pesticide use, high cancer rates, and a loss of medical care is worth a read.
— Ben Felder, editor in chief
DATA HARVEST: Use of this 2,4-D weed killer is exploding in Illinois farming country
By Lauren Cross, Investigate Midwest
If you live in Champaign County, odds are you’re close to soybean fields – and to the weed killers sprayed on them.
A new analysis by Tufts University researchers found that 45% of the county’s residents lived near heavy 2,4-D use in 2023, nearly double the share in 2017. Statewide, farmers applied more than 2 million kilograms of the chemical that year – over four times the level recorded just six years earlier.
Sunset on the Farm 2025
When: Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025, 5–8 p.m. CST
Where: Walker Homestead, 3867 James Ave. SW, Iowa City
Tickets: From $28.52 (children under 5 free)
What’s included: Unlimited pizza and salad, live music, sunflower to take home
Extras: Silent auction, cash wine bar, and s’mores by the fire
OPINION: A food battle royal is brewing
By Dave Dickey, Columnist
The push for a clear definition of ultra-processed foods in the U.S. could put Health and Human Services Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at odds with U.S. Department of Agriculutre Sec. Brooke Rollins and the corn industry.
ICYMI: The hidden costs of Big Ag's fertilizer dependence
By Keith Schneider, Investigate Midwest
Our Unyielding series that published this week explores the realities of cancer in farm country.
Keith Schneider’s 2023 reporting for The New Lede offers crucial context. His investigation uncovered how fertilizer overuse across the Corn Belt contaminates drinking water, drives up local treatment costs, and has been tied to higher cancer rates.
Families and taxpayers bear the burden while corporate agriculture profits. This story is definitely worth a revisit.
Investigate Midwest is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Our mission is to serve the public as a watchdog over influential agricultural corporations and institutions through in-depth and data-driven investigative journalism.
