To erode small-town culture is to erode the culture of the nation. Small towns have always risked losing young people for good, but especially after the Great Recession, the American economy has conspired against returners. Economic and agricultural concentration, declining industries, and lower wages aren’t giving younger people much reason to go home. Many small towns are becoming older, poorer, less educated.  Small towns and rural areas send a disproportionate number of their children into the military. America’s food is grown around small towns. [node:read-more:link]

Much of the Midwest is dominated by farming: rows and rows of soybeans and corn, with bare soil between the rows. But before farming took over, the dominant ecosystem was prairie. [node:read-more:link]

A coalition of 66 ag-based organizations have joined together to focus on expanding the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) research, education, and extension budget. In an effort to further the U.S. ag industry the coalition is working toward doubling the budget to $6 billion during the five-year life of the 2018 Farm Bill. The coalition submitted its request in a letter to U.S. House and U.S. [node:read-more:link]

According to a survey done by the California Farm Bureau Federation (CFBF), farmers and ranchers are having an increasingly hard time finding, and hiring, people who are willing and qualified to work in the Ag industry. The survey conducted this summer showed that 55-percent of responding farmers had experienced employee shortages. [node:read-more:link]

New research from the University of Delaware concludes that food labels such as “organic” and “fair trade” can stigmatize foods produced with conventional processes even when there is no scientific evidence that they cause harm or that products are compositionally different. Such process claims often are not based on science and can cause consumers to misinterpret these labels and misalign their personal preferences and food purchases, the researchers said. [node:read-more:link]

Lon Frahm may represent the future of farming. Inside a two-story office building overshadowed by 80-foot steel grain bins, he points to a map showing the patchwork of square and circular fields that make up his operation. It covers nearly 10% of the county’s cropland, and when he climbs into his Cessna Skylane to check crops from the air, he can fly 30 miles before reaching the end of his land. At 30,600 acres, his farm is among the country’s vastest, and it yields enough corn and wheat each year to fill 4,500 semitrailer trucks. Big operations like Mr. [node:read-more:link]

But Iowa’s marketplace is arguably in the worst shape in the country at a time when Republicans are intent on dismantling Obamacare, creating further stress on the wobbly exchanges. And Trump’s decision to gut funding for outreach and marketing activities ahead of open enrollment is likely to have an outsize effect in a state in which many customers are certain to be confused by their options. How did Iowa get to this precarious point? [node:read-more:link]

New smart farm technologies can give America’s growers the ability to monitor crop conditions in real time, respond to technical problems before machinery breaks down in the field and consult with the world’s foremost agronomic experts with the push of a button. That is, as long as they’ve got five bars of service and plenty of internet bandwidth. If not, the smartest piece of technology isn’t worth its weight in good, quality fertilizer. [node:read-more:link]

The Environmental Protection Agency has removed dozens of online resources dedicated to helping local governments address climate change, part of an apparent effort by the agency to play down the threat of global warming. A new analysis made public on Friday found that an E.P.A. [node:read-more:link]

Cargill is offering consumers turkeys with a side of traceability. The company’s Honeysuckle White brand recently launched a pilot project that that uses blockchain technology to trace turkeys produced by family farmers. To learn more about their Thanksgiving turkey, consumers in select markets can text or enter an on-package code at HoneysuckleWhite.com to access the farm’s location by state and county, view the family farm story, see photos from the farm and read a message from the farmer. [node:read-more:link]