Agriculture

Just one year away from a 2025 deadline to reduce nitrate and phosphorus entering the Gulf by 20 percent, success seems unlikely.

This summer’s “dead zone,” a low-oxygen area where the river empties into the sea, could span 5,827 square miles across the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana has the power to call for change.

Worsening local effects on health and recreation in states like Minnesota and Wisconsin are spurring action on problems that also cause the Gulf of Mexico’s chronic “dead zone.”

Sluggish progress on reducing nutrient runoff into the Chesapeake Bay marks an inconvenient truth, but offers lessons for others seeking to clean their watersheds.

Agricultural drainage tile, a system used by farmers to increase crop yields, is a main contributor to excess nutrients in waterways.

Linn County Supervisor Kirsten Running-Marquardt believes wind and solar energy are critical to economic development in Iowa. But she also wants to make sure landowners who sign contracts for wind projects aren’t left twisting in the wind.

Making that dream a reality hasn’t been easy, in part because even as farmers would benefit from a huge new market for corn, the plan relies on federal tax credits triggered by capturing carbon dioxide at refineries and then moving the gas hundreds of miles through pipelines that would snake across the Midwest, including beneath farmers’ fields.

One of the largest dairy farms in the state has cattle that are infected with bird flu, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship reported Monday.