New Iowa carbon task force looks like greenwashing
“If someone tasked you with making an exhaustive list of who could profit from carbon sequestration, this is what you would come up with,” tweeted Chris Jones, a research engineer at the University of...
View ArticleChet Culver to return to federal board
President Joe Biden appointed former Iowa Governor Chet Culver to the Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation’s board of directors this week. Assuming Culver is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, it will...
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Iowa wildflower Wednesday: Speaking for the prairie
Tommy Hexter ‘21 and Jacy Highbarger ‘22 wrote this post. The authors are co-founders of Grinnell College’s chapter of Herbicide-Free Campus; Poweshiek Soil and Water Commissioner (former), and...
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Iowa wildflower Wednesday: Bloody Run blooms again
Kenny Slocum is the naturalist and natural resource manager for the Clayton County Conservation Board. -promoted by Laura Belin Bloody Run County Park already had a lot going for it when I began...
View ArticleA story of hope and the Leopold Center’s first leader
Paul W. Johnson passed away in February 2021. His family and Dennis Keeney gave permission to share the text of the forward he wrote for Keeney’s 2015 book The Keeney Place: Life in the Heartland. In...
View ArticleAmerica Needs Farmers? Farmers need Iowans, too
Dan Piller: The Iowa Farm Bureau might want to start thinking of city folks as partners, rather than supplicants, before it is too late. A big winner at the October 9 Iowa-Penn State football game in...
View ArticleWe All Want Clean Water
The “We All Want Clean Water” podcast is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. About us: Silvia Secchi is a Professor in the Department of Geographical and Sustainability Sciences at the University...
View ArticleTraveling in the Right Direction
The late Paul W. Johnson wrote the following essay as an introduction to Chapter Five of “The Essential Aldo Leopold: Quotations and Commentaries,” C. Meine and R. Knight, eds., University of...
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Remembering Neal Smith
I was so sorry to hear that former U.S. Representative Neal Smith passed away on November 2 at the age of 101. Iowa’s longest-serving member of the U.S. House represented Polk County in Congress for...
View ArticlePaul Johnson on Agriculture and Conservation
Before northeast-Iowa farmer Paul Johnson died in early 2021, he served as an Iowa state legislator, the head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, and...
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Rural Iowa and an approach to political dialogue
Charles Bruner: Democrats need to recognize rural Iowans’ frustration with the political system and start finding common ground. Broadly generalizing, rural Iowans are good folk. They work hard and...
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Iowa Ag Department still ignoring state auditor’s warnings
With the state’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report and Single Audit for the 2020 fiscal year in the rear view mirror, the State Auditor’s office has been churning out its annual “reports of...
View ArticleWhat UAW members gained with five-week strike
Iowa’s largest strike in decades is over after nearly five weeks. About 10,000 United Auto Workers members, including nearly 7,000 in Iowa, ratified the latest tentative agreement with John Deere by a...
View ArticleJohn Deere could have offered workers more
Only a week after United Auto Workers members ratified a new six-year contract with John Deere, the company announced record profits of $5.96 billion during the fiscal year that ended on November 1....
View ArticleMike Naig running, John Norwood considering Ag Sec race
Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig announced on December 7 that he will seek a second full term in 2022. No Democrats have declared for this race, but Polk County Soil and Water Commissioner John...
View Article“Get Big or Get Out”: An American horror story
C.J. Petersen is a “dirt road Democrat” and rural organizer. In the 1987 movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko quipped that “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” Since that time, the American family...
View ArticleWhat “Critical Race Theory” actually is
This column first appeared in the Jefferson Herald and the Carroll Times Herald. One evening in late October, the six candidates for the Greene County Community School Board were taking questions from...
View ArticleIowans don’t want carbon pipelines – here’s why
This post was co-authored by Emma Schmit, Food & Water Watch; Jess Mazour, Sierra Club Iowa Chapter; Caitlin Golle, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement; Mahmud Fitil, Great Plains Action...
View ArticleA must-watch MLK, Jr. clip for Iowans
“Share this clip of my father,” tweeted Bernice King, the CEO of the King Center on January 17, the holiday honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “We must study him beyond the end of ‘I Have a...
View ArticleLet’s talk about the weather
State Senator Joe Bolkcom represents Iowa City and is outreach and community education director for the University of Iowa’s Center for Global & Regional Environmental Research. We Iowans love to...
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