1000 Friends of Iowa Treasurer, LaVon Griffieon, is mentioned in an Earth Island Journal article.
Title: Our food systems are changing for the better thanks to a rising crop of women farmers.
Written by: Sena Christian.
Click link to see the full article, http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/unconventional_agriculture/.
The first coordinated study of food hub development in Iowa shows that food hubs play a significant role in the state’s local and regional food economy. According to the study, thirteen food hubs purchased $4.5 million in food from more than 450 Iowa farmers and supported 58 jobs. Further, it posits that if the sample businesses were representative of all 31 food hubs and centers of food hub-related activity in the state, Iowa food hubs could be handling more than $10 million of locally grown food in the state! Read the full report.
NPR The Salt, February 2, 2015
Here’s How to End Iowa’s Great Nitrate Fight by Dan Charles
Three weeks ago, Sara Carlson was driving to her job in Ames, Iowa, when she turned on the radio and heard me talking about nitrates in Iowa’s water.
“And I was like, ‘I really hope he nails this,’ ” she says.
This topic is Carlson’s specialty. She works with a group called Practical Farmers of Iowa. These farmers are devoted to farming in ways that protect the environment.
We can solve this by Art Cullen
Storm Lake Times, January 28, 2015
We were encouraged to report Friday that virtually everyone involved in a potential lawsuit over nitrate levels in the Raccoon River is interested in some sort of negotiated settlement. We were especially interested in hearing from Buena Vista County Attorney Dave Patton and Des Moines Water Works CEO Bill Stowe that they agree that we have an issue that needs to be sorted out short of a courtroom. If those two people could meet in a room for an hour or two we would bet there would be some sort of outline for a deal.
by Robert Steuteville, Better Cities & Towns
A walkable community is the most common term to describe the alternative to drive-only suburbia. Walkability is easy to explain but uninspiring. Walking is so basic to human life that we often take it for granted. Perhaps a better term is livability.
Quad City Times, September 17, 2014
by Tony Thompson and Jennifer Terry
Farmers are “stewards of the land”. Most Iowans have heard this expression growing up—the notion that farmers responsibly care for the land in order to leave it better than they found it for future generations. These are the true environmentalists, and there are still Iowa farmers who fit the stewardship image.
Many Iowa farmers have been practicing good stewardship on their land for decades—sometimes with, sometimes without government incentives. They use their own money to build wetlands and ponds in order to create habitat and keep rain water—and the soil and nutrients it carries with it—from washing onto their neighbor’s fields. They ensure there are buffers alongside streams, and they plant crops a reasonable distance from waterways. They see the land as more than just a commodity.
The County Map That Explains Ferguson’s Tragic Discord by Peter Coy
What does a map have to do with a riot? Everything, in the case of Ferguson, Mo., where a police officer shot dead a black teenager, some residents looted and rioted, and police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.
The map of St. Louis County, the home of Ferguson, looks like a shattered pot. It’s broken into 91 municipalities that range from small to tiny, along with clots of population in unincorporated areas. Dating as far back as the 19th century, communities set themselves up as municipalities to capture control of tax revenue from local businesses, to avoid paying taxes to support poorer neighbors, or to exclude blacks. Their behavior has ranged from somewhat parochial to flatly illegal.
by John Biewen and Rob Dillard
It’s a good time to be a farmer in Iowa. Corn prices, at $5.91 per bushel as of Monday, are soaring in part because of growing demand for ethanol, a corn-based fuel that the federal government supported when it passed the energy bill late last year. And with help from chemicals and biotechnology, Iowa farmers produce 150 bushels of corn per acre, nearly double the yield in 1970, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The Griffieon family has owned a farm in Ankeny, Iowa, since 1868 — spanning six generations — and has witnessed the growth.
Craig and LaVon Griffieon and their three children raise corn, soybeans and livestock on 1,150 acres. Their stock of antibiotic-free Limousin cattle has roamed the farm since 1960. For more than a decade, they have also offered pasture-raised poultry.
For the first time in years, the Griffieons say they’re doing well financially, but they’re ambivalent about the direction of American agriculture.
As it stands now, if one acre or more of land is disturbed during construction of a home or business and there’s at least four inches of topsoil present, it must be restored unless that isn’t feasible. Some developers want that requirement eased because of cost, so options are now being considered, according to Adam Schnieders with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
Some folks are looking hard for more dirt on Gov. Terry Branstad’s administration.
I’m just looking for some in my yard.
Nearly seven years ago, we moved from an older neighborhood in Ames to our newish, late ’90s subdivision on the north side of Marion. When the first spring in our new digs arrived, we set out to do some landscaping, flower beds, bushes, etc.
What we found out fast was that our sod was sitting on thick, compacted clay subsoil. Whatever topsoil had existed before this cornfield became a housing development was pretty much gone. It was an unpleasant surprise. I later learned that builders often strip the topsoil to make it easier to use heavy equipment on a worksite and speed up building. And in many cases, they don’t put much, or any, of it back. Sometimes, the topsoil is sold.
Now, whenever I plant anything in our yard, in fertile Iowa, for Pete’s sake, I have to buy dirt in a bag from a store. And having any decent grass means dumping a bunch of chemicals on my lawn. This is not an unusual story in the sprawling subdivisions of suburban Iowa.
“Most subsoils in Iowa are clay-based. The permeability is low to begin with,” said Joe Griffin, who leads the wastewater permitting program for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. “And then run over it a few times with large equipment, that does not increase the permeability. When they’re done building the lots, they put a layer of sod on, which has a layer of topsoil on it. But it’s a small layer, three-quarters of an inch to an inch.”