Monitor Advocate News Today

Labor Department officials oversee state counterparts who are supposed to ensure states protect farmworkers from unsafe housing, wage theft and other abuses.

With the cost of farmland up by more than 8% percent in North Carolina, the states Black farmers are struggling to purchase additional acreage or jumpstart their farming dreams. Demi Tucker, owner of Uyoga Farms and a fifth-generation Black farmer, grows mushrooms on her familys land in Steadman. She said most farmers she knows are leasing and looking to expand, but finding themselves competing with investors and corporations swooping up large tracts. ...

Farmers, ranchers and livestock producers are working with solar companies in Iowa to find multiple uses for land once used only to plant corn and soybeans. Some are investing in whats known as "dual-use solar" or agrivoltaics. They are cultivating profitable crops, grazing livestock, even raising healthier honeybees, all in the shadows of solar panels. ...

By Sky Chadde and Johnathan Heddinger for the Investigate Midwest, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.Broadcast version by Mark Richardson for Illinois News Connection reporting for the Investigate Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration. In early 2019 in Illinois, a farmworker, his wife and his son lived in a moldy house. Attempting to keep the winter cold at bay, he’d spray-foamed the windows shut. ...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture touts its conservation programs for farmers, but a new study from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy found last year, three of four applications for the programs were denied. The Conservation Stewardship Program and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program help farmers handle flooding and drought. ...

Some advocates have lauded Oregons new temporary protective rules for outdoor workers, but worries remain about workers pay and health impacts.