Rural
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‘You are ruining rural Iowa’: Tenant farmer takes on Alliant’s gas plant
Linn County rejected Alliant’s Morgan Valley gas plant, but Iowa regulators could still approve it. Tenant farmer Tamara Krug says she’s watching.
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Iowa farmer Aaron Lehman pays $1,000 more a day for diesel this harvest
On a busy harvest day, Aaron Lehman’s Iowa farm can burn through 400 gallons of diesel. This fall, that fuel is costing him about $1,000 more per day than it did last year. “That’s just a cost that you cannot adjust around and make up for in other ways,” said Lehman, a fifth-generation farmer whose…
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Prices up 3.8% from last year, highest since 2023: Iowa worker news and layoffs for May 14, 2026
That $12 billion farmer bailout is also being eaten up by rising prices caused by Trump’s war in Iran.
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Luther College student goes to World Bank with big ideas on helping small farmers
Can access to technology help small farmers in Iowa make money? This Luther College student says it can–and he told world financial leaders to prioritize it this month.
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JD Vance’s Iowa visit canceled as Trump’s embattled farm bill is ‘in big trouble’
JD Vance has nixed a planned Iowa visit this week, rescheduling his campaign stop with Rep. Zach Nunn to May 4.
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From Minneapolis to your block: Real people are proving politics isn’t just for watching
Consuming political news isn’t the same as building political power. From Minneapolis to small-town America, rural organizer Gwen Frisbie-Fulton writes that real change starts with local organizing and civic engagement. Someone once told me this story: Anthropologists visiting an Aboriginal village showed them a newspaper clipping about an earthquake that destroyed a town halfway across…
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New report outlines impact of federal policy on rural America, from Iowa to Appalachia
The 2025 Rural Policy Action Report highlights struggles and solutions for small communities in Iowa and nationwide.
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Iowa farmers are struggling without a China trade deal
Amie here. Harvest time is upon us, and Iowa farmers are supposed to have the third-largest harvest on record. Yet it all amounts to a hill of beans (literally) if nobody’s buying them. Iowa soybean farmers—and those in the wider ag industry—are hurting in a big way, and they’re not getting any relief with President Donald…
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Reynolds vetoes bill protecting landowners from eminent domain
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds vetoed a bill restricting private pipelines’ use of eminent domain, against the wishes of Iowa landowners and farmers.
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Rural America fights back: Iowa summit calls for fair funding, stronger communities
Organizations from across the country gathered in Des Moines for the 2025 Rural Policy Action Summit, where leaders demanded fairness for working families
