Area crop artist’s latest work celebrates U.S.-Mexico ties

By | October 30, 2025
Lawrence, Kansas-based crop artist, Stan Herd, says his portrait of a Mexican indigenous woman is the most relevant work he has created. The portrait in a field in Linwood, Kansas. (Mary Sanchez | Flatland)

Kansas soil, cleared of vegetation to reveal a rich brownish mauve, forms the indigenous woman’s skin. Sand, mulch, woodchips, and compost are layered and sculpted to form the rest of the portrait titled “Young Woman of Mexico.” Stan Herd has sculpted similar images for more than 30 years in places like Brazil, China, and Cuba.…

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The End of the Pesticide Arms Race?

By | October 1, 2025

To spray or not to spray, that’s the question for farmers. Pests can be the make-or-break factor for a season’s harvest. Between 20% to 40% of global crop production is lost to pests annually, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Conventional chemical pesticides have traditionally addressed this challenge, but their…

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Rural communities rely on this USDA agency. Trump’s cuts threaten that

By | March 31, 2025
Jenna Batchelder and her husband Brad have been raising livestock for years. A grant from USDA Rural Development helped them branch out into a successful retail meat business. (Frank Morris | Harvest Public Media)

USDA Rural Development is Washington’s chief tool to promote economic growth in rural counties — providing funding for everything from renovating old hospitals to providing faster internet service. Sometimes the agency sweeps in to clean up an urgent mess. For instance, last year in Dunklin County, in Missouri’s Bootheel, a sewer system failure sent raw…

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Cultivating History Pt. 3: Business Success Breeds Resentment

By | February 20, 2025
After the deaths of Junius Groves in 1925 and his wife Matilda in 1930, the Groves family struggled financially, leading to receiving an eviction notice in 1933. (newspapers.com)

Junius Groves had built a potato empire by 1907, when educator Booker T. Washington showcased his success in his book, “The Negro in Business.” Groves then was shipping potatoes across North America while also importing what Washington called “fancy seed potatoes” from distant states. “He would get seed potatoes from Idaho and other places, and…

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Cultivating History Pt. 2: ‘Potato King’ Thrives Amid Racism

By | February 19, 2025
Junius Groves (center) grew more than just potatoes; he and his wife Matilda raised other vegetables and also tended orchards that produced apples, peaches and pears. (Photo courtesy, the Wyandotte County Historical Museum.)

While Kansas would prove friendly to potato growers like Junius Groves, it would not be quite the “free state” envisioned by Exodusters, the African Americans who, following the end of Reconstruction, considered their prospects more promising in the North. “It was about the same time when the Exodusters arrived in Kansas that the state Legislature…

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