Farm & Field
My Farm Roots: Farm kids’ big life lesson
Farm dog? Check. Barn cats? Check. Muddy work books lined up at the back door? Five checks. We kick off our fourth season of “My Farm Roots” with the Renyer Family, five farm kids I had the pleasure of meeting last week. Driving onto the Renyer farm, out in Nemaha County, Kan., I was struck…
The science behind farm herbicides and cancer
Farmers count on chemical herbicides to keep their fields weed-free. But an international panel of scientists who studied two of the most heavily used farm chemicals to determine whether they could cause cancer, said exposure to weed-killing chemicals could come at a cost. In the last few months, scientists brought together by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC, considered glyphosate and 2,4-D.
Anxiety over changing farmworker housing rules
Many of the more than 3 million migrant farmworkers that plant and pick the fruits and vegetables we eat in the U.S. live on the farms they work for. But the rules that govern farmworker housing may be changing, worrying both farmers and migrant worker advocates. For decades, farmworker housing standards have been governed by…
Kansas Bee Hotels Give Native Species A Place To Call Home
A patchwork of bamboo and paper tubes, with diameters no bigger than a nickel, are stacked artfully inside a 4-by-4 wooden frame near the edge of a public hiking trail in Lawrence, Kan. Organized by size, each hollow tube is about 8 inches long, designed as nests for Kansas’ wild bees. This structure is called…
When it rains, it pours – how storms are affecting this year’s crops
Driving down a two-lane highway in rural Missouri, Matt Plenge squinted at a patch of gray clouds hanging low over his farm fields in the distance. “Does it look hazy up there?” he asked. “We only had a 20 percent chance today. We shouldn’t get any rain.” Plenge, like most farmers, always keeps one eye…