Harvest Public Media

Craig Rowles grew up on an Iowa farm, and like a lot of farm kids, he’s done his share of heavy lifting.

Are Midwestern farmers overlooking an opportunity ripe for the picking?

As one of the worst droughts in 50 years ravages the Midwest, livestock producers are left without a safety net, watching their herds suffer or be sold because there’s nothing else to do. 

Ninety years ago this May, my grandfather, Ronald Merle Phillips, and his twin brother, Robert Earl, were born on a farm near Chetopa, Kan.

Sometimes farm roots don’t blossom into a farm life. But those memories can still have a huge influence, perhaps even determining a career choice.

It’s not every day that a trip to the drug store can change your destiny.

Farmers are the bedrock of the agricultural commodities markets – after all, they make the products that are traded there.

The future of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan is under the microscope this week for the second time in just over a month.

Many people in the Kansas City area have close ties to agriculture, whether they currently work on a farm, or grew up on one and left. Or maybe their ancestors settled in the region to work the land. 

“Hack” isn’t a word usually associated with agriculture, but that might be starting to change.

Inside a new facility in Blair, Neb., north of Omaha, a gleaming maze of steel tubes connect a line of giant fermentation tanks that will cultivate some of the most advanced biotechnology in the ethanol industry.

A committee of the National Research Council says an updated risk assessment of a proposed high-security biodefense lab in Manhattan, Kan., appears to understate the chances of deadly pathogens being accidentally released.