When the last grocery store in Shoals, Indiana, closed, locals pitched in to start their own

In many rural communities, the only grocery mainstay is a Dollar General. Shoals, Indiana, has been on that list for a year since its last remaining grocery store, JayC, closed. Its 670 residents had begun to "fill the gaps" with limited Dollar General inventory, reported Laura Lane for The Daily Yonder. But one resident aims to change that by opening a locally-owned and operated grocery store in the near future.

Lane reports that Kroger, the parent company of JayC, cited a desire to operate more efficiently as the reason for closing the store, but residents say they were not given notice about the closure until “the last minute.”

Ever since, some residents had to “travel 25 miles to Washington or Bedford, cities with big grocery stores and Walmart Supercenters.” Others cannot drive or order a driving service because those don’t exist in Shoals. 

The Dollar General half a mile east of town carries “processed meats like hot dogs, frozen items, milk and cheese, canned goods, and they have limited produce,” a Shoals resident told Lane. “You can get by, but it’s kind of pricey.”

To combat Shoal’s new food desert, Todd Baker, owner of Bo-Mac’s drive-in restaurant on the town’s eastern edge, set up a “Grocery Grab” in the parking lot of his restaurant every Tuesday evening for 12 weeks. 

"Vendors sold Amish-grown produce, local meats, Prairie Farms dairy products and fresh-baked sourdough bread. People came and stocked up." With the popularity of the parking-lot grocery, Baker and local officials are now collaborating to discuss the possibility of opening a small grocery store.

Appalachia sees highest rate of Black Lung Disease in 50 years from silica dust

Appalachia is facing its highest rates of Black Lung Disease since 1978, reports Howard Burkes for The
Daily Yonder (republished from Public Health Watch). The statistics come from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, just as courts stall protections for coal miners.

“If you imagine one out of every three school teachers were getting an incurable lung disease because of something they were exposed to at work, the whole country would put their hands up screaming and stop whatever this exposure was immediately,” said Dr. Drew Harris, a medical director at Virginia’s Stone Mountain black lung clinics, which sees the most patients for black lung care and legal help in the country. “[But] this is largely impacting rural Appalachian folks that don’t have a voice, that don’t have a country to unite behind them.”

A troubling reality is that younger coal miners are falling ill because as Appalachia’s thickest coal seams were mined out, companies looked to smaller seams, which require digging through more rock that tends to be rich in silica. Mining through silica produces highly toxic dust that poses health risks to miners.

“Excessive inhalation of coal mine dust is the sole cause of [black lung] in coal miners,” the new NIOSH research letter said. “Substantial evidence shows that exposure to the respirable crystalline silica component of coal mine dust plays an important role in contemporary disease patterns.”

Even as mining companies comply with silica overexposure regulations 90-97% of the time, any exposure can lead to an influx of cases and lives affected. Stricter regulations for exposure have been suggested by NIOSH since 1974, but no bipartisan action had taken place. 

The Biden administration made exposure limits twice as restrictive and incorporated noncompliance fines in 2024. In response, mining companies sued and federal courts responded. “The Trump administration did not oppose the delay, announcing it too would put enforcement on hold.”

Midwest Native communities oppose newly issued permit for updates on oil and gas line under waterways

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit plan to update an older segment of a pipeline that carries crude oil and natural gas 645 miles from Superior, Wisconsin, through Michigan, to Sarnia, Ontario. The plan faces opposition from indigenous nations in Michigan, whose traditions and burial grounds are in the path of the Straits of Mackinac, reports Vivian La for Grist. 

Owner of the pipeline, Enbridge Energy, “wants to replace a 4-mile segment that lies on the bottom of the ecologically sensitive straits with a new one, buried in a tunnel under the lakebed.” The permit was fast-tracked under an executive order from President Donald Trump last year.

The Michigan native nations affected by the pipeline believe reconstruction would breach their treaty rights, established in the 1836 Treaty of Washington. They  “hold treaty rights to fish and hunt in these waters, rights that predate Michigan’s statehood.

The Army Corps said their plan would cause minimal impacts on the waterway or surrounding lands, and that it would  “reduce the environmental risks associated with the pipeline, such as leaks caused by a direct hit from a boat’s anchor.”

But La reports that previously collected data from the Army Corps said tunnel construction would have adverse impacts on wetlands, vegetation, land use and cultural resources. 

Building of the pipeline has been caught up in state legislation. The Michigan Supreme Court sent permit approval back to regulators for more review after Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer sought to shut down the pipeline last year. 

Trump announces temporary pause on beef import tariffs, faces opposition from ranchers

The Trump administration announced a “deal” allowing imports of up to 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to enter the U.S. market with relaxed tariffs. The announcement came on Aug. 21, and states that, “... foreign beef exporters will provide a 25% discount on beef exports ‘to be passed along to American consumers’ in exchange for tariff relief” for 90 days, reports Emily Chang and Benjamin Siegel for ABC News. 

Ranchers and several Republican lawmakers from farm states oppose the plan. Chang and Siegel report Republican Montana Sen. Tim Sheehy said “... this action will make it more difficult for American ranchers to rebuild our herd and bring prices down for the American people.” CEO of the National Cattleman’s Beef Association Colin Woodall also advocates against Trump’s deal, saying it "sacrifices long-term stability for short-term messaging.”

Many customers have expressed concern over rising grocery prices. Beef and veal prices soared 9.4% in the last month as compared to last year. The U.S. cattle supply has reached a 75-year low, and domestic farmers are struggling with high fertilizer and diesel costs amid ongoing supply issues caused by the Iran war. 

Chang and Siegel report that the White House official who confirmed the 25% discount also told ABC News “that the president will formally sign an executive order on the matter within the next two weeks.”

The White House official told ABC News the administration is working with domestic ranchers to expand production. Trump wrote in a social media post that “This deal will reduce prices for Americans while giving space for our Great American Beef Herd to grow again.” 

Conference to celebrate International Year of the Woman Farmer and reveal results of women in agriculture study

The Women in Agribusiness Summit will convene from Sept. 22-24 in New Orleans to celebrate 2026 as the

International Year of the Woman Farmer. Farm Bureau News reports that the Summit’s goal for its 15th year is to provide space for individuals in all types of rural communities to connect and collaborate with one another. 

This year, the WIA Summit will feature “panel discussions offering insights on ag markets, sustainability, risk management and several other topics, as well as workshops focused on leadership development and workplace transformation.” 

One panel in particular will share results of an American Farm Bureau Federation study about women in agriculture. The panel is led by Jessica Cabrera, managing director of member engagement at the American Farm Bureau Federation, and features Juliana Farah, president of the Agricultural Sowing Commission of the Sao Paulo State Agriculture and Livestock Federation, and Payal Pathak, director of Athena Tradewinds PVT LTD. 

"The study … identifies the essential roles women play in building a sustainable future for agriculture as well as opportunities for growth, improvement and additional support.” More than 4,000 women from all 50 U.S. states and territories were interviewed. 

Key findings from the study are: 

• Women in agriculture have strong confidence in their ability to balance farm work and family responsibilities

• 90% of women surveyed are interested in taking on leadership roles now or in the near future

• Most respondents have a high level of confidence in their ability to represent agriculture in public or professional settings 

• 9 out of 10 women would feel confident speaking at community meetings about agriculture

In addition, “the study also identifies five key areas where the agriculture sector could increase support: time and caregiving; skill development; leadership involvement; financial future; and overall wellbeing.”

• 52% of all respondents reported interest in training related to farm succession or ownership transition

• 44% are interested in gaining equipment or technical skills training

• Nearly 6 in 10 respondents expressed interest in business and financial management training

• 45% of respondents expressed interest in policy or civic engagement training

• 42% expressed interest in community involvement or advocacy training

Walmart to pay $50 million for its role in bolstering the opioid crisis

The Justice Department announced this week that Walmart must pay $50 million to resolve claims “that its pharmacies filled hundreds of thousands of suspicious prescriptions for opioids,” reports Ishani Desai for The New York Times. 

In 2020, government lawyers alleged that Walmart, the biggest retailer in the country and a mainstay in many rural communities, failed to detect and report ‘shady’ orders, thus fueling the opioid crisis — a crisis that disproportionately impacts rural communities. 

“Over an approximately four-year period, a time during which Walmart shipped an estimated 37.5 million controlled-substance orders to its pharmacies, it reported only 204 suspicious orders to D.E.A. — in other words, almost none,” Desai reports. 

The federal suit cited an instance in which an employee admitted to filling illegitimate and lethal doses of an opioid, and another in Florida of a doctor for whom Walmart filled over 3,500 controlled prescriptions. Workers who flagged such practices “were ignored in part to drive sales.” 

The settlement was announced as a government effort “to hold companies accountable for what it says were their roles in the opioid epidemic.” A Walmart spokesperson said the company was pleased to resolve the case. 

United Houma Nation credits 'good journalism' as reason for $56.5 million federal grant award

The United Houma Nation in South Louisiana is crediting "good journalism" for a newly awarded $56.5 million grant it received from the U.S. Department of Commerce and NOAA to help implement a climate "disaster and resilience plan," reports Ottavia Spaggiari of The Margin, a digital-only nonprofit news outlet that covers climate change's impacts on marginalized communities. 

"The funding will assist six hurricane-prone parishes in South Louisiana, including Lafourche Parish, home to the United Houma Nation," Spaggiari reports, writing that the grant comes after the outlet's "in-depth reporting on the United Houma Nation's decades-long fight for federal recognition and how that status gap heightened its climate exposure."

The Margin’s original reporting in 2022 focused on the impacts of Hurricane Ida in August 2021. "The storm left 26 dead, 14,000 displaced, and 75% of the buildings damaged or destroyed in Lafourche Parish, one of the hardest-hit areas and one of the parishes with the highest number of Tribal citizens," Spaggiari reports. 

Tribal citizen Sherry Parfait told Spaggiari: ''That kind of journalism is key to telling the story of the place.'" Spaggiari continues: "[Parfait] explains that deep narrative journalism can help people get a comprehensive understanding of the toll coastal erosion is taking on Tribal communities like the one she grew up in, where hurricanes and climate change have forced dozens of Tribal members to leave."

The grant will help the United Houma Nation create plans for climate mitigation, disaster preparedness and recovery best practices. It will also help to "develop community-led migration strategies" so tribal members can stay on their ancestral homelands after disaster strikes. 

Wendell Berry, champion of natural places and agrarian life, has died at 92

Wendell Berry, Kentucky poet, novelist, essayist and farmer, died at his home in Henry County on
Monday, Aug. 31. He was a naturalist, staunchly advocating for and supporting returning land to its natural state, and encouraged an off-grid lifestyle that would do as little harm to the natural world as possible. He was also a fierce advocate for rural places. 

"Mr. Berry wrote more than 50 volumes of poetry, fiction and argument that championed small family farms, the environment, local foods and interdependent communities, and railed against chemicals, most technologies, agribusiness and distant government," reports Robert D. McFadden for The New York Times.

McFadden continues: "He never became a household name but, as his oeuvre grew over a half-century, advocates of agrarian and ecological causes embraced his work as an eloquent, if sometimes didactic, expression of their own hopes. Some critics likened his landed exhortations to those of Thoreau or Thomas Jefferson."

He studied English at the University of Kentucky, writing at Stanford and taught at New York University for two years before being called back to his Henry County, Ky., homeplace, "an old two-room cabin on the Kentucky River at Port Royal... where his ancestors had lived since 1803," McFadden writes. 

"Returning to his home as a place to write for the rest of his life was a way to insure, to himself, that he would always be bound by the truth, Mr. Berry said in a phone interview in 2018 ...," McFadden writes. "The landscape was there to check me if I was wrong. I could never go away and make up stuff at cocktail parties about the backwoods of Kentucky," Berry said during the interview. "I worked with people here in all walks of life and learned from them. It’s been a very rich experience.”

Oil and gas drilling could increase in Alaska's wilderness under proposed exclusions to environmental laws

Alaska's wild places might be under threat -- with little oversight -- after a move by the Trump
administration to fast-track oil drilling in the National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve. 

Adam Federman reports for High Country News that the administration is issuing a "categorical exclusion" in the National Environmental Policy Act that would allow "new winter exploration and drilling to move forward without any kind of environmental review" by federal agencies or input from the public.  

Drilling in the protected areas has been "well-documented" to heavily disturb wildlife and altar the landscape in harmful ways, Federman writes, and yet the exclusion "could be released as early as this week." 

There is legal basis for seeking such exclusions, but applying it to a delicate ecosystem is uncommon. Jeremy Lieb, an attorney with environmental advocacy group Earthjustice told Federman the exclusions are usually applied where the changes caused by industry won't threaten the natural environment. Lieb said the effects of what's being proposed in Alaska are "well-documented" and are exactly the "kind of actions that should be scrutinized by the land-management agency."

The exclusion is in line with other rules re-written by the Trump administration to make drilling easier in Alaska's protected wilderness, some of which are already affecting local tribal communities, who have been "inundated with new drilling activity," as a result, Federman reports. Such operations also pose risks to workers, and increase the likelihood of oil spills. 

New solar microgrids will help western North Carolina be more prepared for Helene-like disasters

It has been almost two years since Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina, causing unprecedented flooding and leaving a large swath of destruction in its wake. Many communities were left in the dark in the aftermath because of blackouts that couldn't be remedied until power lines could be repaired. But a new statewide microgrid solar project aims to prevent such a situation from happening in the future. 

"The state Department of Environmental Quality invested $5 million in 26 microgrid projects last August, in partnership with a coalition of nonprofits dedicated to the expansion of sustainable energy. The goal is to build 24 stationary microgrids and two mobile ones, with five sites announced in June," reports Katie Myers reported for Grist (republished by Next City). 

Solar microgrids can power one or more buildings and can store energy to keep the power on "for days without sunshine," Myers writes. Stationary systems remain in one place, and power "essential infrastructure." Myers writes that one such system powers the entire town of Hot Springs, N.C., and "kept the lights on during Helene." 

The Foothills Project, a nonprofit bringing microgrids to western North Carolina, uses what they call "beehives" -- small, portable systems with batteries that can work in sunny or cloudy conditions. They provide up to 100 kWhs of energy, and could power a building for 10 hours. Myers reports that "Foothills Project is prioritizing installing them outside food banks, fire stations, community centers, and libraries," because they "can store supplies and serve as a hub of community operations during a disaster."

Two solar "beehives" will be ready for use in 2027, and installations at five stationary sites began this summer. 

Data centers threaten Texas' farmland, echoing similar battles across U.S. rural areas

Texas agriculture is facing off against an increasingly heard-about foe: data centers. Construction of the facilities requires large swaths of cheap, open, flat land, and rural Texas has it in spades. Nearly 250 data centers are slated to be built in the state, reports Jayme Lozano Carver for The Texas Tribune.

The story connects with dozens of others from around the country's rural areas, where communities are facing similar pressure from data center developers. Carver writes that a recent Pew Research Center study  found that 67% of data centers nationwide are in rural areas. The tax revenue promised to local governments by such development is increasingly difficult to pass up for many that are struggling to keep essential services going with a declining tax base.

"Texas agriculture has been an illustrious behemoth for decades, generating more than $963 billion in total economic output and driving nearly $15 billion in exports annually. Texas also has more farmland than any other state — 126 million acres as of 2021," Carver writes. Data center development is adding stress to other issues Texas farmers have faced in recent years, such as rising costs of growing crops, drought, and loss of croplands. 

“They’re building them on our most valuable, most fertile farmland,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told Carver. “Once our farmland is gone and paved over, we’ll never farm it again.”

New federal rule would increase water cuts in the Colorado River Basin; Native American tribes say they weren't consulted

Colorado River Indian Tribes say the U.S. Department of the Interior did not provide them with enough notice or allow them sufficient input about its newly proposed plan of "future cuts to Colorado River water deliveries to three lower river basin states," reports Daniel Herrera Carbajal for ICT. 

The plan dictates that California, Arizona and Nevada would take less water from the Colorado River "to stave off a crisis in the river." Arizona and Nevada have taken water usage cuts before, but this proposal "could lead to more significant reductions, impacting agriculture, cities and tribes," according to the ICT report. 

In a release letter earlier this month, The Colorado River Indian Tribes' attorney general, Rebecca Loudbear, wrote that the decision does not "reflect the nature and extent of [The Colorado Indian Tribes's] water rights," because the Tribes "holds water rights to over 23 percent of Arizona’s entire allocation of Colorado River water."

The Tribes is a major shareholder of Colorado River water in Arizona and has "some of the most legally untouchable water rights pertaining to the river." The Tribes, along with the Gila River Indian Community, pledged to "'stand ready" to challenge the plan if it does not meet their needs.

California farmers are 'returning lettuce to the soil,' laying off workers as fears about cyclosporiasis continue

Workers are being laid off, assembly lines have stopped and huge amounts of lettuce and cabbage are being returned to the soil at farms across the country as fears about the spread of cyclosporiasis continue. 

Soumya Karlamangla reports for The New York Times that despite the largest cluster of cases being "linked to iceberg lettuce grown in Mexico," sales of lettuce and other greens from the Salinas Valley in California have "plummeted all the same."

Farmers are making the hard decision to till the unsold lettuce back into the field to use as fertilizer because that is the least costly move they can make if it doesn't sell. One such farm making that hard decision is Church Brothers Farm in the Salinas Valley. Karlamangla reports that the company "lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in discarded greens," and "returned an extra estimated 3.9 million heads of lettuce to the soil over the past six weeks as demand dropped."

The Salinas Valley -- long known as the "Salad Bowl of the World" -- has suffered the most from the downturn in sales. The region grows 70% of the country's lettuce. Though the Centers for Disease Control identified only one source of the parasite, it is investigating six other sites, but has not released names. 

The farmers and experts Karlamangla spoke with agreed that lettuce sales would bounce back, but for now "hand-painted tomatoes and heads of lettuce grace the public trash cans in Salinas."