Analysis shows big increase in diagnoses of food allergies, especially in rural children

A new analysis of private insurance claims shows that more people are suffering from allergies these days, and that those allergies are more severe — especially in rural areas. The analysis was conducted by the nonprofit organization FAIR Health, which maintains a database of billions of medical and dental claims from 150 million people with private insurance. The search showed that anaphylactic reactions, especially to peanuts, have increased by almost five times from 2007 to 2016. Anaphylaxis is a systemic allergic reaction that can be fatal if not treated quickly.

An interesting result of the analysis was that there was a larger increase in claims from rural areas than in urban or suburban areas. Though both urban and rural allergy-related claims decreased in 2016, rural claims increased 110 percent while urban claims increased 70 percent over the entire 10-year period. That is intriguing because numerous studies have shown that children growing up in rural areas are less prone to allergies, possibly because the increased exposure to nature gives their immune systems a workout and makes them less likely to react to environmental triggers such as peanuts or eggs.

FAIR Health Inc. chart; click on it to enlarge it.

The analysis doesn't examine whether rural residents had increased rates of private health insurance coverage over that time period, and if so, how that affected the incidence of insurance claims. The rural rate climbed above the urban rate in 2014, the first year that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was in full effect. FAIR Health plans to release a white paper in October examining "geographical and gender variations and costs of services, among other factors," Sumathi Reddy reports for The Wall Street Journal.

Experts have plenty of theories about the cause of the increase and severity of allergies. "The increase could be related to the increasing use of antibiotics, rising rates of Caesarean sections that affect the microbiomes of babies, and an increasingly sterile environment, says Hugh Sampson, director of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. All have altered the good bacteria in our intestinal tracts, which alters the programming of our immune systems," Reddy reports. Sampson says another problem is that parents have been told to avoid giving highly allergenic foods such as peanuts to small children, an approach that appears to have backfired. Allergies to peanuts and tree nuts have at least doubled in the U.S. over the past 20 years.

Invasive pigweed seeds found in most birdseed mix

Palmer amaranth, better known as pigweed

Researchers at the University of Missouri found out that commercial birdseed is giving Palmer amaranth, an invasive pigweed species, a sneaky ride into farms and gardens across the Midwest. Palmer amaranth is a frequent annoyance in the South, but was found "popping up in pollinator plots across the Midwest last year. Missouri scientists have also pointed to waterfowl contributing to the continued spread of the weed as the birds eat and subsequently poop the undigested and still viable pigweed seeds far away from the point of initial consumption," Pam Smith reports for The Progressive Farmer. The weed has spread to 39 of Missouri's 114 counties in recent years.

Mizzou weed expert Kevin Bradley says that the spread of the plant is usually blamed on contaminated livestock feed, bedding, or seeds clinging to machinery. His findings about the birdseed vector were presented at the university's recent Integrated Pest Management field day.

It's research worth noting, since some kinds of Palmer amaranth can resist several kinds of herbicides. The tiny seeds were present in almost all of the birdseed the researchers screened, but seed mixes that contain millet tended to have the most. One sample "contained nearly 8,000 pigweed seeds in a single pound bag. That's a lot of pigweed since birdseed often sells in 50 lb. bags," Smith reports. Seeds for other weeds were also common in the birdseed samples, including ragweed, velvetleaf, and morning glory.

Va. farms embrace agritourism, which is growing

The Parrish Pumpkin Patch in southern Virginia. (Parrish Farm photo)

Who doesn't love a visit to the farm? From pumpkin patches and hayrides to U-Pick-Em strawberries and wine tastings, there's something for everyone -- and savvy farmers know they can bring in extra revenue by hosting such events. "Farmers searching for ways to diversify their portfolios have added tourism to the mix as a way to bring in new business and new exposure to the industry. Agritourism now has several trends going for it: the growth of the experience economy and the popularity of farm-to-table foods, leading to a renewed interest in where food comes from," Tiffany Holland reports for The Roanoke Times.

Agritourism has become a big moneymaker over the past 10 years in Virginia, according to a study published in April by the Pamplin School of Business at Virginia Tech. It looked at the financial impact of agritourism in the state, and found that visitors to the state's more than 1,400 agritourism destinations spent about $1.5 billion in 2015 alone. "In total, agritourism accounts for about $2.2 billion in economic activity and it’s growing. The most growth for agritourism venues has been from 2010 to the present, with more than one-third of the venues opening in the past seven years," Holland reports.

State agencies have published materials to help guide farmers who want to get in on the trend. And rural counties are embracing it, even hiring coordinators to see to the industry. Big events such as tractor pulls or festivals can bring in profit to the whole community. And farmers who offer agritourism destinations say they love giving city dwellers the opportunity to learn more about farming and where their food comes from. Holland writes that "Carolyn Reilly, who opened Four Corners Farm in 2011 in Franklin County, said she and her husband offer farm tours to expose people to farming and show the public where the food comes from, in addition to making a living at it."

There are a few downsides to agritourism. it tends to be dependent on weather, so a festival getting rained out can cost a community thousands of dollars in lost income. Safety and liability are also a concern for farmers, as well as zoning issues and local ordinances. In short, the grape-picking expedition might get rained out, the on-site wine tasting bar at the vineyard might not be allowed, and the farmer might need to buy extra insurance in case a tourist gets hurt. But many farmers believe the promise of extra income in an increasingly cash-strapped industry is often worth the trouble.

What led EPA to decide farmers could keep using a pesticide banned for residential use since 2000?

Here's a story that highlights the importance to reporters of Freedom of Information Act requests and meticulous research.

"In the weeks before the Environmental Protection Agency decided to reject its own scientists’ advice to ban a potentially harmful pesticide, Scott Pruitt, the agency’s head, promised farming industry executives who wanted to keep using the pesticide that it is 'a new day, and a new future,' and that he was listening to their pleas," Eric Lipton and Roni Rabin report for The New York Times.

The Times found this information after obtaining more than 700 pages of internal agency documents through an FOIA request. The documents show that EPA staff appointed by President Trump were instrumental in getting long-time staff to agree to reject a petition from environmentalists to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos. Chlorpyrifos has been produced by Dow Chemical since the 1960s and is still widely used, but it has been banned for residential use since 2000 because of evidence that it damages the brains of fetuses, infants and children. Because chlorpyrifos dries up and drifts on the wind after it has been sprayed on crops, it is being blamed for causing sickness in 47 farmers near Bakersfield, Calif., on May 5.

"Three days before Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, Dow Chemical had separately submitted a request to the agency to reject the petition to ban chlorpyrifos, calling the scientific link between the childhood health issues and the pesticide unclear," the Times reports. The trail of internal memos and emails seems to show that new EPA staff were listening — not just to industry executives, but to interested parties in the White House and the Department of Agriculture, which tends to be more industry-friendly than the EPA. Melanie Benesh, a legislative attorney at the Environmental Working Group, told the Times, "What is clear from these documents is that Administrator Pruitt’s abrupt action to vacate the ban on chlorpyrifos was an ideological, not a health-based, decision."

Job growth in rural areas continues to lag

"Job growth in rural America continues to lag the rest of the country, according to the latest figures from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics," Bill Bishop reports for The Daily Yonder. While jobs increased about 2 percent in large metropolitan areas from June 2016 to June 2017, rural areas overall only increased 0.29 percent, and the 924 counties that are farthest away from cities didn't gain jobs at all; they declined by 0.02 percent.

Daily Yonder map; click on it to enlarge

"Moreover, rural areas have been losing workforce, the total number of people either working or looking for a job," Bishop reports. "From June 2016 to June of this year, the rural workforce has shrunk by just over 105,000 people, or about 0.5 percent. That has helped keep rural unemployment rates low, but it indicates that the economy in many rural areas is hollowing out."

Rural areas have struggled to add jobs since the end of the Great Recession in 2009. There are new jobs to be had, but they're mostly concentrated in America's largest cities. "Seventy percent of the growth in employment since last June took place in the metropolitan areas with a million or more people," Bishop reports. Click here for a zoomable county-by-county map detailing job growth trends in America.

Voters say local news is less biased than national

A poll last week found that voters put more trust in their local news outlets than they do national news media, Edward Graham reports for Morning Consult, which commissioned the poll with Politico. It found that 41 percent of registered voters in a nationwide sample trust the local news more than national news to tell the truth, while 27 percent said they trusted national news more (32 percent didn't know or didn't have an opinion).

Democrats were slightly more likely to trust national news more than local news, while Republicans (especially Trump voters) and independents were almost twice as likely to trust local news over national news. On the question of bias, 54 percent of the respondents said they believed national news is liberally biased, while only 16 percent said it was conservatively biased and 7 percent said it was nonpartisan. The perception of liberal bias was seen less in local news: 40 percent said their local news leans liberal, while 25 percent said it is conservative and 11 percent said it was nonpartisan. The poll was conducted online Aug. 10-14 among 1,997 registered voters, and results were weighted to produce a target sample of registered voters based on age, race/ethnicity, gender, educational attainment, and region. The margin of error is plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Natalie Jomini Stroud, an associate communications studies professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said local media may be more trusted by viewers because there is evidence that local newspapers tailor coverage to readers' preferences.

The poll takes on added weight when considering the controversial ascent of conservative news conglomerate Sinclair Broadcasting Group. "Sinclair, already the largest owner of television stations across the United States, is in the middle of a proposed $3.9 billion purchase of Tribune Media that would see the company add 42 new stations. The Federal Communications Commission is currently reviewing the proposed merger," Graham notes. Some have criticized Sinclair for requiring local news stations to frequently run segments of conservative commentary.

Vilsack says U.S. doesn't appreciate its rural areas, which could draw more value-added manufacturing

Tom Vilsack (right) spoke at the Iowa State Fair.
(Des Moines Register photo by Angela Ufheil)

Americans don't appreciate rural America, and small towns could attract many more manufacturing jobs, former agriculture secretary and Iowa governor Tom Vilsack said at the Iowa State Fair Aug. 19.

Vilsack, a Democrat, is president of the U.S. Dairy Export Council. He said the U.S. can create more jobs by putting processing and manufacturing facilities near where natural resources are harvested or extracted, instead of shipping raw materials elsewhere. The rhetoric could resonate with Iowa cattle ranchers reeling from the loss of a promised meat processing plant, after the U.S. withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Angela Ufheil reports for The Des Moines Register, which sponsored Vilsack's appearance as part of its Political Soapbox at the fair.

"Another challenge facing Iowa, Vilsack said, is the lack of appreciation for rural America. He noted almost all food produced in the U.S. comes from rural areas. Yet those living in cities and benefiting from inexpensive food are so far removed from its production that they don't understand the challenges farmers face," Ufheil reports. He suggested that state and federal regulators use incentives that would lighten the financial burden on farmers, saying that they can't easily absorb increased costs due to regulation.

The Political Soapbox is an extension of the paper's Changing Iowa series, which explores the "demographic, cultural and economic changes taking place across the state, including the pressure being put on mid-sized farms, how automation is reshaping Iowa's workforce, and how Iowa's smaller cities have been left behind," Ufheil reports.

Interior halts study on health effects of large-scale surface mining in Central Appalachia

A surface coal mine (Herald-Leader photo by Charles Bertram)

The Interior Department has ordered to halt a $1 million study of whether large-scale surface mining in Central Appalachia has caused health problems. The U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement had hired The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to do the study. It included a public meeting in Hazard, Ky., on the day the halt was announced. The meeting, and one in Lexington the next day, were held.

Interior said it halted the study because it is reviewing all its grants and cooperative agreements of more than $100,000, Bill Estep reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. OSM had commissioned the study in August 2016, charging a panel of experts to review what it said was a "growing amount" of academic research on the topic.

Opponents of surface mining say they fear the study will be scrapped completely, citing the Trump administration's recent efforts to turn back some environmental regulations. "This was something that we had considered and feared given the change in administrations," Erin Savage, a program manager for Appalachian Voices, told Estep.

Studies have shown that mountaintop mining is associated with higher rates of cancer, heart disease, and other health issues. "However, the coal industry has fiercely disputed the studies, and a 2012 industry-funded study by a Yale University researcher and others concluded that 'coal mining is not per se the cause of increased mortality in rural Appalachia,'" Estep notes.

William Kearney, executive director of the National Academies, said in a press release that the agency believes the study is important and is "ready to resume it as soon as the Department of the Interior review is completed." At the Hazard meeting, residents told National Academies researchers that they hope OSM will allow the study to continue, Estep reports in an update. "Science isn't going to hurt us. What we don't know very well could," said Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies in Whitesburg.

Rad more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article168383627.html#storylink=cpy

Virginia is the latest state to help military veterans promote their products with special logo

Virginia is the latest state where military veterans who are farmers can use a special logo to promote their products. The logo is a combination of the "Virginia Grown" label and the national "Homegrown by Heroes" logo. The state label has been used by farmers for 15 years to advertise locally-grown produce and products; the other logo "is the official farmer veteran brand image developed in 2013 by the national Farmer Veteran Coalition," reports the Bristol Herald Courier. Gov. Terry McAuliffe unveiled the joint logo July 26. Several states, including Arkansas and Kentucky, have also developed joint logos in the past few years.

Army Col. (Ret.) John Fant, a retired cattle rancher, is president of the new Virginia chapter of FVC. He says the logo may help encourage more young veterans to get started in farming. "From a food security perspective, the average age of a Virginia farmer is 58½ years. So as current farmers transition into retirement, we need to replace them," he says. "We think many veterans have the specific skill set to do that, and this marketing tool can help them. Anyone who’s ever sold something knows you can have a great product, but if you can’t sell, you won’t succeed."

Farmers who want to use the logo must be certified as former military personnel through FVC. The first training program for interested farmers will be Oct. 27 and 28 at Hudson Heritage Farms in Halifax County. For more information contact Rebekah Slabach of Virginia Cooperative Extension at rslabach@vt.edu or (434) 476-2147.

Rural Alabama hospital closes, highlighting struggles of rural hospitals nationwide

On Sept. 1 a hospital serving some of Alabama's poorest counties will close its doors, making it the seventh rural Alabama hospital to close in eight years. The J. Paul Jones Hospital in Camden had been open for 60 years, Christopher Harress reports for Alabama.com. That puts Alabama third on the list of states with most rural hospital closures. Georgia is in second place with six closures and Texas is in first place.

Rural hospitals all over the country are struggling, partly because many rural residents rely on Medicaid, but Medicaid is not a big money maker for hospitals. That's especially true in Alabama, where a complex federal formula gives hospitals less reimbursement for treating Medicaid patients than almost any other state. Republicans in Congress want to cut Medicaid, which may worsen the problem. Hospitals that remain open in rural areas are coping by cutting back on expensive specialized services such as obstetrics, as these maps show:

Alabama.com graphic

"Alabama is without doubt facing a rural health crisis," says Jim Carnes, policy director at Alabama Arise, a non-profit advocate group for low-income residents. "The hospital closures, along with other medical facilities, have already had and will continue to have dire consequences for residents in rural areas." Dale Quinney, executive director of the Alabama Rural Health Association, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and enhancing the health of rural Alabama citizens, told Harress that 34 of the 46 rural hospitals that report annual income were operating at a loss.

An increased rural population and better jobs that offer private insurance would help improve the issue, but barring that, an expansion of Medicaid, building hospitals with fewer beds, allowing nurse practitioners to take over routine medical care, and embracing telehealth could help. Telehealth is becoming an increasingly popular solution to rural health, but implementation in Alabama may be difficult because of two things: there is no required telehealth reimbursement law, and rural areas may not have the necessary access to broadband internet.

Experts to hold Twitter chat Thursday to discuss agricultural health and safety issues

The Rural Health Information Hub will host a Twitter chat at 2 p.m. EDT Aug. 24, to discuss "barriers to the health and safety of farmers, ranchers, and farmworkers and explore some of the innovative ways these barriers are being addressed in rural communities."

Farmers and farm workers often face danger at work because of machinery, repetitive stress injuries, and exposure to pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals. They also often have limited access to health care or health insurance. The RHIhub will chat with experts.

The chat will be about 60 minutes long and will use the hashtag #RuralHealthChat. You can follow on Twitter or use a client such as TweetChat for ease of use. Click here for a list of the participating experts and directions for how to participate.

Missouri rejects big Midwest power line

On Aug. 16 the Missouri Public Service Commission rejected a proposed 780-mile-long high-voltage power line that would carry electricity from Kansas wind farms through Missouri and Illinois to Indiana, where it would connect to a power grid serving the Eastern U.S.

The case highlights a major roadblock in making renewable energy more mainstream: "Although converting wind and sun into electricity is increasingly affordable, it can be hard to get the regulatory and legal approval needed to transmit the power from remote areas where it's produced to the places where it's most needed," David Lieb reports for the Fort Wayne, Ind., Journal Gazette. "Other large-scale renewable energy projects in the Midwest, South and West also have faced denials or delays in transmission line approvals from federal and state regulators and courts." All the other states along the proposed path had already agreed to allow the Grain Belt Express Line, which would cost $2.3 billion and be one of the nation's longest transmission lines.

High Plains Public Radio map; click on it to enlarge; for state maps click here.

This is the second time in two years the Missouri utility regulators denied a request from Clean Line Energy Partners to build the power line project through the state. The first time, in July 2015, the commission rejected the proposal because they believed it didn't benefit Missouri residents enough and would be burdensome to landowners on whose land the line would be built. Clean Line tried to fix those objections in their revamped proposal, offering more protections to affected landowners and renewable energy deals to dozens of Missouri utilities along the line that serve hundreds of thousands of customers.

Four out of the five commission members said they thought the new proposal was a good idea, but "felt compelled to vote against it because of a recent state appeals court ruling. The judges in that case said utilities must first get the consent of counties to string a power line across roads before state approval can be granted. Clean Line lacks approval from several Missouri counties where its line is opposed by local residents," Lieb reports.

The future of the project is uncertain. "The Houston-based wind energy company could appeal the denial in court. It could try to win support from counties and apply again to Missouri regulators. Or it could attempt to circumvent Missouri by seeking federal approval to build the line through the state, as it did for an Oklahoma-to-Tennessee power line after Arkansas regulators ruled against it in 2011," Lieb reports.

Journalists explore ways to serve and connect with their communities in politically polarized times

Carolyn Powers of Internews listens to Lee Bratcher, who runs The Ohio County Monitor,
an online news outlet in Western Kentucky, during a workshop Friday in Bowling Green.

By Jennifer P. Brown
Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

Community journalists who want to report stories that help build trust with readers and listeners, while also addressing political polarization, can find help from the non-profit organization Solutions Journalism, which offers free training to newsrooms.

"We didn't invent this. We basically put a structure around this idea," Carolyn Robinson told a few dozen participants at a workshop stemming from the "From Polarization to Public Sphere" study, a project of Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism. The researchers are Andrea Wenzel, a journalism professor at Temple University, and Sam Ford, an independent media consultant and research fellow at MIT who teaches at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, where Friday's workshop was held.

The researchers recommend Solutions Journalism as one approach to bridge the gap that result from political polarization.

Solutions Journalism puts problem-solving at the center of a story, Robinson explained. For example, a story about the difficulty freed prisoners have in re-entering public life would focus on successful programs and why they work, not just the failures of the system.

Robinson said news consumers complain they are overwhelmed with reports that focus on negative aspects of American life, and "We can't afford to have people tuning out." She said journalists who focus on solutions are "guide dogs" rather than "watchdogs."

Also presenting ideas at the workshop in were Jeremy Hay, co-founder of Spaceship Media, and Carolyn Powers of Internews.

Spaceship Media was established after the 2016 election. Its projects create space for people with opposing political views to have a sustained conversation. One example was a two-month discussion via a private Facebook group between 15 women who voted for Donald Trump and 15 who voted for Hillary Clinton.

Internews helps train journalists to understand their communities and get beyond stereotypical reporting. One effort is the Listening Post Collective, which gets newsrooms involved with their communities and spurs interaction with people whose stories help explain how a community works.

"From Polarization to Public Sphere" collected data from residents of Bowling Green and nearby Ohio County to begin studying new approaches for local journalists. Wenzel and Ford said they will use input from the workshop to make additional recommendations.

Jennifer P. Brown is former editor and opinion editor of the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville, Ky., and a member of the national advisory board of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.

Wisconsin starts nation's first rural residency program for obstetrician-gynecologists

The University of Wisconsin has started the nation's first rural residency program for obstetrician-gynecologists, Dr. John Torres reports for NBC News, after noting that 54 percent of rural counties lack obstetric services, up from 45 percent in 2014.

"This is a national crisis," Dr. Ellen Hartenbach, who designed the program, told Torres. "I want this program to be a blueprint for increasing training spots in the country." It tries to "recruit doctors who have already embraced rural life and who have some experience in small community hospitals," Torres reports.

Sperling's Best Places map

The first resident is Laura McDowell, practicing in Monroe, a town of 11,000 near the Illinois border. "Just because docs are leaving doesn't mean the need isn't still there," she told Torres. "Women shouldn't have to think twice about getting good, quality health care in their small, rural town."

The report aired on "NBC Nightly News" Saturday, Aug. 19, starting at 13:10 in this video.

Coal industry's decline leaves E.Ky. schools crying for help, but lawmakers focus on state pensions

Stinnett Elementary School (H-L photo by Michael Reaves)

The decline of the coal industry in Appalachian Kentucky has school districts "struggling to keep the doors open," reports Valarie Honeycutt Spears of the Lexington Herald-Leader. The industry's poor prospects have caused devaluation of unmined coal, cutting tax revenue, and "Education officials are calling on Kentucky’s General Assembly to look for new ways to fund" the coalfield districts.

“If they don’t come up with something we may survive this year. But then we will either be running in the red or we will have to shut down,” Knott County Supt. Kim King told Spears. Harold Morgan, assistant school-finance director in Leslie County, "said students in third through ninth grade have Chromebooks — laptop devices — but because of the loss of money, school officials could not afford to purchase them for kindergarten through 2nd-graders or for all 10th- through 12th-graders," Spears reports

Linda Rains, the new superintendent in Leslie County, told Spears, “It’s so scary. People in Eastern Kentucky are used to being successful by pure grit, they’ve always had to depend on their determination and grit to get the job done. That’s what we’ll continue to do. But it sure would be nice to have some funds and to give these kids the same chances that all students in Kentucky have.”

But it's a bad time to be asking for help from the legislature, which is looking for money to shore up the state's pension system, by some measures the worst-funded in the nation. Sen. Chris McDaniel, chair of the Senate Appropriations and Revenue Committee, said pension reform will have to come first. “If we don’t get pension reform there’s just no way to help them,” he told Spears.

If you're going to farm country for the eclipse, keep farmers in mind and watch for purple posts

David Cansler expects "a blizzard" of
eclipse watchers at his farm. (SF photo)

The expected rush to see Monday's solar eclipse has some farmers wary. "You can only get so many people down a two-lane road," Terena Bell writes for Successful Farming from Cerulean, Ky., which will be the point of greatest eclipse, where the moon covers the sun most fully, at about 1:25 p.m. CDT.

"In West Kentucky tobacco country, late August is cutting season," Bell reports. "Inability to get in and out limits how many wagons you can move from field to barn and back, which could leave crops to burn in the fields, a concern county Magistrate Mark Wells voiced at a recent town hall."

David Cansler, who with relatives owns the farm with the greatest-eclipse point, predicts "a blizzard in August . . . They're just going to have to shut everything down." Christian County Judge-Executive Steve Tribble said, "you could have some crops destroyed" by people parking vehicles.

Purple posts in Maine and other
states mean "No Trespassing"

Five states along the path of totality have "purple post" laws, which ban parking where fence posts are painted purple: Illinois, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, and North Carolina, Bell reports. However, many visitors "are not going to know what a purple post means," said Jessica Hahn, the Farm Bureau manager in Jackson County, Illinois, which will have the point of greatest eclipse duration, where the moon will cover the sun for the longest time: one-tenth of a second longer than on Cansler's farm. Here's a screenshot of part of an interactive map from NASA:

Purple marker is where eclipse will last longest, 2 minutes and 40.2 seconds. Green marker shows where moon will cover sun most fully, but for 0.1 second less. Blue lines show bounds of totality, the length of which increases rapidly as you move inward; it will last 2:20 in Paducah, 1:48 in Cape Girardeau, Mo., and 47 seconds in Central City, Ky.

Dicamba drift damages more than 3 million acres of soybeans, leaves farmers' planting plans uncertain

Illinois farmer Jeremy Wolf inspects damage
from dicamba. (DTN photo by Pam Smith)

The number of soybean acres damaged by drift of a new form of Monsanto's dicamba herbicide has surpassed 3 million, according to estimates by state agriculture agencies for weed expert Kevin Bradley at the University of Missouri, who cautions, "We will likely not know the extent of dicamba damage until the end of the season."

Bradley issued maps showing the number of acres estimated to be damaged in each state, and the number of damage investigations in those and other states:

The dicamba debacle has left many farmers uncertain about what seeds to book for next year," reports Pam Smith, crop technology editor for DTN/The Progressive Farmer. Homer, Ill., farmer Jeremy Wolf, half of whose beans were damaged, told her, "My entire summer has been consumed by trying to determine exactly how my beans got damaged and how to respond to that. I've seriously considered planting all corn next year. I do not want to go through another year like this."

Texas legislators let citizens vote on whether cities in large counties can annex rural areas

Gov. Greg Abbott speaks to the special session.
(USA Today photo by John Moritz)

The Texas state legislature ended an almost month-long special session on Aug. 15. For Gov. Greg Abbott, it was a mixed bag. He said the session was necessary because some state agencies would be forced to close unless the legislature passed certain laws. But Abbott had also included a 20-item agenda with a wide-ranging list of issues. His signature property tax reform bill did not pass, along with the transgender bathroom bill, the private school voucher bill, and the bill to defund Planned Parenthood. "The list of achievements included the must-pass "sunset" bills that will keep some state agencies from closing as well as proposals to crack down on mail-in ballot fraud, extend the life of maternal mortality task force, reform the municipal annexation process, limit local ordinance regulating trees and impose new restrictions on abortion," Morgan Smith and Patrick Svitek report for The Texas Tribune.

One controversial item that passed would allow Texans to vote on "whether cities in large counties can annex areas outside of their limits, Alex Samuels and Shannon Najmabadi report for the Tribune. Many opponents of the bill believe the state government is trying to force state control of issues that should be left to local communities.

Poor children growing up in rural areas are more likely to marry young

A new study says that where you grow up has a big impact on when you're likely to marry. The findings were part of a larger study of income tax records by Stanford University economist Raj Chetty and Harvard University economist Nathaniel Hendren. They studied how growing up in different counties affected poor children. "In general, the longer a child spends growing up in a rural community, the more likely he or she is to be married at age 26. Poor children who grow up in nine out of ten rural counties will marry at rates above the national average at age 26," Bill Bishop reports for The Daily Yonder. The study also found that children who grow up in rural areas are more likely to make a higher income than average at the age of 26.

Daily Yonder graphic

Both future income and marriage rates are partially determined by what Chetty and Hendren called "neighborhood effects", which means the general characteristics of neighborhoods that can influence children for better or worse. Rural areas tend to be less segregated, have greater community involvement from churches and civic organizations, lower crime rates, higher voting rates, and better schools. Rural young people are especially more likely to marry young in communities with more two-parent families and higher church attendance. There are political differences between rural and urban counties as well. "Clinton won the counties with neighborhood effects that result in lower than average marriage rates, 59% to 36%. Trump won the half of the country living in communities where children from poor families are more likely to marry by 56% to 37%," Bishop reports.

But the rural areas that promote earlier marriage and better income tend to be only incubators because there are far fewer high-earning jobs available. In other words, when those rural children grow up, they're likely to need to take their spouse and move to a more urban area that has more jobs available. Chetty and Hendren say they hope families will consider moving their children to rural areas to increase opportunity. "And governments and nonprofits could make investments in communities that would enhance those neighborhood effects that have been shown to be so beneficial, such as reducing segregation and increasing social capital," Bishop writes.

NAFTA renegotiations begin; farmers hold breath

Officials from the U.S., Mexico and Canada began renegotiations Aug. 16 on the North America Free Trade Agreement, a 1994 treaty that "eliminated tariffs on most goods traded among the three countries and imposed other rules in areas like intellectual property and labor standards," Danielle Kurtzleben reports for NPR.

The U.S.-Canada negotiations don't seem too contentious thus far. "Canadian companies essentially want more access to American government and construction contracts," Andrew Soergel reports for U.S. News and World Report, though they are seeking several provisions on issues that may be unpopular with the Trump administration, such as gender rights and labor and environmental standards. But the atmosphere surrounding the U.S.-Mexico negotiations has been heating up for months. Those negotiations could have a major impact on the U.S. economy, as well as the state economies of the four states that share a border with Mexico, Christopher Wilson reports for Forbes. Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California sell 55 percent of all U.S. exports to Mexico. "They facilitate an even greater portion, providing warehousing, transportation and other services for most of the 80 percent of all U.S.-Mexico trade that crosses the land border. If NAFTA were to fall apart, it would be a disaster for the thousands of companies and more than a million jobs along the border that depend on cross-border trade and tourism," reports Wilson.

The current administration has a markedly skeptical view of NAFTA. President Trump criticized it in his campaign, calling it the "worst deal ever made in the history of the world." And U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who is representing the U.S. during the NAFTA negotiations, says he shares Trump's views on NAFTA and promises big changes in the trade deal to "to support higher-paying jobs in the United States and to grow the U.S. economy," Kurtzleben reports. He said the trade deal had "fundamentally failed many, many Americans and needs major improvement," but acknowledged that it had benefitted farmers and ranchers who were able to sell their goods in Canada and Mexico, Kurtzleben reports.

U.S. corn farmers have especially benefited from NAFTA, since they were able to flood the Mexican markets with cheap, U.S. government-subsidized corn, Kirk Semple reports for The New York Times. Though corn is a small fraction of the overall $525 billion in trade between the two countries, it's of huge importance to Midwestern farmers, and Mexico has used it as a symbol of Mexico's dependence on the U.S. In response to Trump's initial threats to overhaul NAFTA completely, Mexico began exploring buying their corn elsewhere and increasing domestic production. Corn farmers, who live in areas that voted heavily for Trump, were shaken by the prospect of losing Mexico as a foreign market. Philip Gordon, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat on his Saline, Mich., farm, told Semple, "If we lose Mexico as a customer, it will be absolutely devastating to the ag economy."

The Department of Agriculture says that "Mexico is not only the leading destination of American corn, but it also imports more dairy products, poultry and wheat from the United States than any other nation, and is one of the top importers of American pork, soybeans and beef," Semple reports. Supply chains for automobiles and other industries criss-cross the U.S.-Mexico border as well; some cars cross the border several times in the course of being manufactured, and eliminating the tariffs in such complicated situations has been a boon to automotive manufacturers.