Ever since Grace Kennedy met Quinn in May, the teenager’s goal has been to fatten the Hereford calf up — but not too much, not if she wants to auction it off at this month’s National Western Stock Show in Denver.
Quinn, who is about a year-and-a-half old, weighed 460 pounds when Grace won the animal from the Stock Show’s Catch-A-Calf program. The calf weighed about 1,250 pounds as of early December.
“They just want a good-looking carcass,” Grace, who lives just outside of Morrison, said of the judges who will determine how well she did in raising Quinn for beef.
The 17-year-old is just one of Colorado’s 4-H youth members who will attend the Stock Show in hopes of making a sale. Teenagers from across the state will come to Denver to auction off cattle, goats and other livestock, with the goal of earning money for college, first cars or to reinvest in their farming endeavors.
4-H student Grace Kennedy, 17, tries to convince her one-year-old steer, Quinn, to continue his walk around the property on Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025, in Morrison, Colo. (Photo by Timothy Hurst/The Denver Post)
The Stock Show began Saturday and will run through Jan. 25.
“Being from Colorado, I feel like it would be really cool making a sale in a national show in your state,” 15-year-old Ty Weathers said.
Ty, who lives on a cattle ranch outside of Yuma in northeastern Colorado, has been showing cows since he was about 7 years old. He will show a steer named Theodore at the Stock Show this year, and he hopes to sell the animal to earn money for a car.
Unlike Grace, who received Quinn through the Catch-A-Calf program, which requires participants to sell their calves during the Stock Show, there’s no guarantee Ty will make a sale.
“I like winning,” Ty said, referring to his hope he’ll be able to auction Theodore off for the highest price. “I’ve grown up in it, so it’s just a part of life.”
Zemery Weber, who lives in Gill in Weld County, started showing goats when she was 8 years old to earn money, but this is her first time doing so at the Stock Show.
“I got a goat this year that seems to be pretty good,” the 14-year-old said. “I’m excited, but I’m also nervous because it’s my first time.”
Zemery will show a goat named Nemo. She plans to save part of the money she earns from selling the goat for meat for her first car and college.
Zemery Weber, 14, leads her goat, Nemo, outside of a barn at her mother’s home near Gill, Colo., on Dec. 15, 2025. Weber plans to show the goats at the National Western Stock Show. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
“It has helped me become the person that I am,” Zemery said of showing goats. “It is a very good experience for students to have and kids to have to learn responsibility and reliability.”
Showing animals is just one way students can participate in the Stock Show.
In the Front Range, county 4-H programs — which have youth participate in agricultural, STEM and other projects — also put on a field trip for elementary school students to visit the show so they can learn about animals and where their food comes from, said Josey Pukrop, a 4-H youth development specialist with the Colorado State University Extension in Jefferson County.
Last year, about 12,000 children participated in the field trip, she said.
4-H has been operating nationally for more than 120 years, through it, children participate in programs that include showing livestock, gardening and building robots. The youth program is largely funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, according to the agency’s website.
More than 100,000 Colorado students participate in 4-H via community clubs and other programming, said Michael Compton, the state 4-H program director at the CSU Extension.
Like Ty, Grace’s family is in the cattle business, but it wasn’t until the pandemic that she began to take an interest and dream of owning her own ranch someday.
Grace’s foray into cows began when the dance studio she attended closed because of COVID-19 in 2020. Grace, in search of a new hobby, got into horses and trail riding with her father.
4-H student Grace Kennedy, 17, leads her one-year-old steer, Quinn, around the property as training for being shown at the National Western Stock Show next month, on Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025, in Morrison, Colo. (Photo by Timothy Hurst/The Denver Post)
Soon after, she took an interest in cows and worked on her grandfather’s cattle ranch in South Dakota during the summer. Grace’s parents have their own herd near Morrison, and the teenager has started breeding and raising her own cattle.
“Animals are the coolest things,” Grace said. “They are here to teach us something, to teach us life qualities. They’re peaceful.”
Grace has been a member of 4-H for six years, showing cattle for four.
She is participating in the Stock Show’s Catch-A-Calf program, which loaned her a calf so she can learn cattle management.
The Catch-A-Calf program started in 1935 and is open to teens ages 14 to 18 who live in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and Wyoming, according to the Stock Show’s website.
“Sometimes it’s kids that haven’t raised these animals before,” Pukrop said.
Zemery Weber, 14, cleans the pens for her goats, Theo, left, and Nemo, in a barn at her mother’s home near Gill, Colo., on Dec. 15, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Teens participating in the program have to rope a calf, feed it and return the cow to the next Stock Show to be judged on showmanship and carcass quality. The program’s Grand and Reserve Grand Champions get to sell their steers at an auction held on the final Friday of the Stock Show, according to the website.
The program is about “taking accountability and staying on track with your animal and really learning what goes behind their feed and all the math,” said Miranda Leatherman, a 15-year-old participant from Arvada.
By participating in the Catch-A-Calf program, Grace and Miranda had to send monthly reports to sponsors on their steers’ progress and track their weight and how much they are fed.
Grace doesn’t know how much Quinn will sell for, but if she doesn’t win and make it to auction, the calf will still be sold — just for a lower price.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have a choice,” she said.
Grace plans to use any earnings from Quinn’s sale to cover expenses of his upkeep, such as grain and veterinary bills. Anything left over is profit, she said.
“It was a cool opportunity,” she said. “It was a way to get more involved. It was a great way to strengthen this project I have been doing.”
For the past few months, Emmanuel Porter-Taylor and other young men housed at Colorado’s Youthful Offender System detention facility in Pueblo have complained to their parents about being hungry.
Meal portions seem to be getting smaller and smaller. The canteen, where incarcerated teens and young adults can buy snacks and other food items, is only reserved for those who have achieved higher privilege levels based on good behavior.
Porter-Taylor lost 20 to 30 pounds in recent weeks, his mother told The Denver Post. His eyes began to yellow. He couldn’t keep water down. Staff gave him Tylenol and told him to sleep, his mother, Ivory Taylor, said in an interview.
“Mom,” his mother said he told her last week, “I think they’re trying to kill me.”
The 22-year-old ended up in the hospital, where doctors concluded that his condition was caused by malnutrition, according to his family. When Porter-Taylor was stable, the hospital released him back to the detention center with a referral to see a kidney specialist as soon as possible. Doctors also said he needed to double his daily food intake, the family said.
Administrators at the state’s facility for young violent offenders said he’d have to wait six months to see a specialist, the family said. He was not given additional food.
On Sunday, Porter-Taylor was rushed back to the hospital, suffering from full renal failure, according to a letter sent by a juvenile justice advocate to a state senator. He was flown the following day from Pueblo to a Denver hospital.
His family, though, says they have no idea how he’s doing because the Colorado Department of Corrections reported they couldn’t find his “release of information” document, emails show. The family knows they filled it out.
“I want him to pay his debts and get out alive,” Taylor said of her son, who isn’t eligible for parole for two more years. “I don’t want to bury my 22-year-old kid.”
Parents say they’re worried their kids could be next. Ten mothers told The Post this week that they have watched their boys lose concerning amounts of weight over the past few months, as they complain about the lack of sufficient food at the 256-bed facility. Some have yellowing in their eyes. Others have fainted, become dizzy or found blood in their stool.
These accounts led a juvenile justice organization, the National Center for Youth Law, to sound the alarm and alert Colorado lawmakers and state corrections officials.
“They don’t even treat prisoners of war like this,” said one of the mothers. All but Taylor spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity because they fear reprisal against their children.
A spokesperson with the Department of Corrections, which runs the Pueblo facility, declined to provide information on Porter-Taylor’s condition, citing federal and state privacy laws.
The department has gradually decreased the calorie count provided to those housed in the YOS detention facility in recent years to align with federal guidelines, said Alondra Gonzalez, a DOC spokesperson. Food is never withheld as a punitive measure, she said.
“All individuals in our custody receive appropriate food and medical care,” she wrote in a statement provided to The Post on Friday evening.
‘We hardly get anything’
The Colorado legislature established the Youthful Offender System, known as YOS, in 1993 in response to Denver’s “summer of violence,” a period marked by heightened youth homicides. Senate Bill 93S-009 provided the state with a new “middle tier” sentencing option, where certain youth offenders could be sentenced as adults directly into YOS.
These individuals “serve their sentence in a controlled and regimented environment that affirms dignity of self and others, promotes values of work and self-discipline, and develops useful skills and abilities through enriched programming,” corrections officials said in the 2024 YOS annual report.
The facility, which only houses violent offenders, was originally designed for those between the ages of 14 and 17 at the time of their offense, though a 2009 bill expanded the eligibility criteria to include 18- and 19-year-olds. Sentences cannot be shorter than two years and cannot exceed six years.
YOS touts a three-level model, designed to reward positive behavior. At level 3, individuals get unlimited visits and phone calls, video games, movies and free weights. They can also buy items such as deodorant or snacks from the canteen.
But those at lower levels cannot purchase food from the canteen, nor can they receive food packages from their family.
That leaves them reliant on prison meals that keep getting smaller and smaller, the parents who spoke to The Post said. Portions began to shrink a few months ago, these mothers said. One said entrees could fit in the palm of their hand.
Breakfasts have included an English muffin and a sausage. Lunch could be beans with two tortillas. Dinner might consist of four mini corndogs and a cup of macaroni and cheese.
“You feed our dog more than what we get on our plate,” another parent recounted their teen telling them this week. “We hardly get anything.”
YOS menus provided to The Post by the Department of Corrections show a variety of different meals. One recent lunch included one slice of cheese pizza, a cup of tossed green salad with olives and croutons, one cup of canned fruit and one cup of punch. A recent dinner consisted of one cup of spinach lasagna, salad, a slice of Texas toast and peach crisp.
Parents say their children’s weight loss has been extreme and noticeable. Many lost as many as 30 pounds in less than two months.
Without the ability to send food through the mail or use their canteen funds, parents have been forced to feed their children as much as they can during in-person visits. That means relying on whatever the vending machine in the lobby has left. Sometimes, it’s nearly bare.
“When you see a dog on the street that hasn’t eaten in a week,” a third mother told The Post, “that’s what he looked like.”
One individual who was incarcerated at YOS until last month said he relied on the canteen to supplement their meals. Without it, “it would have been tough,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they’re still on probation and fear reprisal. Sometimes, those on higher levels would try and sneak food to their lower-level friends, he said, but they risked being demoted themselves.
Recently, a group of 12 young people wrote a letter to leadership requesting more food, among other changes, one parent said. The boy who wrote the letter got put in solitary confinement, they said.
Gonzalez, the DOC spokesperson, said the level system is a “standard correctional practice to promote positive behavior,” but that meals are never withheld as a punitive measure. The DOC is “reviewing the current phases to determine whether any adjustments are necessary.”
Last month, another mother wrote a letter to the DOC, pleading with leadership to address the food shortage and punitive commissary policy.
“Adequate nutrition is not a privilege,” this woman wrote in the letter, which was reviewed by The Post. “It is a fundamental necessity for health and rehabilitation.”
The mother said DOC never replied.
In response to inquiries from state Sen. Judy Amabile this week, a corrections official acknowledged that YOS did “reduce caloric intake” for inmates due to the agency’s dieticians and the Department of Human Services “agreeing that the average (body mass index) of YOS offenders was higher than what was considered healthy within the age group.”
The average age of YOS offenders has risen over time, which means less caloric needs, Kayla Shock, the DOC’s legislative liaison, said in an email reviewed by The Post. If an individual requires additional calories, they will be assessed by the medical provider and provided an additional snack, she wrote.
YOS data shows the average age inside the facility has increased to 19.1 years old in 2024 from 16.8 years old in 2007.
During fiscal year 2022-2023, males in YOS received 3,200 calories per day, while females received 2,600 calories, Gonzalez said. Beginning in 2024-2025, those numbers dropped to 2,700 calories for men and 2,200 for women.
Gonzalez said the agency changed its food allotments to align with federal standards updated every five years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. When these updates occur, she said, the state’s team of registered dietitians reviews the changes to ensure their menus are up to date.
Amabile, a Boulder Democrat who has worked on juvenile justice bills, called the calorie reduction “surprising.”
“If they’re cutting the number of calories that kids get every day — which includes people of different sizes — I would want to know: Is that healthier for them or is that a cost-cutting measure?” she said.
‘I don’t know if my son’s alive’
Porter-Taylor’s biological mother and the woman who had been his legal guardian say they haven’t been able to get updates on their son’s condition.
In an email, a health services administrator told Taylor that “we don’t have anyone designated as the point of contact to release medical information.”
Both Taylor and his former legal guardian, who has the power of attorney and considers him her son, remember these documents being filled out.
“Now it’s been six days since this surgery and I haven’t heard from my son,” Taylor said, “I don’t know if my son’s alive or not.”
If the details surrounding Porter-Taylor’s malnutrition are true, then this facility “now more closely resembles a concentration camp,” Dana Walters Flores, senior program manager for the National Center for Youth Law, wrote in a letter to Amabile this week.
“Young people paying a debt to society by serving time in a secure facility are still our sons and daughters — to turn a blind eye while youth in the custody and care of the state of Colorado are starving is unconscionable,” she wrote.
President Donald Trump’s administration returned to the Supreme Court on Monday in a push to keep full payments in the SNAP federal food aid program frozen while the government is shut down, even as some families struggled to put food on the table.
The request is the latest in a flurry of legal activity over how the program that helps 42 million Americans buy groceries should proceed during the historic U.S. government shutdown. Lower courts have ruled that the government must keep full payments flowing, but the Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to keep them frozen for now.
The high court is expected to rule Tuesday.
The seesawing rulings so far have created a situation where beneficiaries in some states, including Hawaii and New Jersey, have received their full monthly allocations and those in others, such as Nebraska and West Virginia, have seen nothing.
Brandi Johnson, 48, of St. Louis, said she’s struggling to make the $20 she has left in her SNAP account stretch. Johnson said she has been skipping meals the past two weeks to make sure her three teenage children have something to eat. She is also helping care for her infant granddaughter, who has food allergies, and her 80-year-old mother.
She said food pantries have offered little help in recent days. Many require patrons to live in a certain ZIP code or are dedicated to helping the elderly first.
“I think about it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, literally,” Johnson said. “Because you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to eat.”
Millions receive aid while others wait
The Trump administration argued that lower court orders requiring the full funding of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program wrongly affect ongoing negotiations in Congress about ending the shutdown. Supreme Court Solicitor General D. John Sauer called the funding lapse tragic, but said judges shouldn’t be deciding how to handle it.
The Senate Monday passed a compromise funding package that would end the government shutdown and refill SNAP funds. It now goes to the House for consideration.
Trump’s administration initially said SNAP benefits would not be available in November because of the shutdown. After some states and nonprofit groups sued, judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ruled the administration could not skip November’s benefits entirely.
The administration then said it would use an emergency reserve fund to provide 65% of the maximum monthly benefit. On Thursday, Rhode Island-based U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell said that wasn’t good enough, and ordered full funding for SNAP benefits by Friday.
Some states acted quickly to direct their EBT vendors to disburse full monthly benefits to SNAP recipients. Millions of people in at least a dozen states — all with Democratic governors — received the full amount to buy groceries before Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson put McConnell’s order on hold Friday night, pending further deliberation by an appeals court.
Delays cause complications for some beneficiaries
Millions more people still have not received SNAP payments for November, because their states were waiting on guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP. Several states have made partial payments, including Texas, where officials said money was going on cards for some beneficiaries Monday.
“Continued delays deepen suffering for children, seniors, and working families, and force nonprofits to shoulder an even heavier burden,” Diane Yentel, President and CEO, National Council of Nonprofits, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in a statement Monday. “If basic decency and humanity don’t compel the administration to assure food security for all Americans, then multiple federal court judges finding its actions unlawful must.”
Trump’s administration has argued that the judicial order to provide full benefits violates the Constitution by infringing on the spending power of the legislative and executive branches.
Wisconsin, which was among the first to load full benefits after McConnell’s order, had its federal reimbursement frozen. The state’s SNAP account could be depleted as soon as Monday, leaving no money to reimburse stores that sell food to SNAP recipients, according to a court filing.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said Monday that some cardholders have been turned away by stores concerned that they won’t be reimbursed — something she called to stop.
New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin said Trump was fighting “for the right to starve Americans.”
“It’s the most heinous thing I’ve ever seen in public life,” he said.
The latest rulings keep payments on hold, at least for now
States administering SNAP payments continue to face uncertainty over whether they can — and should — provide full monthly benefits during the ongoing legal battles.
The Trump administration over the weekend demanded that states “undo” full benefits that were paid during a one-day window after a federal judge ordered full funding and before a Supreme Court justice paused that order.
A federal appeals court in Boston left the full benefits order in place late Sunday, though the Supreme Court order ensures the government won’t have to pay out for at least 48 hours.
“The record here shows that the government sat on its hands for nearly a month, unprepared to make partial payments, while people who rely on SNAP received no benefits a week into November and counting,” Judge Julie Rikleman of the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals wrote.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, presiding over a case filed in Boston by Democratic state officials, on Monday paused the USDA’s request from Saturday that states “immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits.”
In a hearing later that Monday, Talwani said that communication to states was confusing, especially because the threat came just a day after USDA sent letters to states saying SNAP would be paid in full.
Federal government lawyer Tyler Becker said the order was only intended for states to receive the full amount of SNAP benefits, and “had nothing to do with beneficiaries.”
Talwani said she would issue a full order soon.
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Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Margery Beck in Omaha, Nebraska; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Kimberlee Kruesi in Providence, Rhode Island; Nicholas Riccardi in Denver; and Stephen Groves and Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
BOSTON, Massachusetts: Two federal judges ruled on October 31 that President Donald Trump’s administration cannot halt food assistance for millions of Americans during the ongoing government shutdown. They ordered the government to rely on existing contingency funds to keep benefits flowing.
The rulings, issued in federal courts in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, came in response to separate lawsuits challenging the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s plan that stopped Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits on November 1. SNAP, also known as food stamps, helps low-income households afford groceries. For weeks, Democrats and Republicans in Congress have blamed each other for the shutdown, which has put SNAP payments at risk.
It remains uncertain whether the decisions guarantee that benefits will be issued. Both judges asked the administration to update them on November 3 on how it will follow the orders.
Trump posted on social media that the federal government may lack legal authority to distribute SNAP funds during a shutdown. He said administration lawyers are asking courts for guidance on how to restore payments quickly. “If we are given the appropriate legal direction by the Court, it will BE MY HONOR to provide the funding,” he wrote.
SNAP benefits go to households earning less than 130 percent of the federal poverty level. In many states, that currently means about US$1,632 per month for a single person or $2,215 for two people. While the federal government funds the program, states handle daily operations and distribute monthly payments.
According to the USDA, it costs between $8.5 and $9 billion per month to fully fund SNAP for the roughly 42 million Americans who rely on it. The administration has argued that the agency has no authority to spend that money during the shutdown, which began on October 1, until Congress approves new funding.
However, U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Providence said the administration’s refusal to use $5.25 billion in available contingency funds was arbitrary and would cause real harm to families worried about access to food. He ordered that those funds be distributed as soon as possible and said the agency should also consider tapping a separate account that holds about $23 billion if needed.
Minutes earlier, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston reached a similar conclusion. Her ruling came in a case brought by 25 Democratic-led states and Washington, D.C. She said the suspension of benefits was based on a mistaken belief that the contingency funds could not legally be used during a shutdown.
The USDA had previously stated that contingency money could keep benefits going if Congress failed to pass a budget. But last week, the agency changed its position and warned that “the well has run dry,” triggering the legal challenges.
Despite administration claims that the payment systems might struggle or that partial benefits would be too difficult to distribute, both judges stressed that the government has the authority and responsibility to fully fund SNAP during the shutdown.
Nearly 2 million Illinoisans will be cut off from food stamps next month if the federal government remains shut down, threatening “a vital lifeline to nutrition,” the Illinois Department of Human Services announced this week.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture informed states that it won’t fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP or food stamps, starting Nov. 1 unless there’s an end to the weeks-long government shutdown, IDHS said in a Thursday news release.
SNAP provides low-income people with prepaid cards that they can use to purchase groceries. Benefits have continued through October.
Illinois would lose the $350 million it administers to 1.9 million recipients across the state. The state “does not have the budgetary ability to backfill these critical resources,” IDHS said.
“SNAP is a proven, time-tested program, one that protects children and families from going hungry,” said Dulce M. Quintero, IDHS Secretary. “The federal government needs to ensure families receive their benefits on November 1, so their livelihoods are not disrupted.”
Gov. JB Pritzker pointed the finger at President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans who he said are jeopardizing food assistance that goes to working families because they “want to score political points and refuse to reach a deal that reopens the federal government.”
“Why is it that they can find the money during a shutdown to pay their masked federal agents wreaking havoc in our communities but not help people in need put food on the table,” Pritzker said in a statement. “Trump promised to lower costs but that’s not happening — the very least they could do is preserve SNAP access for low-income families struggling to feed their kids.”
“One child going hungry in America is one too many — this used to be a value we could all agree upon,” Pritzker added. “The Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans need to do their damn job and start delivering for the American people.”
The Greater Chicago Food Depository said earlier this month that it is “gravely concerned that a prolonged shutdown could significantly increase hunger and hardship for millions across the U.S.” The longer the shutdown goes on, the greater the risk for the millions who rely on public food assistance, the statement said.
“We continue to urge elected leaders to reopen the government and fund critical safety net programs that address poverty and hunger,” the food depository said. Food pantries across Chicago have reported an “extraordinary demand” for food assistance in recent years as food prices climbed.
Across Illinois, about 45% of SNAP benefits go to households with children, and 44% have a person with a disability, according to IDHS. The average monthly SNAP benefit is $370, the department said.
Rob Karr, president and CEO of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, said a disruption in SNAP benefits could also impact grocers who are “already struggling to keep their doors open.”
“The elimination of this vital support puts entire communities at risk of losing access to fresh and healthy food,” Karr said.
The ongoing shutdown — which is primarily centered around debate on health care spending — began Oct. 1 and currently has no end in sight. Many federal workers in Illinois have been furloughed and Chicago’s federal court operations have been disrupted, among other impacts.
Besides the shutdown, other changes could also soon cut access to SNAP. Trump signed into law earlier this year a sweeping Republican domestic package that expanded work requirements for SNAP benefits to previously exempt groups such as adults ages 55 to 64.
WASHINGTON, D.C.: The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will invest up to US$750 million to construct a new production facility in Texas designed to breed sterile flies as a weapon against the New World screwworm, a parasitic pest that threatens livestock by literally eating animals alive.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced the plan this week, warning that the insect’s advance from Mexico toward the U.S. border has raised serious concerns about a potential outbreak.
The project reflects growing alarm within the cattle industry, which fears that the return of screwworm could devastate herds and push already record-high beef prices even higher by tightening supplies.
“It could truly crush the cattle industry,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said during a joint press conference with Rollins. Texas, the nation’s largest cattle-producing state, has not seen screwworm infestations in decades, thanks to a landmark eradication program in the 20th century that relied on aerial releases of sterile flies.
The new plant, planned for Edinburg, Texas, will operate alongside a previously announced dispersal center at Moore Air Base. Once completed, it will be capable of producing 300 million sterile screwworm flies each week, Rollins said. When released, the sterile flies overwhelm wild populations by disrupting reproduction, eventually collapsing infestations. While Rollins did not give an opening date, she has previously noted that such a facility typically requires two to three years to build.
To bridge the gap until the Texas facility comes online, the USDA will allocate another $100 million to develop new screwworm-fighting technologies and to expand mounted patrols along the southern border, where wildlife could carry the pest into U.S. territory. The agency has already suspended imports of Mexican cattle as of July, further tightening domestic supplies that are already at historically low levels. “Those ports don’t open until we begin to push the screwworm back,” Rollins emphasized.
The U.S. is also working with regional partners. A sterile fly production plant in Mexico is scheduled to open next year, while an existing facility in Panama breeds about 100 million sterile flies per week. According to USDA estimates, as many as 500 million sterile flies must be released each week to drive the screwworm southward and prevent it from re-establishing itself in North America.
“This is not just a Texas problem—it’s a national concern,” Rollins said. “All Americans should be concerned.”
Boar’s Head, the deli meat company at the center of a deadly listeria food poisoning outbreak, is being scrutinized by law enforcement officials, the U.S. Agriculture Department disclosed in response to government records requests.
Officials with USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service refused to share documents regarding the agency’s inspections and enforcement at the Boar’s Head plant in Jarratt, Virginia, plus inspection reports from eight other company factories across the U.S.
The records — which FSIS acknowledged include dozens of pages of documentation — were withheld because they were compiled “for a law enforcement purpose, which includes both civil and criminal statutes,” according to a letter sent Friday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests submitted by The Associated Press. Releasing the records could “interfere with” and “hinder” the government’s investigation, the letter said.
The AP asked for records regarding the listeria outbreak that, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has killed 10 people and sickened at least 50 in 19 states since May. Listeria bacteria were initially detected in samples of Boar’s Head liverwurst and later traced to illnesses in people.
Previously released records revealed problems including mold, insects, dripping water and meat and fat residue on walls, floors and equipment dating back at least two years. Boar’s Head earlier recalled more than 7 million pounds of deli meat distributed to stores across the country. This month, the Sarasota, Florida-based company said it has closed the Virginia plant and permanently stopped making liverwurst.
Boar’s Head is facing several lawsuits filed by victims and their families.
FSIS officials did not respond to AP’s emails seeking additional comment about the records. Justice Department officials declined to comment on potential legal actions against Boar’s Head.
This week, Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Rep. Rosa DeLauro called on the Agriculture and Justice departments to “work closely” to determine whether to bring criminal charges against Boar’s Head in connection with the crisis. In response, USDA’s own internal investigators are reviewing the agency’s work and will decide by the end of the year whether to open an inquiry, according to Blumenthal’s office.
Past food poisoning outbreaks have resulted in criminal and civil penalties.
In 2020, Chipotle agreed to pay a record $25 million to resolve criminal charges over tainted food that sickened more than 1,100 people in outbreaks between 2015 and 2018. In 2015, former Peanut Corporation of America executive Stewart Parnell was sentenced to 28 years in prison after an outbreak of salmonella in his company’s peanut butter killed nine people and sickened more than 700.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Wisconsin health officials initiated a recall of eggs following an outbreak of salmonella infections among 65 people in nine states — including Colorado — that originated on a Wisconsin farm.
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services said in a statement Friday that among those infected by salmonella are 42 people in Wisconsin, where the eggs are believed to have been sold.
“The eggs were distributed in Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan through retail stores and food service distributors,” the department said. “The recall includes all egg types such as conventional cage-free, organic, and non-GMO, carton sizes, and expiration dates in containers labeled with ‘Milo’s Poultry Farms’ or ‘Tony’s Fresh Market.’”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed in a statement on its website that 65 people in nine states were infected by a strain of salmonella, with 24 hospitalizations and no deaths as of Friday. The states include Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Virginia, Colorado, Utah and California, the agency said.
One case has been reported in Colorado to date, according to the CDC.
The egg recall was undertaken by Milo’s Poultry Farms LLC of Bonduel, Wisconsin, the CDC said.
“Anyone who purchased the recalled eggs is advised to not eat them or cook with them and to throw them away. Restaurants should not sell or serve recalled eggs,” the Wisconsin health department said.
The department advised anyone who ate the eggs and is experiencing symptoms to contact a health care provider. Symptoms include diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever and vomiting lasting for several days, the statement said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture in July announced new measures to limit salmonella in poultry products. The proposed directive included requiring poultry companies to keep salmonella levels under a certain threshold and test for the presence of six particularly sickening forms of the bacteria, three found in turkey and three in chicken.
Bacteria exceeding the proposed standard and identification of any of the strains would prevent poultry sales and leave the products subject to recall.
The CDC estimates salmonella causes 1.35 million infections annually, most through food, and about 420 deaths. The Agriculture Department estimates there are 125,000 infections from chicken and 43,000 from turkey each year.
LAKEWOOD, Colo. — The U.S. Department of Agriculture is putting nearly $66 million toward improving roads, trails and water quality in the Rocky Mountain region, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service announced in a news release Monday.
“These investments will ensure that millions of Americans can continue to enjoy clean water, world-class recreation, and more resilient transportation infrastructure across hundreds of communities in and around national forests and grasslands,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.
Approximately $3.5 million of the total funding will go toward the Pike-San Isabel and White River National Forests in Colorado, and the Shoshone, Bighorn and Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests in Wyoming.
Another part of the funding will be allocated for restoring threatened and endangered fish and wildlife habitat, the forest service said.
$5 million will also go to the Collaborative Aquatic Restoration Program at Camp Hale in Eagle County, Colorado — a World War II era training camp.
The projects are being planned in coordination with the Ute Tribes and National Forest Foundation to improve water quality, prevent E. coli, restore passage for aquatic species, increase landscape resiliency and eliminate large amounts of sediment in drinking water systems.
When Timothy Pinnow arrived at Finlandia University as its new president last summer, he wasn’t naïve about its financial situation. It was a tiny liberal-arts college in a remote part of the country, bruised by years of budget cuts and struggling to attract students. But the board told him the institution had a balanced budget, and Pinnow thought he could help turn things around.
Pinnow had a track record of developing new programs and finding new revenue, having spent more than a decade at Colorado Mesa University, where he was most recently senior vice president for strategic initiatives. He thought that made Finlandia a good fit. He also knew the campus, having been there when he was 16 and 17 for Lutheran summer teen-leadership camps, an influential time in his life.
When he arrived last summer, Pinnow discovered that the “balanced budget” the trustees had told him about presumed a 20-percent enrollment growth at a university that had been hemorrhaging students for decades.
Pinnow dug in, started putting together partnerships with other colleges, and laid the groundwork for a few new programs that could help stabilize the institution’s finances. If everything broke right, maybe this small private university in Michigan’s rural Upper Peninsula could keep going.
Aaron Peterson for The Chronicle
Timothy Pinnow was blindsided by the news that the university he’d just been hired to lead had mortgaged all its assets to stay afloat. “There were zero reserves,” he said. “There were none. Everything was fully leveraged.”
But the new ideas wouldn’t be paying off immediately. In the meantime, the university needed some cash to keep the doors open.
Pinnow had options. The university had a house with some land, a couple of vacant lots, and a big hospital-turned-office-building Pinnow could sell. He found buyers for the land and a couple of developers interested in purchasing the former hospital.
Then, just half a year into his first presidency, Pinnow got a strange call. Finlandia’s real-estate agent shared a piece of devastating news: All that stuff the university’s leaders wanted to sell wasn’t actually theirs to sell.
When I say it’s a mess, I can’t overstate it.
Patrick O’Keefe, Finlandia’s court-appointed receiver
Buried deep in county land records — and unknown to any current Finlandia administrators — were a series of encumbrances on pretty much the entire campus that had been signed in the 1990s in a successful effort to keep it afloat then. In other words, the university had already signed over almost everything as collateral for loans.
That snuffed out any hope of a resurrection. In March, the university announced it would close at the end of the academic year. As of the end of May, all the faculty and most of the staff had been laid off. Faculty who were on nine-month contracts being paid over 12 months were notified that while the university hoped to deliver the final six paychecks owed them, there were no guarantees it would be able to. Students who wanted to continue their studies were placed at a variety of colleges across the Midwest. Arrangements were made to store student records at other universities. The lone private college in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula no longer existed.
Now, an official appointed by a Michigan court is sorting through the rubble to see what can be sold off to finish paying faculty their salaries and repay a convoluted series of loans.
“When I say it’s a mess, I can’t overstate it,” said Patrick O’Keefe, the court-appointed receiver and a former trustee at Michigan State University. “The assets are cross-collateralized. It’s a hodgepodge of bad records and financial mismanagement.”
Pinnow, still working on campus during the university’s final days, still marvels at how the institution got to this point. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “It’s crazy.”
During the late 1800s, Finnish settlers arrived in Hancock, Mich., to work in the area’s lumber and copper industries. The town, located on the Keweenaw Peninsula, which juts off the top of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula into Lake Superior, continued to grow. By the 1880s, a local pastor from the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America was becoming concerned that the Finnish culture and history of the immigrants was being lost. He formed Suomi College and Theological Seminary to help preserve that heritage, teach English, and train ministers.
The cornerstone of the first building on campus, Old Main, was laid in 1898. The building still stands, one of the properties tied up in mortgages and encumbrances. By the 1980s, Suomi had settled into a niche as a small liberal-arts college offering associate degrees to its roughly 600 students. (It began offering four-year degrees in 1996 and changed its name to Finlandia University in 2000.)
But then came 1994. Enrollment plunged by 137 students, down to 405. The next year, the slide continued, with only 340 students on campus. Nearly three decades later, it’s unclear why.
Whatever the cause, the enrollment drop hurt finances, which were already being stressed, so much that the college was unable to make payments on four bonds from the federal Department of Education. The bonds, issued in 1963, 1969, 1988, and 1990, were most likely used to help finance buildings, officials said.
The college sought, and got, a three-year moratorium on principal payments, according to land documents on file with Houghton County.
In exchange, the college agreed to not enter into any financial agreement that would use any of its property or finances as security on another loan.
The next year, 1995, the college and the Department of Education modified that agreement, allowing members of the Board of Trustees to lend $1.5 million to the college to “provide the necessary cash to balance” the operating budget, documents show. In exchange for the loan, the unnamed board members wanted mortgages on “all real estate” of the college. It appears they received the mortgages although land records aren’t completely clear.
This wasn’t the end of the college’s deal-making with the Department of Education. In 1999, the college asked for another moratorium on repayments. It got the deferral and gave up a “first and superior” mortgage on several parcels of land.
The Chronicle contacted the Education Department with questions about the deals; a spokesman acknowledged the message but did not provide any answers.
As the competing claims stacked on top of each other, it became difficult if not impossible to determine who had dibs on what in the event of financial collapse. But that didn’t stop the university from making deals.
In 2001, the institution was placed on heightened monitoring by the Department of Education. It had to obtain a new bond worth $587,455, which it secured by once again putting up unnamed assets of the university as collateral, in order to keep receiving federal funds, including student-loan revenue, documents show.
Cash from the government wasn’t enough. Audited financial statements show that administrators and board members kept trying to keep the doors open by pumping in millions in loans. That included a private investor’s loan worth more than $3.8 million at 9-percent interest. The Mission Investment Fund of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America had also extended Finlandia a $1-million line of credit, which would be paid off over the course of an academic year and then repeated the next year. This took place several times during the 2010s, financial documents show.
By 2016, a “substantial portion” of the college’s assets had been put up as collateral for operating loans, according to the university’s audited financial statements.
The board itself continued to lend the college money. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2016, unnamed board members lent the university $650,000 at 5-percent interest. The previous year, the board members lent $880,000 to the college. Some years, a portion of board-member loans were paid off, according to documents. Some years, a portion of board-member loans were forgiven.
It’s common for university board members — especially at private colleges — to financially support the institution. But that almost always comes in the form of gifts. It’s rare for them to lend money to the institutions whose finances they oversee.
Rare, but not unprecedented. Ohio Valley University borrowed at least $6.5 million from current and former board members and officers in the decade ending in 2019, as well as from family members and related companies, a Chronicle analysis found.
Board members’ lending money is shoddy management, said Armand Alacbay, chief of staff and senior vice president for strategy for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, who works with boards on governance issues.
“Self-dealing is a no-no, even if it is done in good faith,” he said. “It’s generally not a good idea to say, ‘If you look at the fine print, it’s OK.’ If you have to do that, you’ve missed the point. You can’t be a fiduciary if you don’t have independence.”
Aaron Peterson for The Chronicle
A court-appointed receiver is overseeing the auction of campus furniture and other items in hopes of being able to cover lingering payroll obligations.
By the time it closed, Finlandia was down to only two loans from the federal government. But over two decades, the university had struggled to keep up with its payments. Financial statements for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021, show the university missed payments to the Department of Education, meaning it still owed a total of $1.7 million. Interest on the loans had been accruing since 2003.
That meant the department could call in Finlandia’s loans at any time, or seize the land if the university couldn’t pay.
Finlandia’s institutional accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, has been aware of the university’s financial difficulties since at least 2012, records show. The agency put Finlandia on notice several times and required additional monitoring of its finances.
But in 2021, it informed the university that it was “no longer at risk for noncompliance” and was removing it from notice. It said the university’s faculty and staff met the required competency standards. It also said the university “continues to meet with concerns” criteria that require it to have enough resources to support “its current education programs and its plans for maintaining and strengthening their quality in the future.”
The accreditor did not reply to requests for comment.
Records paint a bleak portrait of the debt amassed over the years. By the time it closed, Finlandia owed more than $10.6 million across 12 loans, plus $275,000 more for equipment.
Philip Johnson was president for much of that period. Hired as the campus’s pastor and assistant to the president in 2006 and then hired to lead the university in 2007, Johnson served until 2022, when the board, after a no-confidence vote from the faculty and other controversy, encouraged him to resign. Johnson did not respond to messages requesting comment.
The decision by Finlandia administrators and board members to effectively sign away the campus for short-term cash was a fatal error, O’Keefe, the official appointed to oversee the dissolution, said.
“They just kept throwing more money at it,” he said. “I blame the management for that.”
Boards, he added, “need to be serious” about dealing with projected enrollment dips. As more colleges face those looming declines, O’Keefe said, Finlandia “is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Michael Nakkula, Finlandia’s board chairman, declined to comment or answer questions about the university’s closure.
With millions of dollars owed, Pinnow’s only hope for salvation was the endowment. But that had been tapped out, leaving the president with no levers to pull.
Within days, Pinnow and the board reached the hard conclusion. The school was out of money and unable to get more.
“There were zero reserves,” he said. “There were none. Everything was fully leveraged.”
On March 2, the board announced Finlandia’s closure, blaming “an unbearable debt load.”
Pinnow presided over the breaking of the news with a heavy heart. “Trying to help these folks see the end had arrived was tough,” he said.
Aaron Peterson for The Chronicle
Pinnow, still working in the university’s final days, marvels at how it got to this point. “I’ve had to make the worst decision a president can make.”
“I’ve had to make the worst decision a president can make,” he added. “I had 10 years of experience in 10 months. I’d make a good president now, but I’ll probably not get another one.” There aren’t many presidencies available for someone who’s closed a college.
As Carolyn Dekker, an associate professor of English who had been at the university since 2015, addressed a community gathering in May that felt like a funeral service, she reminisced about tight connections made with students. She also pointed out, with regret, how tight finances had worsened those students’ education. She cited water dripping into trash cans from leaks and projector bulbs that took weeks to get replaced.
“The renovations were always going to be completed next year,” she said during the ceremony.
People on campus had long been aware of the institution’s financial precarity. Faculty saw a series of reductions, including in 2020-21 when contributions to their retirement were taken away and pay cuts imposed: 5 percent for assistant professors and 10 percent for associates.
“This was absolutely a leadership failure,” Dekker told The Chronicle. “For years we had inexperienced leaders who made bad decisions. This year we finally assembled the people who could have made a difference, but they didn’t have the opportunity.”
Two days after the members of Finlandia’s final graduating class received their diplomas, a letter arrived in faculty and staff mailboxes that destroyed any misconceptions about how bleak the university’s finances were.
After a couple of paragraphs reminding the employees to be out of their offices by May 12, O’Keefe, the court-appointed receiver, cut right to the point: Finlandia didn’t have enough cash to finish paying what was owed to faculty members.
“We intend to compensate all staff for the work and benefits earned,” the letter from O’Keefe said. However, Finlandia was “insolvent” and any payouts for salary and vacation owed to employees would come only as the defunct university somehow got funds.
For most faculty, working on nine-month contracts being paid out over 12 months, that meant six paychecks would be missed, or maybe paid out somewhere down the line.
Then came the kicker: Please don’t sue us for those wages, O’Keefe wrote.
“While the University’s delayed payment may constitute a valid wage claim, if employees hire attorneys to pursue these claims it will only make the dissolution more expensive, leaving even fewer funds available to make employees whole,” he wrote. “Civil actions by employees could delay the payouts and reduce the total amount that the University can pay to employees. Please remember that even if various employees are able to obtain judgments ordering the University to pay further compensation, the cost of the litigation will have reduced the total amount of funds available to employees, and a judgment against an organization with no funds can’t be enforced.”
O’Keefe hopes he will be able to sell the land and buildings, but he knows it’s a tall task.
First, there’s no apparent market for the buildings or the land. Hancock is a town of just over 4,000. It is across the Keweenaw Waterway from Houghton, which is home to Michigan Technological University and has about 8,000 residents. Michigan Tech and Finlandia have been among the area’s top employers. There is no other dominant industry there.
Aaron Peterson for The Chronicle
Stonework crumbles on Old Main, Finlandia’s original building, which dates to 1898. Campus renovations “were always going to be completed next year,” one faculty member said at a farewell ceremony.
And even if someone is interested, getting the property free of all of the encumbrances is going to be a struggle.
“This makes entering into purchase agreements problematic since many properties have debt that exceed their value and the lender’s interest is often cross collateralized with another non performing property,” O’Keefe wrote in an April 30 report to the court. “Almost all of the real estate has debt that exceeds value.”
Selling college buildings can be hard. Ohio Valley University’s entire campus was placed for sale in August 2022. Media reports showed that a letter of intent to buy had been signed in December 2022, but as of the end of May the property was still listed for sale. The campus includes 11 buildings containing more than 327,000 square feet on 255 acres.
There are continuing conversations with several developers for the Ohio Valley property, David E. Levy, managing director of Keen-Summit Capital Partners LLC told The Chronicle. Various nondisclosure agreements limited his ability to provide further details, he said.
No price is included in the listing.
It’s not just students and employees who are affected by Finlandia’s closure. At a recent Hancock City Planning Commission meeting, City Manager Mary Babcock said the town was worried that the government’s lien might remain on the land, in which case the receiver might himself be at an impasse, according to a media report of the meeting. “And this could all be left in the Department of Ed’s ownership.”
In Iowa, the campus of Iowa Wesleyan University, which also closed this spring, isnow the property of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The department had lent the private school $26 million in 2016, and the university couldn’t pay it off.
There are also multiple vehicles up for auction, including a 2018 Ford Fusion with 51,300 miles. But like most everything connected with Finlandia, it too has a lien on it that must be paid before the buyer can take the keys.
Dan Bauman contributed reporting for this article.
WHITINGHAM, Vt. — Organic dairy and other livestock farmers are seeking emergency federal aid as they grapple with skyrocketing organic feed costs, steep fuel and utility expenses as well as the consequences of drought in many parts of the country.
Two dozen U.S. senators and representatives wrote to U.S. Agriculture Department Secretary Tom Vilsack this week asking for emergency assistance for these farms. National and regional organic farming groups have also reached out to the department and the heads of the congressional committees.
Organic dairy farmer Abbie Corse, whose more than 150-year-old family farm is located in the southern Vermont town of Whittingham, said she doesn’t know what the future of the farm will look like.
“If a farm like ours is questioning how we’re going to keep going if something doesn’t change, I don’t know how we think there’s a future for anybody,” said Corse, 40, who farms with her mother and father.
On top of the high feed, energy and fuel costs organic farmers are facing, labor is a pressing challenge for The Corse Farm Dairy, which has a herd of about 90 and sells its milk to Organic Valley, an international milk cooperative based in LaFarge, Wisconsin. If anyone is unable to work, the family doesn’t have backup to keep the farm running.
“We are a medical emergency away from selling our herd,” she said.
In May of this year, prices for organic soybeans in the U.S., used as feed on organic farms, soared to $40.52 per bushel, an increase of nearly 110% from January 2021, according to the letter the members of Congress sent to Vilsack on Monday.
Feed costs normally average over half of organic dairy and poultry farmers’ total production costs “but dramatic increases year-over-year in organic feedstuffs are now creating unsustainable circumstances that could lead to farm closures, reduced competition and ultimately, limited consumer choice,” the letter said.
The war in Ukraine and the Agriculture Department’s discontinuation of the National Organic Program recognition agreement with India has reduced imported grain supplies and pushed up prices, officials said.
The drought in the West and other areas of the country has caused California, the country’s top dairy state, to have its driest three-year stretch on record and, this summer, challenged farmers in the Northeast. Western forages have been depleted and organic alfalfas, hays and sileages are in limited supply and nearly doubled in price, said Albert Straus, the founder and CEO of Straus Family Creamery in Marin County. The creamery has formed a crisis coalition of organic dairy farms, processors and brands in the West to petition for emergency drought relief.
California has lost 10 organic dairies in the last several months and as many as 50 are projected to go out of business if no relief comes in the next couple of months, said Straus. Twelve farms had provided organic milk to the creamery until one recently went out of business, he said.
“I’m concerned that the viability of these farms and the future of our communities is at risk,” Straus said.
U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he’s heard from Vermont organic dairy farmers, companies that buy their milk and the state’s agriculture secretary about “the severe financial pressure” organic dairies are facing.
While Leahy, a Democrat, said the longer term solution must be found in more stable markets and a risk management program that works for organic dairy, he’s confident “that the federal government will find an approach to provide temporary support to our struggling organic dairy farm families.”
A spokesperson said the Agriculture Department “is exploring avenues to address the challenges faced by organic dairy farmers, while also pursuing ongoing work to support organic and transitioning farmers through USDA programs.”
For Kathie Arnold, who farms with her son at Twin Oaks Dairy in the central New York town of Truxton, this is likely one of the most financially difficult periods she has seen since the farm became organic in 1998. They’re going to survive, but for other younger farmers, who bought their farms in recent years and have debt to pay off monthly, “they’re not going to be able to weather this storm,” Arnold said.
NEW YORK — Drought in California meant Raquel Krach, a rice farmer and graduate student in the Sacramento Valley, planted very little. Using groundwater, she and her husband planted 75 acres this year to maintain their markets. The rest of the 200 acres she typically sows remained empty due to an inadequate water supply.
The 53-year-old Democrat said it’s clear to her that climate change is responsible. But she says that notion is a deeply divisive one in her community.
“Our connections to our neighbors are pretty limited because our views are so different. Climate change is normally a topic we don’t even broach because our views are so different,” Krach said.
The impacts of climate change hit communities across the country, including Krach’s, yet voters in rural communities are the least likely to feel Washington is in their corner on the issue. Rural Americans and experts suggest there’s a disconnect between the way leaders talk about climate change and the way these communities experience it.
AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of the 2022 midterm electorate, shows clear differences between urban and rural communities in voter sentiment on President Joe Biden ’s handling of climate, and whether climate change is impacting their communities.
About half of voters nationwide approve of the president’s handling of the issue, despite the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act this summer that meant historic investments aimed at reducing the emissions that cause climate change. While around 6 in 10 urban voters approve, the figure drops to about half for suburbanites and roughly 4 in 10 for rural voters.
The urban-rural divide exists within the Republican Party, showing those differences aren’t driven solely by a partisan split between bluer cities and redder countryside. While 27% of urban Republicans approve of Biden’s leadership on climate, only 14% of small-town and rural Republicans say the same, VoteCast showed.
Sarah Jaynes, the executive director of the Rural Democracy Initiative, which provides funding to groups that support progressive policies in rural areas, suggested the overarching urban-rural divide has a lot to do with messaging issues.
“People in rural areas and small towns are less likely to think that Democrats are fighting for people like them, so there’s a partisan trust issue,” Jaynes said. “I think there’s an issue where people don’t want to signal that they’re supporting Democrats in rural communities right now.”
VoteCast also shows that despite nationwide climate crises — from hurricanes to wildfires to droughts — there’s varying concern among voters about whether climate change is in their backyards. About three-quarters of urban voters are at least somewhat worried about the effects of climate change in their communities, compared to about 6 in 10 suburbanites and about half of small-town and rural voters.
That difference isn’t necessarily explained by a lack of belief in climate change within rural communities. A September AP-NORC poll showed majorities across community types say climate change is happening.
“If you’re speaking to climate generally, rural people can feel like ‘well, do you really care about me? Are you talking about me?’” Jaynes said. “If you ask them ‘are you concerned about flooding? Are you concerned about the water crisis? Are you concerned about the impacts of extreme weather?’ You’re going to hear a lot more positively when you meet them where they are.”
In Krach’s community, she said “everyone is very clear on that there’s no water and that there’s a drought. Whether they attribute that to climate change is different.”
Nationally, extreme weather has meant agriculture has taken huge hits. Krach’s experience isn’t unique: ongoing drought in California meant that Colusa and Glenn counties saw their rice acreage drop by at least three-quarters, according to an analysis by UC-Davis agricultural economist Aaron Smith. In Texas, drought and a heat wave meant a whopping near 70% of cotton crops are likely to be abandoned. In Georgia, farmers have started growing citrus, as weather warms up and becomes increasingly untenable for the peach.
Johnathan Hladik, the policy director at the Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska, an organization focusing on rural community development, including environmental stewardship, said the nature of much of the work rural people do makes looking at the global scale difficult – like in agriculture.
“Farmers are experiencing climate change in a much different way than many more urban people do. It’s in every part of their job. It’s almost like it’s a day to day battle. You’re in the trenches every single day and it’s really hard to step back and look at it big-picture-size,” he said.
Olivia Staudt, a 20-year-old junior at Iowa State University, grew up on a fourth-generation corn, bean and row crop operation in Marble Rock, Iowa. The Republican said another factor contributing to the divide on climate issues is that some rural people think urban communities assign them disproportionate blame on climate issues without looking in the mirror.
“There always needs to be a scapegoat, and it feels like that’s what rural communities are to a lot of these urban areas,” Staudt said. “But no one has all the blame or creates all the issues.”
Staudt knows first-hand how much farming communities think about natural resources — her family not only uses the land but maintains it for the future, and that connection to the Earth can be farther off for urban residents. When she sees new big developments in cities and smog, paired with a perception of the agriculture sector getting blamed for climate change, it feels off.
The findings are complicated by a lack of knowledge on Biden’s climate actions. September’s AP-NORC poll found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults said they knew little to nothing about the Inflation Reduction Act — a law widely heralded as the largest investment in climate spending in history.
The IRA, which Biden signed into law in August, included about $375 billion in investments in climate over 10 years. Among other things, the legislation provides around $260 billion in tax credits for renewable energy and offers consumer rebates to households for heat pumps and solar panels, and up to $7,500 in electric vehicle credits.
Some elements of the law are geared towards the agriculture sector, too. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the law includes $20 billion to conservation programs run by the department, $3 billion in relief for distressed USDA borrowers whose operations are at financial risk, and $2 billion in financial assistance to farmers who have experienced past discrimination in USDA lending programs.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at https://www.ap.org/votecast.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Production of oranges in Florida this season is forecast to be down 36% from earlier estimates, in part a reflection of twin hurricanes that battered growing regions, according to U.S. Agriculture Department figures released Friday.
The latest forecast calls for about 18 million boxes of oranges to be produced in 2022-23 in the state, compared with agency estimates of 28 million in October that did not account for damage caused by Hurricanes Ian and Nicole.
The most recent numbers show a drop of 56% in Florida orange production compared with last season, agriculture officials said. The boxes generally weigh about 90 pounds (40 kilograms).
Other citrus crops are also forecast to be down, with grapefruit production coming in at 200,000 boxes fewer than estimated in October and 100,000 fewer boxes of tangerines and tangelos.
The decline in orange production would make the 2022-23 season one of the lowest since World War II. The harvest was 41 million boxes in 2021-2022 and more than 67 million the season before that.
“This is a gut punch. There’s no doubt about it,” said Matt Joyner, CEO of the Florida Citrus Mutual trade association.
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried said Hurricane Ian damaged about 375,000 acres (152,000 hectares) of commercial citrus when it roared across the state in late September. While Nicole did far less damage, it also struck some of the same areas in November
For consumers, this already means higher prices for orange juice, the main product made with Florida oranges. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports prices for juices and nonalcoholic drinks are over 57% higher in 2022 compared with 1997.
And it means food companies likely will need to increase imports of oranges from countries such as Brazil and Turkey. California’s orange production for 2022-23 is expected to top 47 million boxes, far surpassing Florida’s expected total.
In Florida, overall agriculture losses from Hurricane Ian have been pegged at at least $1.56 billion, according to the University of Florida. In total, counting cattle, vegetables and other agriculture interests, the Category 4 hurricane affected about 5 million acres (2 million hectares) in the state.
Before the storm, citrus production in Florida was already forecast to drop by a third compared with the year before, in part because of winter freezes and ongoing disease problems. Growers say the hurricanes are yet another obstacle to overcome.
“If you eat, you’re part of agriculture,” said Roy Petteway, a fifth-generation Floridian, said during a recent tour of his groves. “We were anticipating a very good crop this year. Sadly, there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s just a devastating thing.”
