All of Greg Thoren’s cows are technically identified by the number on their ear tag. But when he drives around his pastures checking in on his animals, they go by another name: Sweetie.
“Hey, sweetie,” he reassured one cow — her ear labeled 604. “Hi, honey. You’re okay.”
In the spring, one of Thoren’s daily tasks is tooling around looking for calves that were born overnight. This cow had a newborn.
“You’re okay. You had that baby this morning.”
He stepped out of the truck, caught hold of the calf and in a few moments had looked it over, tagged its ear and popped back into the truck. He made a couple of notes in a battered pocket notebook and continued on through the fields.
Thoren comes out to greet his cows most days, bringing a pile of hay in the bed of his old pickup truck as a snack. If he stops for long enough, the herd descends on his truck, eating straight from the bed.
He’s a regenerative farmer, which means that as much as he cares for his animals, he cares about his soil more. He used to work the land as intensely as any other conventional farmer, but he quit “cold turkey” years ago.
Now, he’s cover-cropping, rotational-grazing, no-tilling and trying out any other conservation method he wants to experiment with. And it’s showing interesting results: He’s saving a lot of money, his cows are healthier, and his profits are growing. Plus, researchers have shown that these and similar conservation methods reduce soil erosion and water pollution and help to store more carbon in the soil compared to conventional methods.
Greg Thoren sits in the bed of a pickup truck as he speaks to a crowd of a few dozen farmers and non-farmers at a field day he hosted on April 3, 2026. Thoren was hosting field days before the Jo Daviess County Soil and Water Health Coalition in Illinois officially began, but now other farmers connected to the coalition are hosting field days of their own. (Jess Savage / WNIJ)
He also shares what he’s learned with a group called the Jo Daviess County Soil and Water Health Coalition. The work they do is at the heart of the “farmer-led movement,” a grassroots initiative to put farmers at the center of agricultural innovation, rather than top-down academics or government officials. The movement is well underway in northwest Illinois, and similar examples can be found throughout the U.S. and across the globe.
The coalition believes that one of the most effective ways to make farms more resilient — and more profitable — is to invite people into farmer-led conversations about soil health and water quality. Many farmers in the coalition are trying their own conservation methods and sharing the outcomes at field days and regular meetups.
This shared knowledge is meant to create a community of farmers who are shifting their mindset. They show up to learn from one another and experiment with conservation themselves. The coalition estimates their outreach, education and events have reached hundreds of people.
‘Figuring out practices that will work’
Corn Belt farmers are in the midst of multiple crises. Conventional farming practices are contributing to pollution, erosion and financial misfortune. Farm debt and bankruptcies are rising, and so are prices for inputs like fertilizer, pesticides and fuel. Meanwhile, the prices farmers get for crops like corn, soybeans and wheat are on a downturn. The Midwest lost more than 30,000 farms between 2017 and 2024.
The farmer-led movement offers an answer to these crises.
“Change is what needs to happen,” said Beth Baranski, the organizing secretary for the Jo Daviess County Soil and Water Health Coalition. “The farmer-led movement allows people to share the risk and minimize the risk. … The key is the farmers on their farms, in their fields, figuring out the practices that will work for them to achieve these goals.”
One of Greg Thoren’s cows munches on some hay April 13, 2026, in Stockton, Illinois. He likes to bring a pickup truck bed full of hay out with him when he goes to check on his animals, and if he stops long enough, they’ll swarm his truck. (Jess Savage / WNIJ)
Many farmers in the movement are still using conventional practices. It’s not necessarily the goal of the coalition to convince everyone to take on 100% regenerative practices. The group recognizes every farmer comes to it from a different place and has different priorities for their land and operations. Even if they wanted to try regenerative farming practices, razor-thin margins make it financially risky to make the switch.
Instead, the goal is for farmers to show their neighbors what’s possible and learn from each other.
And while there are plenty of government programs and grants and incentives that could help in theory, Baranski said many farmers are skeptical about how well they actually work. She said that, generally, they’re more likely to trust another farmer.
“Somebody coming from the corporate world or from an institution … and saying, ‘This is what you need to do,’ is not as effective as a neighboring farmer who has tried one practice and found it beneficial,” she said.
‘Farmers tend to push it’
The coalition offers connection and tested solutions to some of agriculture’s biggest problems. But it’s a slow-growing movement, and much of the industry is set up to work in opposition to the coalition’s goals, said Jonathan Coppess, an associate professor of agricultural policy at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“When things are tight and margins are tough, what we’ve seen historically is farmers tend to push it, right? You push the land, you try to put more land in production,” he said.
Coppess said policy coming from the government should support innovation like regenerative agriculture so farmers don’t have to choose between protecting soil and water and making a profit. But he said policies act like a barrier instead.
“If you’re running tight — or even sometimes negative — margins on a crop, you’re going to try to get more of that crop so you can have a little bit more room to market it. And you’re going to try to do everything you can to put bushels in the bin.”
He said that pressure makes it that much harder for farmers to move away from conventional practices and try conservation.
“In theory, farmers could just decide to put less nitrogen on (their fields),” he said. “The risk of doing that is pretty significant. And so our policies may be making it worse … but we’re also not addressing those issues. And so to me, it’s almost like paradoxes within paradoxes wrapped in ironies.”
He said conservation-minded farmers can be put at a competitive disadvantage to other farmers and across the supply chain.
“Farmers doing conservation practices are some of our most innovative,” he said. “They’re thinking well ahead. … Maybe it takes three or four or five years for this practice to really begin to pay off, and that’s a really critical but difficult investment.”
A thick clump of aggregated soil from one of Greg Thoren’s fields in Stockton, Illinois, which he showed curious farmers who attended his field day April 3, 2026. (Jess Savage / WNIJ)
The farmer-led movement does have some federal backing. The coalition got seed money from an organization called the Fishers & Farmers Partnership, which uses Congress-appropriated money to support similar projects in the Midwest. They also support projects that actually install conservation practices. So far, they’ve funded 70 projects, and with matching funds from other sources to support these projects, they’ve generated more than $9 million for initiatives that put farmers at the center of the conversation.
Amy Smith is one of the directors of the partnership. She said it is important to fund work that starts with the farmer.
“We’re focusing on the farmer because we’re focusing on people,” she said. “We are sitting with that farmer at the table, and we’re pulling in other people that they can connect with, and then they’re doing the same on the back end. They’re connecting with neighbors; they’re connecting with local county members.”
The partnership has awarded grants for more than 15 years, and so far, they’ve helped to enhance 113 habitats and conserve almost 40,000 acres of land. Since 2021, their work has engaged more than 175,000 people in outreach or education events like the ones Jo Daviess County Soil and Water Health Coalition hosts.
“Creating this mind shift in one farmer can lead to the mind shift of 20,” Smith said. “And that’s where we see watershed-scale change, landscape-scale change.”
Inviting people in
As Thoren turned his truck onto the dirt road toward home, he said even though farming this way isn’t exactly easy, but when it’s stripped down to the basics, it’s pretty simple.
“You’ve got to think about the farm. It’s not about the people. It’s about the farm. It’s about the land. It’s about the soil. That’s why I tell these young people, ‘Come in with me.’ I said, ‘It’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s about the soil.’”
Greg Thoren kneels down April 13, 2026, to check cover crops he recently planted — a mix of barley, oats, clover and sugar beets. Last year, he grew corn in the same field in Stockton, Illinois. The plants are just barely poking up in the soil in the spring, but he’ll set his cows out to graze by mid-summer. (Jess Savage / WNIJ)
That kind of understanding doesn’t come easy under the current industry that incentivizes conventional farming, he said. But when farmers’ minds start to shift, so can the whole system.
“It just all comes together,” Thoren said. “It’s not the system. It’s the mindset of the person to get the system activated, but you got to have the mindset of the person first. That’s my true belief.”
He’s hosting a field day later this summer, and other farmers connected to the group are hosting their own field days, as well. It’s a testament to the success of the coalition; they get to be in a supporting role to farmers who are leading the way forward.
Mississippi River conservation groups are among a broad coalition urging the federal government to take action against nitrate contamination in drinking water, which they say has reached “crisis levels” and is a public health emergency.
Nitrate, which forms when nitrogen-rich sources combine with oxygen, has long been found in the country’s surface waters and groundwater, where it can end up in people’s drinking water. Consuming water with elevated levels of nitrate is linked to birth defects, thyroid problems and some cancers.
Agricultural fertilizer and manure are the most common sources of nitrogen to groundwater, with septic systems and lawn fertilizers also contributing. An April analysis from the Environmental Working Group found that about 18% of the U.S. population from 2021 to 2023 used drinking water from community systems with 3 milligrams per liter (mg/L) or more of nitrate, the threshold at which the Environmental Protection Agency says indicates contamination.
Advocates say nitrate contamination has struggled to capture public attention but is costly and hazardous to those it affects.
A May 5 letter to the Department of Health and Human Services and the EPA was signed by 80-plus groups, about a third of which are located in or focused on the Mississippi River basin. It calls on the agencies to “immediately identify and eliminate sources of nitrate pollution in drinking water and provide funds to communities to reduce nitrate to safe levels.”
The letter cites a recent report from the Iowa Environmental Council and the Harkin Institute at Drake University in Des Moines that found high nitrate levels in drinking water, as well as the presence of pesticides and forever chemicals, are linked to rising cancer rates in Iowa. Intensive farming across the state, including corn, soy and hogs, is the dominant source of nitrate pollution, the report notes.
“We understand these are long-term problems,” said Tyler Lobdell, senior attorney at Food & Water Watch, which spearheaded the letter. “The longer we wait to address root causes, the more difficult, and more expensive (it is), and the more harm is caused in the long run.”
The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment on the letter. A spokesperson for the EPA said it is beginning the next round of review of national drinking water regulations, last published in 2024.
Too much nitrogen taints drinking water, hurts river ecosystem
Nitrate contamination is a widespread problem across the country, especially in the Corn Belt, but actions to address it have been slow-going.
Groups in multiple states, including Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, have previously petitioned the EPA to take emergency action on nitrate problems in specific regions. Lobdell said the agency has either ignored or given an insufficient response to those petitions, dating back several years and multiple presidential administrations.
Under former President Joe Biden, the EPA restarted an assessment — which had been suspended during the first Trump administration — of the impacts of nitrate on human health. Environmental advocates had hoped that it could lead to an adjustment of the national standard for nitrate in drinking water, which currently sits at 10 mg/L, because some research shows impacts to human health below that level. Little progress has been made on the assessment.
Beyond human health impacts, too much nitrogen in surface water can drive excessive algae growth, causing harm to fish and other aquatic life. It’s one culprit, in addition to phosphorus, in the creation of the Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone,” an area of low oxygen that spans thousands of square miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Kelly McGinnis, executive director of the environmental advocacy organization One Mississippi, a signatory on the letter, said that humans aren’t separate from the environment and that addressing nitrate contamination would have positive impacts on both.
She said she hopes the letter catches the attention of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has pledged to “Make America Healthy Again” and has shown interest in reducing toxins in people’s diets.
“We felt the urgency right now to take advantage of the new research (from Iowa) to say, ‘Hey, this is something you guys need to be addressing,'” McGinnis said.
The spokesperson for the EPA said the agency is “committed to Making America Healthy Again by taking real, tangible steps to evaluate risks of nitrates in drinking water while following the law and gold standard science.”
As a teenager, Ryan White learned to harvest manoomin from his father and grandfather on the White Earth Reservation.
The Minnesota lakes are surrounded by towering pines, the shallows hidden by tall grass, where the sacred wild rice grows. Every fall, he rows out on one of these pristine lakes, some of which ban motor boats during harvest season to keep the water pollution-free and the wild rice beds undisturbed.
Among the tall grass, White fills his canoe with the grain that’s part of the Ojibwe creation story.
“Most ricers start out as polers, and you just push them around,” he said. “As you gain experience, you’ll kind of figure out where the riper rice is, where the thicker rice is, and just get to know the bed and know the lake.”
But White, a citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and the director of advancement and public affairs at Leech Lake Tribal College, also knows to avoid harvesting from a certain part of the lake — Pike Bay Channel.
The channel abuts an active Superfund site that is part of a federal government cleanup program for some of the most polluted areas in the country. The site sits between State Highway 371 and Pike Bay, a 4,700-acre lake just outside the city of Cass Lake. Groundwater pollution stretches east beneath the channel and is migrating to the surface. And recent testing shows that the groundwater pollution is spreading south to Fox Creek, which flows into Pike Bay.
It’s putting wild rice harvesting — and Ojibwe traditions — in further jeopardy. And if contamination spreads, it could become a problem for communities downstream. Pike Bay and Cass Lake, the 15,000-acre body of water that gives the city its name, are part of a chain of lakes in Minnesota that form the headwaters of the Mississippi River.
The Environmental Protection Agency has been working to clean up the hazardous waste contamination in Cass Lake for more than 40 years. The primary solution is a water treatment plant that takes groundwater from multiple wells on the site, filters out the toxic pollutants and pumps the treated water into Pike Bay Channel, which connects Pike Bay and Cass Lake.
The system is meant to clean the contaminated groundwater and prevent its spread.
“It’s failing in both respects,” Eric Krumm, the Leech Lake band’s Superfund coordinator, told Buffalo’s Fire.
From 1957 to 1985, the St. Regis Paper Company operated a wood preserving facility in Cass Lake. During that time, it used the land as a dumping ground for its waste.
Workers placed wood soaked in hazardous preservatives next to homes, filling them with the smell of tar and mothballs. They burned waste products and discharged about 500 gallons of sludge and wastewater per day into onsite holding ponds, storm drains and the city dump.
The main chemicals of concern are creosote, a tar-like byproduct of burning coal or wood, and pentachlorophenol, a manufactured chemical that the EPA is phasing out and will ban by 2027. Both substances are considered potential carcinogens by the EPA.
When the facility was active, the community was directly exposed to these chemicals at a swimming hole dubbed “Rainbow Pond” because of the iridescent sheen on the water from creosote runoff. In the neighborhood next to the facility, residents breathed in toxic fumes from the burning of the facility’s waste product, and contaminated soil and dust were tracked into homes.
The EPA designated the 163-acre facility as a Superfund site in 1984 and placed it on the National Priorities List. A year later, the St. Regis Paper Company stopped operations. Residents were bought out of their homes. Businesses closed. And 42,000 cubic yards of contaminated sludge and soil were excavated and buried in a lined containment vault a quarter mile from downtown.
The South Side neighborhood of Cass Lake is now a vacant field called “the great expanse,” surrounded by short, stunted pines. It serves as a reminder of the paper company’s pollution.
A ‘stable’ situation … or ‘stagnant’
The cleanup plan is now led by International Paper Co., a paper manufacturer headquartered in Tennessee, which acquired St. Regis and assumed cleanup in 2000. The EPA oversees cleanup, with the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe Division of Resource Management and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency providing feedback.
The groundwater treatment plan has remained unchanged since water extraction wells and the on-site water treatment facility were constructed in 1987, but the federal government and the band differ on its effectiveness
The EPA’s 2025 Five-Year Review showed decreasing contamination at the core of the plume, but it also showed unsafe pentachlorophenol levels east of the plume near Pike Bay Channel and south near Fox Creek. Of 89 monitoring locations on the site, 58 had pentachlorophenol levels that exceeded the band’s standards, greater than 0.02 parts per billion (ppb), and 36 exceeded EPA standards, greater than 1 ppb.
The EPA calls these levels “stable.” Krumm calls them “stagnant.”
Poles covered in toxic wood preservatives by the St. Regis Paper Co. around 50 years ago lie discarded in Fox Creek Valley near the Leech Lake Division of Resource Management facility, Cass Lake, Minnesota, Oct. 20, 2025. (Gabrielle Nelson / Buffalo’s Fire)
The treatment plant was supposed to reduce the groundwater plume and render it effectively contained by 2011. Yet, the treatment plant is still required today — 40 years later — to keep the plume in check. And according to the EPA’s 2025 report, the groundwater “cleanup timelines could extend well beyond 2051 if the system were to remain operating as-is.”
Groundwater testing by the Leech Lake Band shows that the plume has spread beyond the extraction boundaries and beneath Pike Bay Channel.
The EPA said this doesn’t necessarily mean that the plume is growing. Rather, as the agency does more testing, “the shape of the plume is changed to reflect that new data.”
There are also fears other chemicals may be present.
While the plant removes most contaminants, Krumm said, treated water “regularly exceeds” healthy limits of dioxins. This group of highly toxic chemical compounds is believed to have been introduced to the soil and waters of Cass Lake by workers burning waste and wood at the St. Regis facility in the ’80s.
Limits placed on traditional foods
Brenda Eskenazi, a University of California Berkeley public health professor who studies dioxin exposure, told Buffalo’s Fire that dioxin is a potent carcinogen that interferes with hormones and can cause fertility and developmental problems.
“It has a very, very, very long half-life,” she said, which “means it hangs out in the body and in the environment for very long periods of time.”
In 2001, the EPA conducted testing on white fish in Cass Lake, which showed dioxin levels in some was 10 times higher than those in nearby lakes. That has fed concerns that community members may be taking in chemicals indirectly through their food sources, including white fish and wild rice, which are staples of the Ojibwe diet.
The Leech Lake Band advises tribal members to remove as much fat, where dioxin accumulates, from Pike Bay and Cass Lake fish, while recommending that pregnant women and children avoid eating them altogether. But as stated in the band’s 2024 report, “consumption advisories for Treaty fish are like telling average Americans to limit meat or bread consumption.”
Limits are also placed on wild rice. Though the band has not issued a consumption guide for the grain, out of the thousands of pounds of wild rice it buys from tribal members each year for processing, Krumm said none are from Pike Bay Channel.
Eric Krumm, Superfund coordinator for the Leech Lake Division of Resource Management, stands next to monitoring wells at Fox Creek Valley, Cass Lake, Minnesota, on Oct. 20, 2025. (Gabrielle Nelson / Buffalo’s Fire)
Brandy Toft, environmental director for the band’s Division of Resource Management, told Buffalo’s Fire that there aren’t enough extraction wells to capture the contaminated groundwater and prevent its spread.
Standing among the tall grass at Fox Creek next to EPA monitoring wells, she said the groundwater is like a wave pool, and the contamination is like dye dropped into it. The extraction wells are like straws trying to suck all the dye out of the pool, but there just aren’t enough straws, she said.
“Especially in a subsistence Indigenous community that has every right, literally every right, to hunt, fish, gather in these areas or surrounding areas without fear or without exclusion from those zones because of contamination,” she said.
International Paper has not included plans to update the water treatment plant, beyond replacing filters, in its most recent remediation report. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
Disrupting a way of life
Back at the Leech Lake Reservation, White harvests wild rice every year with his sons, 16-year-old Debwe and 14-year-old Arrow — a tradition he is passing down.
Eight years ago, he took his sons ricing for the first time. White said they were just “moseying along,” collecting rice here and there, when Arrow saw another little boy with more rice in his boat than him. Competitive, Arrow looked at his dad with excitement, urging him to hurry up.
Arrow’s love of ricing came “naturally,” said White. “He had just seen it in our people and how much we care about that rice. Even at a very young age, you know that it’s important.”
Minnesota Ojibwe tribes, including Leech Lake, harvest wild rice in beds along the St. Louis River and in shallow lakes that make up the headwaters of the Mississippi River — and have been for centuries. Ojibwe ancestors were sent to the region by a prophecy that told them to travel west from the East Coast until they found the “food that grows on water.”
“It’s called the sacred berry, or the good berry,” said White. “It’s food, but also, it’s medicine. It’s who we are.”
He said wild rice has also provided for the Ojibwe. Today, many tribal members rely on a steady wild rice harvest to supplement their income in the fall.
Bins containing hazardous waste sit at the edge of “the vault,” which holds 42,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and sludge from the St. Regis Paper Co. Superfund site, Cass Lake, Minnesota, Oct. 20, 2025. (Gabrielle Nelson / Buffalo’s Fire)
“There’s times where I had to use my income from wild rice to pretty much pay the bills, keep a roof over my head and keep the lights on,” said White.
But they have been limiting where they harvest since Pike Bay Channel is off-limits to tribal members.
“That’s what may happen in the future for the entire Pike Bay and the surrounding waterways,” said White, “and all that connects to the Mississippi River. And we’re pumping that directly into the lake.”
Community impact
So, why can’t Leech Lake tribal members just fish and harvest wild rice at a different lake?
Harvest practices are deeply tied to place and identity for Native communities, Anton Treuer, a Leech Lake citizen and a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, told Buffalo’s Fire.
“Being a Leech Lake Ojibwe person is connected to harvesting fish at Leech Lake,” he said. “The argument that someone should just pack up their bags and drive to Lake of the Woods and harvest a walleye that doesn’t hurt them is silly for a variety of reasons.”
The St. Regis Paper Co. hasn’t used Cass Lake as its dumping ground for more than 40 years, but Treuer said it’s still in the consciousness of tribal members today. He explains it as “an icky feeling.” Is it safe to drink tap water? Is it safe to go swimming in Cass Lake?
“It never feels as safe as it should be, and people intentionally avoid that space to the degree that they reasonably can,” he said, which has an “immediate impact on people’s ability and willingness to participate in certain cultural practices.”
On top of limiting where tribal members can practice subsistence fishing and harvesting, the Superfund site also impacts ceremonies, said Treuer, who lives on the reservation near Cass Lake. Cedar, commonly burned in ceremonies, must be harvested out of town, he said, and the Superfund site occupies the area where first-kill ceremonies, a rite of passage for young Native hunters, were traditionally held.
Toft, from the band’s Division of Resource Management, called the Superfund a “black cloud over Cass Lake.”
“It just keeps hanging there,” she said.
The fight to preserve Ojibwe culture
But community members are making efforts to promote Ojibwe culture and language on the reservation.
Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig, a K-12 school, serves more than 200 students of various tribal backgrounds. Operated by the band, the school is located 15 miles from the town of Cass Lake, teaches kids the Ojibwe language and encourages cultural engagement. The school holds a Culture Camp each year where students take language classes, learn traditional crafts like drum making and beading, and take part in traditional Ojibwe pastimes.
Grass grows in the shallow waters of Leech Lake near Cass Lake, Minnesota, Oct. 20, 2025. (Gabrielle Nelson / Buffalo’s Fire)
The Leech Lake Tribal College also offers a course on nationhood and manoomin, taught by Leech Lake elder Elaine Fleming with help from White.
“When we’re on the water, I’ll be the one out there showing them how to rice — how to use the pole, how to knock, how to knock in a good way,” he said.
Treuer said other tribal initiatives are helping the band reclaim their land, language and culture. Around Cass Lake, signage is printed in both Ojibwe and English. And in June 2024, more than 11,000 acres of ancestral land, previously managed by the Chippewa National Forest, was returned to the band.
“The Ojibwe at Leech Lake, and really everywhere, we’re in for the fight of our lives,” said Treuer, “to keep our language alive and to keep our cultural practices vibrant.”
Even if part of the reservation hadn’t been turned into a Superfund site, he said, the Ojibwe community would still be building back their culture from other impacts of colonization, including residential boarding schools and the mass slaughter of buffalo.
While 40 years of Superfund cleanup has accelerated those impacts, Toft said, in the centuries of Ojibwe history, a few decades aren’t deterring the community from fighting for their land and culture.
“We think differently,” she said, “and we’re in for the long haul.”
Members of an ad hoc Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources committee are urging wildlife regulators to work with a national expert as they finalize recommendations to guide state beaver management policy for the next decade.
Researchers and conservationists serving on the advisory body — which is largely composed of DNR staff and government and tribal representatives — hope that including additional scientific expertise, and even a potential computer-guided aerial beaver dam mapping survey, could assist regulators at a time when climate change is beginning to significantly alter Wisconsin weather patterns and pose widespread ecological risks.
“We’re taking our species out faster than they can recover, and when we are overexploiting our trout, when we’re overexploiting animals, plants, habitats, that’s going to make us lose these species faster,” said University of Minnesota ecohydrology professor Emily Fairfax, who has helped review and fact-check several beaver management plans and recently spoke to the committee. “I don’t think we have time to wait — full stop.”
A shift would transform long-standing beaver policy that frames the critters as a nuisance species.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s wildlife services program has removed beavers and their dams in Wisconsin since 1988 under contract with the state, along with local governments, railroad companies and Indigenous tribes.
At least five states across the Mississippi River basin and Great Lakes region contract with the federal wildlife services program for beaver removal, but Wisconsin stands out among states for the quantity of beavers and dams USDA employees clear, the millions of dollars Wisconsin has invested to do so and the state’s justification.
Current trout policy includes killing beavers
USDA killed roughly 23,500 beavers across 42 states in 2024, about 2,700 of which were in Wisconsin, ranking the state among the top five in the nation.
In Wisconsin, the agency focuses on abating transportation hazards, such as flooded roadways. But, perhaps most controversially, about a third of sites where USDA traps beavers are coldwater streams.
Wisconsin currently prioritizes maintaining free-flowing conditions on the state’s prized coldwater streams, partly to appeal to its “customers” and their fishing preferences.
Henry Nehls-Lowe, Southern Wisconsin Trout Unlimited board secretary, casts his fly-fishing line in Sixmile Branch, a Class 2 trout stream, Oct. 7, 2024, in Grant County, Wis. Federal trappers killed about 2,700 beavers in Wisconsin in 2024. About a third of those were in coldwater streams. Wisconsin prioritizes free-flowing conditions to benefit anglers. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
But the strategy has faced increasing scrutiny, even among anglers, who are divided over the issue. Some beaver advocates say the state agency charged with protecting and enhancing natural resources shouldn’t let commercial interests unduly guide its decisions.
In 2025, the agency trapped and cleared dams in more than 1,550 miles of coldwater streams — roughly the driving distance from Milwaukee to Salt Lake City, Utah. The DNR uses proceeds from annual trout fishing stamp sales to finance the annual undertaking.
At least two other states, Minnesota and Michigan, have employed the USDA for trout stream clearing, but at a significantly reduced scale.
The DNR doesn’t know the impacts of these policies on Wisconsin’s beaver population, as it ceased conducting aerial surveys in 2014. Agency staff, instead, estimate beaver numbers and harvest impacts using trapper surveys and voluntary reporting of annual take. Staff believe the population remains stable statewide or is even growing.
Conservationists are calling on the DNR to systematically survey the state’s beaver population. Without obtaining a reliable count, they say, it’s impossible to devise a science-based management plan. Even if beaver removal continued on trout streams, critics say the state could better estimate the population by having trappers register their beaver take, as the DNR requires for turkey, deer, bobcat and bear harvests.
Meanwhile, an expanding body of research is showcasing beavers’ ecosystem and economic benefits and the drawbacks of removal.
Beaver dams help limit flooding
When beavers remain on the landscape, they create wetlands, which mitigate climate change impacts like drought, wildfires and flooding. Problemsthought to be endemic to the American West are now creeping eastward.
Thunderstorms wreaked havoc in southeastern Wisconsin last summer, bringing more than 14 inches of rain to some parts of Milwaukee within 24 hours on Aug. 9-10. Roughly 2,000 homes sustained major damage or were destroyed in the ensuing floods, and the county now faces more than $22 million in public infrastructure repairs after being twice denied federal disaster assistance.
Beaver dams can dissipate torrents of water when the sky opens — even to the city’s benefit.
Using computer models, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researchers estimated that the Milwaukee River watershed could accommodate enough beaver colonies to reduce flood water volumes by 14% to 48%.
Wisconsin beaver policy understudied
But scientists face decades of institutional consensus in Wisconsin that beavers degrade stream habitat and threaten wild coldwater fisheries.
DNR fish biologists say that beavers warm water temperatures and plug coldwater streams with silt. When unobstructed, the water bodies, which tend to contain few fish species, flow fast and hard.
“Past studies have identified some positive but mostly negative effects of beavers on trout, and my research builds upon this,” DNR fisheries scientist Matthew Mitro told the beaver management committee. “The option for lethal removal (of) beavers is an important tool that should remain available for resource managers.”
Yet critics charge DNR biologists with managing streams for the primary benefit of one species by trapping out another, justifying the practice using research that hasn’t undergone scientific peer review.
Henry Nehls-Lowe, Southern Wisconsin Trout Unlimited board secretary, nets a brown trout he caught while fly-fishing in Big Spring Branch, a Class 1 trout stream, Oct. 7, 2024, in Grant County, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
A 2011 academic review of beaver-related research conducted in the Great Lakes region, which predated Mitro’s recent research, found that 72% of claims concerning beavers’ negative impacts are speculative and not backed by data, while the same held true for 49% of positive claims. The negative claims included the idea that beaver dams warm stream temperatures and block trout passage.
DNR biologists often note that academic literature largely has been conducted in the western United States and can’t be directly transplanted to Wisconsin’s comparatively flat landscape.
That is all the more reason to get off our haunches and wade into beaver ponds, Fairfax said.
“We have to follow that up by collecting our own data sets,” she said. “We have to publish them in peer-reviewed journals and get that scientific stamp of approval.”
Beaver trapping and natural predation are distinct from targeted eradication, Fairfax noted. The former can be sustainable, while stream-wide depopulation and dam removal can damage entire ecosystems.
It’s also possible that stream clearing prevents beavers from moving to parts of Wisconsin where they are wanted or where they could thrive with fewer conflicts.
Federal government assesses Wisconsin’s beaver dealings
The DNR beaver management plan’s update coincides with a new USDA environmental assessment of the potential impacts of its beaver and dam removal in Wisconsin.
A conservation organization founded by beaver management committee member Bob Boucher announced its intent to sue the federal agency to compel it to update its previous assessment, published more than a decade ago. Then Boucher threatened to sue the DNR after it wouldn’t release a draft of the new one, currently under review.
The 2013 assessment determined that USDA’s involvement in clearing streams and conflict areas did not significantly impact the beaver population. It estimated wildlife managers would only trap about 2,000 beavers annually, but the agency exceeded that figure within a few years.
The USDA recommends staying the course, using lethal and nonlethal methods. When analyzing alternatives, the agency concluded that other wildlife managers would continue trapping with or without federal involvement.
The USDA allocates some funding for the installation of flow control devices that can reduce the footprint of beaver ponds by lowering water levels. But nearly all beaver conflict sites the USDA handles in Wisconsin are managed through trapping. Levelers do have limited effectiveness in settings like high-flow streams or infrastructure-heavy floodplains.
A tree impacted by beaver activity, Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Wildlife managers say that they need flexibility because no two beaver sites are identical.
“We’re not against beaver complexes,” DNR fisheries biologist Bradd Sims told committee members. “We’re not against ecosystem diversity, and I don’t know why people try to paint us that way. We’re an open-minded bureau that’s open to different management styles.”
Trout and beaver proponents do agree that climate change poses an existential threat to biodiversity. While the former group might view beavers as harmful to coldwater streams, the latter see their potential as a partner in creating resilient landscapes that accommodate not only fish, but also frogs, turtles, bugs, bats, birds and humans.
The committee’s next meeting is March 18 in Rothschild, Wisconsin. Ultimately, DNR staff will rewrite the current plan, release a draft for public comment and discussion at open houses, and present a revised document to the state’s natural resources board for ratification.
This story was produced in partnership with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network, of which Wisconsin Watch is a member. Sign up for Wisconsin Watch’s newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.
This story was originally published on Investigate Midwest.
Lisa Lawler wasn’t surprised when diagnosed with breast cancer in 2025. Her mother had breast cancer and died in 2016. It seemed like cancer had become a common diagnosis for many of her neighbors and friends.
“With how many people seem to get cancer in our community, you just assume you will get it,” said Lawler, who lives in rural Hardin County, Iowa. “But no one really talks about what’s causing it.”
After 10 rounds of radiation and a surgery to remove the tumor, Lawler’s cancer was in remission. Last year, she took a test to determine if her cancer was likely genetic, meaning a high chance of recurrence, which could lead her to have her entire breast removed.
She was surprised by the results.
“The genetic test they ran for me was one that covered 81 genes that are typically related to breast cancer,” Lawler said. “After the test, they told me my cancer is likely not genetic, but likely environmental, based on these 81 genes.
“Your next thought is, then what’s in the environment that caused my cancer?”
Increasingly, pesticides are being blamed for rising cancer rates across America’s agricultural communities.
Hardin County, home to around 800 farms, has a pesticide use rate more than four times the national average and a cancer rate among the highest in the state.
Most of the 500 counties with the highest pesticide use per square mile are located in the Midwest. Sixty percent of those counties also had cancer rates higher than the national average of 460 cases per 100,000 people, according to an analysis of data from both the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Cancer Institute.
This story was produced as part of the Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S. Fellowship.
Last year, Investigate Midwest, in partnership with the University of Missouri, investigated the link between agrichemicals and cancer in Missouri, finding that many were rural communities that already lacked access to health care.
Investigate Midwest expanded on that coverage by analyzing data across the country, along with interviewing more than 100 farmers, environmentalists, lawmakers and scientists as part of a partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S. Fellowship. The result was the picture of a nation at a crossroads in dealing with this public health crisis that has not just been ignored by state and federal health officials, but aided.
This story was also supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
“Cancer is everywhere and it’s an experience that is unfortunately all too common,” said Kerri Johannsen, senior director of policy and programs at the Iowa Environmental Council, a Des Moines-based nonprofit that has been studying the state’s growing cancer rate.
Agrichemicals have helped America become a crop-producing power, increasing yields of commodity crops — such as corn and soybeans — used for food, fuel and animal feed.
Sprayed from airplanes, drones, tractors and handheld devices, these chemicals can drift through the air or run off into nearby rivers and streams.
And for decades, some farmers and pesticide users have developed neurological and respiratory issues. Thousands of lawsuits have alleged that pesticides and the companies that make them were to blame.
Pesticide manufacturers often rejected those claims while sometimes concealing research by their own employees that raised similar concerns. These companies — such as Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva and BASF — have also spent millions to lobby federal and state lawmakers for laws that would limit their legal liability and continue to allow them to sell agrichemicals.
“This is one of the most transparently reviewed products ever,” said Jessica Christiansen, the head of crop science communications for Bayer, speaking about her company’s production of Roundup, a glyphosate-based pesticide. “This product is so well studied … been on the market for over 50 years with thousands and thousands of studies. There is no linkage to cancer, there just isn’t.”
Under the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture have also hired dozens of former pesticide executives and lobbyists, some of whom have already pushed for deregulation of their industry. The Department of Health and Human Services has also altered its own reports to downplay the harm of pesticides.
Two states — North Dakota and Georgia — recently passed laws limiting their residents’ ability to sue pesticide companies, and at least a dozen other states will consider similar laws in the coming months.
“We’ve gotten to a point in the U.S. … where we’ve stopped treating pesticides as if they are dangerous tools,” said Rob Faux, who manages a small Iowa farm and has advocated against pesticide liability shield laws. “Instead, these companies tell these stories that these pesticides are completely safe and we are encouraged to use them anytime. We’ve been convinced that we must use them or we are not going to have enough food to eat.”
In Iowa, a state with heavy pesticide use — 53 million pounds last year — and the nation’s second-highest cancer rate, doctors and health officials have been sounding an alarm for years.
The state has become ground zero in the fight to limit the impact of pesticides on health and the environment. Farmers have gathered at the state Capitol to advocate for increased laws and funding to address the rising cancer rate. That advocacy likely helped defeat a bill last year that would have protected pesticide makers from some lawsuits.
I call myself a Republican, but this is not about politics; this is about money, about the almighty dollar.”
— Bill Billings, a resident of Red Oak, Iowa, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2024
“I believe the groups wanting this (bill) to go through didn’t expect any substantial resistance, but there was enough resistance,” said Faux, who also works for the Pesticide Action and Agroecology Network, a nonprofit advocating for less agrichemical use.
The Iowa bill was strongly opposed by environmental and health organizations, which have traditionally been left-leaning. But there was also strong opposition from many conservative residents and farmers.
“I call myself a Republican, but this is not about politics; this is about money, about the almighty dollar,” said Bill Billings, a resident of Red Oak, Iowa, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2024.
Initially, doctors told Billings, then 61, he would likely be dead in a matter of months after discovering lymphoma in his lungs. A health enthusiast and hospital administrator, Billings had been a regular user of Roundup, the popular Bayer pesticide used on farms and residential properties.
“The cancer specialist said, very directly, (my) cancer is a result of being exposed to chemicals,” Billings said. “In my records, it literally says that I have cancer as a result of exposure to Roundup and agrochemicals.”
Billings was prescribed a five-drug regimen, along with chemotherapy. In September, he was declared cancer-free.
Last year, he hired a lawyer to file a lawsuit against Bayer.
“The irony is … Bayer Pharmaceuticals makes one of the drugs that treated my cancer,” Billings said. “It’s disturbing to find out you are in this financial circle — not only as a consumer, but as a patient.”
Bill Billings in Red Oak, Iowa, on Jan. 21, 2026. (Geoff Johnson for Investigate Midwest)
The home of Bill Billings in Red Oak, Iowa, on Jan. 21, 2026. (Geoff Johnson for Investigate Midwest)
Surrounding neighborhood in Red Oak, Iowa, photographed Jan. 21, 2026. (Photos by Geoff Johnson for Investigate Midwest)
Research increasingly links pesticides to growing cancer risk
Cancer is a complex disease and can be caused by numerous environmental and genetic factors. Some links have been clear — such as smoking and lung cancer — while other forms can be impossible to trace back to an original cause.
But scientific research linking pesticides with certain types of cancers has been growing.
“Our findings show that the impact of pesticide use on cancer incidence may rival that of smoking,” scientists wrote in a 2024 study, which was published in Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society.
The study linked pesticides to prostate, lung, pancreas and colon cancers. Pesticides have also been associated with lymphoma and Parkinson’s disease, the study claimed.
Many doctors in agricultural communities say the link with pesticides is hard to deny.
“Iowa has a super high rate (of cancer) and when you look at all of our modifiable risk factors … tobacco, obesity, too many calories, highly processed foods, lack of physical activity, alcohol consumption, getting vaccinated for HPV, sun exposure, and so on, Iowa doesn’t really stand out dramatically at any of those,” said Dr. Richard Deming, medical director at MercyOne Cancer Center in Des Moines. “But one thing that distinguishes Iowa from other states is our environmental exposure to agricultural chemicals.”
Deming and other health experts also point to Iowa’s high radon levels, a naturally occurring radioactive gas produced by uranium and radium.
The state also has high levels of fertilizer-derived nitrate in its water, which has been associated with increased cancer risk.
“But we use tons of ag chemicals that make it quite likely that the volume of these chemicals is contributing to what we’re seeing in Iowa in terms of the increased incidence of cancer,” Deming said.
A direct correlation can be difficult to determine, as cancer development times can range from months to decades. Overlaying cancer rates onto a map, however, highlights the nation’s top crop and vegetable growing regions, where pesticide use is highest.
The Midwestern states of Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Missouri — leading corn-growing states — had the highest rates, while rates were also high in California and Florida, high fruit-growing states.
Lawler, who developed breast cancer in Hardin County, grew up on her family’s 400-acre farm, where her father grew corn and used 2,4-D, a pesticide made by Dow Chemicals. She and her siblings moved out of state after high school, but Lawler returned in 2010.
Pesticides have become indispensable in farming, Lawler acknowledged, but she wishes more people would ask questions about the risks.
“We change products all the time when we learn about the health impacts,” Lawler said.
These family photos show Lisa Lawler with her mother and siblings over the years. Lawler was recently diagnosed with breast cancer; her mother later died after a cancer diagnosis. The family believes years of farm pesticide and herbicide exposure may have contributed. (All photos courtesy of Lisa Lawler)
As lawsuits mount, Bayer pushes state laws to limit liability
In early 2022, Rodrigo Santos had just been promoted to the head of Bayer’s crop sciences division, a prestigious position within the German-based chemical company. But a global pandemic, climate change and a pending war in Ukraine were disrupting the global production and sale of crops — a direct hit to the company’s pesticide sales.
“The global food system is in crisis,” Santos wrote in a column for the World Economic Forum, going on to say that the world needed to grow more food without a significant increase in the amount of land devoted to crops.
But beyond the pandemic and war, another crisis presented an existential threat to one of the company’s top-selling products. Roundup, the glyphosate-based weed killer produced by Monsanto, which Bayer bought in 2018, had been blamed for causing cancer in thousands of lawsuits.
Since purchasing Missouri-based Monsanto, Bayer’s stock price has dropped more than 90% over five years.
In recent years, Bayer executives, including Santos, openly discussed discontinuing glyphosate production. We are “evaluating all the alternatives that we have for the business,” Santos told investors last year when asked about a possible sale of its Roundup division.
But while Bayer publicly said it was reconsidering its glyphosate business, a review of lobbying disclosure statements, campaign finance records, state legislative records and other documents reveals the world’s largest pesticide company remains committed to expanding its sales.
Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the EPA regulates the warning labels on pesticide products. While state-level lawsuits have claimed that federal labeling is insufficient, pesticide companies, including Bayer, have argued that federal regulations should trump state laws.
Bayer, along with other corporate agriculture groups, has pushed for bills in more than a dozen states that would codify the view that federal labeling regulations are sufficient warning, effectively voiding state-level lawsuits.
Christiansen, the head of crop science communications for Bayer, disputed that these laws will stop lawsuits and said courts have yet to begin interpreting those that have passed.
“Folks can still sue a company, and they should if there’s a problem,” Christiansen said. “But the litigation industry has a lot to lose with these (bills) that are out there.”
Founded by Bayer, the Modern Ag Alliance has lobbied for these bills and promoted opinion articles downplaying the health impacts of pesticides.
“If farmers lose access to crop protection products because of misguided ideological agendas, U.S. agriculture would be upended, potentially forcing many family farms to shut down and driving up food costs for every American,” said Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, executive director of the Modern Ag Alliance.
The Modern Ag Alliance has spent more than a quarter of a million dollars on state lobbying since 2024.
Most of the bills came up short in 2025, but Georgia and North Dakota passed liability shields that will complicate local lawsuits.
Georgia’s Senate Bill 144, which took effect Jan. 1, received some bipartisan support but was mostly approved by the Republican majority and opposed by Democrats.
Similar bills have been filed in at least 10 states for this year’s legislative sessions.
In 2024, the Iowa bill was passed by the state Senate with a 30-to-19 vote. Ahead of a vote in the House last year, farmer and environmental groups lobbied against the bill.
The session ended without the House taking up a vote. The bill could return in 2026, but Faux, the Iowa farmer, said he also worries about it being “snuck into” another bill or budget agreement.
“I don’t think we can just assume this fight is over,” Faux said.
In other states, backlash seemed to stop liability shield bills before they got started.
In Oklahoma, Rep. Dell Kerbs, a Shawnee Republican, authored a pesticide liability shield bill he said was meant to end “frivolous” lawsuits against pesticide makers.
“What’s happened in our country is we have … judges that have decided they need to be in the labeling business,” Kerbs said when introducing his bill at a Feb. 11, 2025, hearing of the House agriculture committee.
State Rep. Ty Burns, another Republican, asked Kerbs why he chose to author the bill.
“I was first approached by Bayer,” Kerbs responded.
“But this is a labeling bill; it is not an immunity bill. It is just clarifying on EPA labeling regulations,” Kerbs added. “There is nothing that prevents a lawsuit from any single person. This is not giving a free pass to kill people. This simply is saying that a frivolous lawsuit to potentially pad the pocket of somebody who was not reading the label is not a justification to add that to a label through a state district court.”
But when Burns asked Kerbs about opposition to the bill, especially from many farmers, Kerbs denied receiving any complaints.
“That is hard to believe,” Burns told Kerbs, “because I have been bombarded.”
The bill was never presented to the House for a vote.
After early promises, MAHA walks back pesticide oversight
While liability shield laws have been largely advanced by Republican lawmakers, the push to further regulate pesticides has transcended partisan lines.
Both left-leaning environmental groups and conservative health movements, which have targeted agrichemicals and some vaccines, have called for reducing or eliminating the use of pesticides.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been a longtime critic of pesticides. In a May 2025 report, his Make America Healthy Again commission linked pesticide overuse to children’s health issues, which drew praise from both political camps.
George Kimbrell, co-executive director of the Center for Food Safety, which has advocated for stronger pesticide regulations, called the initial report a “baby step” forward and said he was encouraged after decades of inaction by the federal government.
“Going back my entire career, 20-plus years now of doing this work, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Democratic administration or a Republican administration, they have been beholden to and done the wishes of the pesticide industry,” Kimbrell told Investigate Midwest last year. “So, this is a unique moment where … there’s a chance that there could be some positive change in terms of responsible oversight for these toxins.”
Corporate agriculture groups heavily criticized the report, including the American Farm Bureau Federation and CropLife America, a national organization representing many large agrichemical companies, including Bayer, Corteva Agriscience and Syngenta.
Many of those groups and companies had been large financial backers of Trump. But Kennedy downplayed any concerns that the president would avoid taking a hard position against pesticide companies because of that support.
“I’ve met every president since my uncle was president, and I’ve never seen a president (like Trump), Democrat or Republican, that is willing to stand up to industry when it’s the right thing to do,” Kennedy said at a May 22, 2025, MAHA commission meeting as the president sat smiling to his right.
Three months later, Kennedy’s MAHA commission published its final report, which contained no calls to further regulate pesticides. In fact, it called for the federal government to work with large agrichemical companies to ensure public “awareness and confidence” in the EPA’s current pesticide regulations.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment from Kennedy.
Many of the groups that expressed optimism over the initial report were outraged over the change.
“This report is … a clear sign that Big Ag, Bayer, and the pesticide industry are firmly embedded in the White House,” said David Murphy, the founder of United We Eat and a former finance director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign.
The Trump administration has employed several pesticide executives, researchers and lobbyists at the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Kyle Kunker, who was a registered lobbyist for the American Soybean Association, an organization that has advocated for the legal liability shield laws at the state level, was hired last year to oversee pesticide policy at the EPA.
Three weeks later, the EPA recommended expanded use of dicamba-based herbicides, which federal courts had previously restricted. The EPA proposal was closely aligned with the position of the American Soybean Association.
In 2025, the EPA also hired Nancy Beck and Lynn Ann Dekleva, both of whom worked with the American Chemistry Council.
Last month, a coalition of MAHA supporters called for the removal of Lee Zeldin, administrator of the EPA.
Recent EPA decisions around pesticides “will inevitably lead to higher rates of chronic disease, greater medical costs, and tremendous strain on our healthcare system,” the group stated in a petition circulating online.
Several prominent MAHA influencers have joined the petition, posting anti-pesticide messages on social media under handles such as The Glyphosate Girl and the Food Babe. “The EPA is acting like the Everyone Poisoned Agency,” wrote Kelly Ryerson, on her Glyphosate Girl Instagram feed.
As the EPA advances pesticide use, the Trump administration has also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that federal labeling laws invalidate state-level lawsuits.
“After careful scientific review and an assessment of hundreds of thousands of public comments, EPA has repeatedly determined that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic in humans, and the agency has repeatedly approved Roundup labels that did not contain cancer warnings,” Trump’s solicitor general wrote in an amicus brief with the Supreme Court.
However, one of the studies the EPA has often cited in claiming pesticides are safe was recently retracted due to concerns about its authorship and potential conflicts of interest.
The report, published in 2000 by the scientific journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, claimed Roundup “does not pose a health risk to humans.” The report has been the foundation for numerous other studies, court cases and policy decisions.
The journal retracted the study last year, noting that court cases had revealed that Monsanto employees had contributed to the study. “This lack of transparency raises serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented,” the retraction stated.
“This is just one example of how the current process of certifying these chemicals is broken in the U.S.,” said Colleen Fowle, water program director at the Iowa Environmental Council. “At the very least, we’re hoping that this (retraction) eliminates this specific research article from being cited in the future and concentrates more on independent peer-reviewed research as our basis to determine the safety of glyphosate.”
Investigate Midwest is an independent, nonprofit newsroom whose mission is to serve the public interest by exposing dangerous and costly practices of influential agricultural corporations and institutions through in-depth and data-driven investigative journalism. Visit online at www.investigatemidwest.org
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