IowaWatch (https://www.iowawatch.org/author/laurenm/)
Organic farm certification is automatically reinstated after three years without additional chemical impacts. The three-year window is the same as the requirement that land, upon initial organic certification, must go through a three-year period in which no non-organic products are applied.
Iowa’s organic farms, vineyards, apiaries and other non-conventional farms surrounded by row crops treated with pesticides are at risk of being hit with drifting spray that can leave their farms’ futures uncertain.
Iowa History, a weekly column, appears at IowaWatch on Saturdays. Cheryl Mullenbach is a former history teacher, newspaper editor, and public television project manager. She is the author of four non-fiction books for young people. Double Victory was featured on C-SPAN’s “Book TV” and The Industrial Revolution for Kids was selected for “Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People.” Her most recent book, Women in Blue traces the evolution of women in policing. Visit her website at: www.cherylmullenbachink.com
The Iowa State Fair of 1868, the 15th annual, was a disappointment in some ways.
Gov. Terry Branstad said in a summer IowaWatch interview that Iowa needs to maintain trade relationships with China and get good business deals with partners in that country. Iowa has built significant economic and diplomatic relationships with China since the 1980s. Find out in this news quiz how much you know about Iowa-Chinese relations.
“There is a handsome bronze tablet in the Army and Navy building in Washington, memorializing the mules and horses who died in the war; but nowhere is there found a record of the women who died,” declared Helen C. Courtney, a member of the Women’s Overseas Service League. The organization led an effort to establish a memorial for women who died in World War I, including a list of 161 names of “gold star women.” Among the names were several Iowans.
Heroin addiction is growing nationwide, and eastern Iowa is no exception with more than 61 non-fatal overdoses and 21 deaths in 2015. Cedar Rapids Gazette healthcare reporter Chelsea Keenan and public safety reporter Lee Hermiston spoke with IowaWatch intern Brittany Robb about their stories that formed part of an in-depth look at the epidemic in The Gazette’s June 2016 series, “Heroin’s Hold In Iowa.”
“Eugene Ely Fatally Injured in Airship Accident.” In July 1910 newspaper headlines announced the death of the Iowa native. However, it turned out the reports were greatly exaggerated.
Iowa’s Governor Leslie M. Shaw delivered his annual message to the legislature and the citizens of the state in January 1900. He had a number of items on his mind, and he wasn’t shy about making his ideas known. The text of his speech was splashed in newspapers throughout the state.
A recent IowaWatch report reveals that many elderly people have become scammers’ easy targets and lost billions of dollars in the past several years. Take this news quiz and find out how much you know about financial scams that target seniors, and how to deal with them.
Michael Gartner received the Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing in 1997 for editorials published in The Daily Tribune in Ames. He was co-owner and editor of the newspaper at the time. The Pulitzer board praised his “common sense editorials” for covering “issues deeply affecting the lives of people in his community,” including local issues ranging from ordinances controlling where signs could be placed to a proposed lap dancing law.