Rainier cherries cling to the branch in the Ray French Orchard in Richland, Washington, on Monday. (Credit: Anna King / Northwest News Network) Listen (Runtime 3:26) Read The French family […]Read More
In late autumn on the cusp of cool winter days, snow comes early to Washington when thousands of aloft avians, snow geese, land here in a flurry of white feathers.
“We call it a snow storm, they just will move as one,” said birder Julie Hagen. “It's just this chaotic whirlwind of birds, they move like a cloud and then they just lift up in the air.” Read More
Driving a long gravel road on a tour of the Horse Heaven Hills. Fallow fields and wheat with mountains in the distance. (Credit: Dori Luzzo Gilmour / NWPB) Listen (Runtime […]Read More
A tractor and sprayer work a stubble field spraying Roundup. Killing volunteer wheat and cheatgrass will help save moisture in the soil for next year’s crop / Anna King – […]Read More
Gangs of wild elk are attacking farmers’ haystacks in Washington and Oregon. They’re hungry, after a long drought and record mountain snow this winter has driven animals down to the lowlands. Climate scientists say things may only get worse in the future.Read More
Northwest farmers are pouring on the water to moisten soils ahead of the triple-digit temperatures and possible record highs expected this weekend. Read More
The aid, delivered in two separate packages over the course of the year, went to a wide variety of people in agriculture, including corn and soybean farmers, cattle ranchers, and fruit and vegetable producers. The $46 billion in direct government payments to farmers in 2020 broke the previous annual record by about $10 billion, even after accounting for inflation.Read More
More Murrow News Stories MALDEN, Wash. (Murrow News 8) – A fire caused by an electrical wire destroyed 80% of the farming town Malden, located 35 miles south of Spokane. Whitman […]Read More
Spring work starts up, ready or not. And Northwest growers are scrambling to figure out how to work around the global coronavirus pandemic and still bring in the coming harvest. Read More
American farmers spend about $32 billion each year to rent land, and Tillable CEO Corbett Kull thinks his company could be farmland's AirBnB or Zillow. "This is one of the beauties of digital marketplaces, where you can bring two parties together that otherwise might never meet," he says.Read More
In Washington Skagit Valley, a conflict is unfolding between the Upper Skagit Tribe and farmers as elk are making a comeback there. Read More
In 2019, the federal government delivered an extraordinary financial aid package to America's farmers. Farm subsidies jumped to their highest level in fourteen years, most of them paid out without any action by Congress.Read More
The possible impeachment of President Donald Trump is not the only thing moving through the U.S. House of Representatives. On Wednesday, the House passed a bipartisan bill that could give undocumented farmworkers a path to legal residence and relief to farmers short on labor. Read More
Dairy farmers in Massachusetts are using food waste to create renewable energy. Each farm produces enough to power about 1,500 homes. This helps prevent the release of methane, a greenhouse gas.Read More
Lots of American companies have lost sales since the Trump administration and China embarked on the current cycle of tariff-raising and retaliation. Few, if any, have been compensated as handsomely as farmers.Read More
American soil. Those are two words that are commonly used to stir up patriotic feelings. They are also words that can't be be taken for granted, because today nearly 30 million acres of U.S. farmland are held by foreign investors. That number has doubled in the past two decades, which is raising alarm bells in farming communities.Read More
A couple of federal agencies you probably haven't heard of keep track of what farmers grow, what Americans eat and how the country's entire food system operates. And the Trump administration wants them out of Washington, D.C.Read More
Growers in Washington, California and Michigan raise the majority of the nation’s domestic asparagus -- and Washington’s season is on. But business in U.S. spears is noticeably dwindling due to cheaper competition from foreign markets. That’s because there’s increasing amounts of cheaper asparagus from Peru and Mexico coming in: fresh, canned and frozen. And that’s Read More
Researchers found that corn production accounts for 4,300 premature deaths related to air pollution every year. Ammonia from fertilizer application was by far the largest contributor to corn's air pollution footprint.Read More
The fertile fields in Washington and Oregon, are just now drying out from severe winter snows not seen for 100 years. And potato farmers like Schneider are a month behind in planting. A cool spring -- along with this late start -- could throw Schneider’s yields off 30 to 40 percent.Read More
Farmers aren't producing enough to keep up with the number of smaller markets that keep popping up, often in close proximity to others. This results in fewer customers, unsold food and maybe closure.Read More
As drought has deepened across the West, much attention is paid to a colorful map that shows the hardest-hit areas. The scientists who update the map each week face enormous pressure to get it right.Read More
Ranchers and farmers living in the Mountain West are vulnerable to all kinds of things—drought, fluctuating crop prices, trade wars—and in part because of those things - depression and suicide. But there's some help out there, from an unlikely source: Twitter.Read More
The new trade agreement signed Sunday at midnight called the USMCA short for the U.S. Mexico, Canada Agreement by the Trump Administration, could change things on some Northwest farms. Farmers are hopeful this new agreement will lift their commodity prices -- many of which are low right now. Read More
During every berry picking season in the Pacific Northwest, blueberry and raspberry growers fight to prevent birds from gobbling up the crop before they can harvest it. This year, some farmers are trying something new and high tech to scare away the thieving birds. It involves lasers.Read More
