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Jessica Naudziunas
Reporter, KBIA

Jessica Naudziunas is Harvest Public Media's connection to Central Missouri. She joined Harvest in July 2010. Jessica has spent time on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday and WNYC's Soundcheck, and reported and produced for WNIN-FM in Evansville, Ind. She grew up in the City of Chicago, studied at the University of Tulsa and has helped launch local food gardens in Oklahoma and Indiana.

Articles by this author:

  • The sustainable hand

    Farmer of the Future, part 3: It seems every farming operation today professes to be "sustainable." We may not know if that’s true until decades from now, but farmers' choices today well may provide a game plan for tomorrow.

     

    Video dispatch: Building a sustainable farm

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
  • Missouri ponders protections for animal ag

    Many animal rights advocates say that the efficient pork production system producers have developed over the last couple of decades is inhumane. That viewpoint is gaining traction with consumers, which scares some farmers who worry that animal rights groups will parlay moral qualms with certain hog farming techniques into legislation banning them. In Missouri, the General Assembly is poised to pass legislation that essentially would lock in the legality of current methods, but the marketplace may have the final word.

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
    3 Comments
  • For many ranchers, profits dry up

    With ground beef selling for record prices, you might think cattle ranchers are raking in the profits. But most ranchers in traditionally big cattle states are still in crisis mode — dealing with the fallout from last year’s drought, high input costs, and competition from international markets.

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
  • A Texas-sized profit-squeezing beef crisis

    Maybe you’ve noticed that the price of beef is going up, rather dramatically. Thanks, in part, to drought in Texas and increased European demand, don’t look for relief from any time soon.

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
    4 Comments
  • Assessing the additives

    If you want a definitive answer on food industry claims, like ‘natural,’ or ‘fresh,’ you could pour over pages of advice from government agency or check out consumer advocate websites.  Of course, you might start by reading the labels. But these ingredients – or additives -- can be difficult to interpret.

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
    5 Comments
  • Selling healthy eating in the aisles

    Walk into your neighborhood grocery store looking for healthy food and you might get lost amid a sea of confusing labels and dubious claims. New programs and rating systems arm consumers with information, but sometimes that only creates more confusion.

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
    14 Comments
  • Agriculture banks are outperforming their peers
    By: Jessica Naudziunas
  • Antibiotics and the healthy cow equation

    Some consumers worry about farmers and dairymen using antibiotics on their cattle.  But for many cattle ranchers, a preventative approach is an essential part of a conventional ranching business. A good vaccination program can stop sickness before it happens.

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
    13 Comments
  • Pricier PB&Js in the forecast, thanks to peanut shortage

    It takes about 540 peanuts to make a 12-ounce container of peanut butter, and it looks like the country's stock and crop of the popular legume is lagging. At grocery stores across the country peanut butter varieties are off the shelves. Peanut butter manufacturers are passing on higher peanut costs to consumers. Now, the US Farm Bureau estimates dwindling peanut supplies for months to come. 

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
  • The curious case of the cattle rustler

    What do you get if you combine the Ponzi-scheme of Bernie Madoff with a wily Midwestern rancher? While Madoff's mastermind plan was becoming clear in New York, out in tiny Howard County, Mo., there was another crook who was swindling dozens of farmers across the country.  

    By: Jessica Naudziunas

Blogs by this author:

  • Can milk, not jails, drive NY economy?

    Dairy farmers in upstate New York produce a lot of milk. Last year, enough to pour into nearly 2 billion bowls of your favorite breakfast cereal.

    But don’t let the volume fool you. The cheese, yogurt and milk business in New York has been suffering for decades. Since 1989, dairy farmers have been caught up in foreclosure scares, millions of dollars in revenue losses and herd buyout programs. The state declared a dairy industry crisis in 2010.

    Over those same decades, the rural countryside here has seen growth — from prisons, and hefty state spending on incarceration. Over the barbed-wire fence, the prison population has been strong.

    That stark contrast is at the heart of Milk Not Jails, a grass-roots effort to promote agriculture as New York’s primary economic development plan — instead of criminal justice.

    Milk Not Jails founder Lauren Melodia argues that when a prison closes, millions of dollars are saved, but when farms shut the barn door, it’s not good for anyone.

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
  • GPS labeling foods could make them safer

    The GPS unit in your car might help you get where you’re going. But GPS technology on the farm may do something more important; it might help keep you safer.

    Some farmers are using GPS units to label the foods they produce and package with the exact location at which it was grown. That means regulators investigating a food safety issue can pinpoint exactly where the problem originated and may be able to fastrack their response.

    This sort of detailed fresh food origin story has a place in recent food safety regulation. The 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act gives the Food and Drug Administration the ability, for the first time, to make a mandatory recall of any food product they suspect to be tainted.

    To do that successfully, they have to know which ingredient in a food product caused the food borne pathogen outbreak and then where that tomato, peppercorn or cantaloupe came from. If a safety inspector has access to GPS records instead of handwritten files, the time it takes to get back to the field could significantly decrease.

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
  • Missouri governor wants levees rebuilt

    Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon met with Missouri Levee and Drainage District members in Columbia, Mo., this weekend, responding to over eight months of questions from farmers and others on how Missouri’s waterways will be protected from future massive flooding.

    The historic flooding throughout Missouri left hundreds of thousands of acres of valuable Missouri farmland and residential areas under water for months. That memory drew questions from the audience who were concerned with the over $60 million funding disparity between fish and wildlife projects and practical flood management.

    Nixon and his political colleagues concluded more government dollars should go to flood management.

    “With the disaster we saw this year, it’s the most important...the highest need, to get the levees rebuilt,” Nixon said. “Habitat can come later on. So, I don’t disagree that the blend this year ought to lean more toward rebuilding the infrastructure and then go back to (environmental concerns.)”

    In the first week of May 2011, the Army Corp of Engineers blasted open the levees on the Missouri side of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to release swelling waters that were threatening to spill over floodwalls at Cairo, Ill. The river flowed unabated for weeks, plunging about 130,000 acres of farmland under water.

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
  • Something foul in the water

    It’s been eight months since the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released massive amounts of reservoir water from locations north of the Missouri River. Those reservoirs were filled to the brim with historic rainwater and melted snow that accumulated over a long winter of inclement weather across the Midwest.

    Most of that released water ended up flowing over valuable farmland and residential areas in northwest Missouri. And the resulting financial and family devastation has opened up a huge Missouri-style feud that will likely last as long as the flooded land will take to return to normal.

    Farmers who work river-bottom land generally think the Corps does not have their best interests at heart; the Corps says it is doing its best with the funding that’s been made available from the federal government. Then there are the scientists and conservationists who believe the river is better off without military-grade, man-made control. And for good measure throw in that farmers generally do not like river management ideas from environmentalists.

    I got to observe the emotional fallout recently at the 2012 Missouri Governor’s Conference on Agriculture in a big hotel ballroom in Kansas City, Mo. In a session titled “Rain, Rivers and Resources,” many of the key stakeholders came together for an uncomfortable – though enlightening – discussion.

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
  • 2011: A year in the life of farm and food

    Whether it was thanks to the Farm Bill, MF Global's bankruptcy, vicious flooding or high land prices, farmers were in the headlines throughout the Midwest in 2011.

    On our Field Notes podcast, we took a look at the long year farmers and foodies had. We've showcased Harvest Public Media's most-read stories in 2011. And we want to know what the big stories of 2012 will be (tell us here!)

    The year ahead is sure to bring many twists and turns in the life of Midwest farmers and rural Americans and we'll be sure to continue exploring issues of food, fuel and farm.

    But before we jump ahead, let's take a look back at a year in Midwest agriculture:

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
  • Ethanol on its own after tax break expires

    The U.S. fuel industry rang in the new year with a little less help from the government as the historically sacred Volumetric Ethanol Excise Credit expired on December 31.

    The tax credit was partially responsible for buoying the growth of the corn ethanol industry over the last 30 years, but the 45-cent-per-gallon helping-hand is no more as Congress allowed the tax credit legislation to expire. The tax credit had cost about $6 billion annually.

    The usual VEETC rally cry from the ethanol industry has been silent for months. On Dec. 6 biofuel giants POET and Growth Energy formally expressed their disinterest in fighting for the tax credit. A month earlier, the same groups pressed the oil industry to follow suit and reject government support for their business. After all, the ethanol industry said, it is the oil companies that blend their product with ethanol that the tax break helped most. Oil companies like Missouri’s MFA Oil use 10 percent ethanol in their unleaded gasoline as an additive under a 2007 state mandate.

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
  • A farmer’s food for thought in 7 minutes

    I recently went to this local Columbia, Mo., event called 20/20. It’s a bimonthly gathering that highlights culture-makers in town who are often hidden from the public as they create, research and organize innovative ideas. And here’s the twist: These passionate people quickly present their ideas while a screen behind them displays 20 images over 400 seconds.

    The standing-room-only crowd lining the walls and sitting on the floor showed how well 20/20 has caught on. There’s something really attractive about its symposium-light style: no commitment and you can learn a lot in just an hour. Among the presenters was journalist and writer Emma Marris, who made an appearance this summer on Harvest Public Media’s Field Notes. Another person talked about how ancient youth remains show us how childhood has evolved over time.

    The presentations were mostly based on academic research, but I was there to hear urban farmer Daniel Soetaert talk about a more simple idea -- food.

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
  • Horse slaughter from the farmer’s point of view

    Outlawing the slaughter of horses may not sound like a bad thing. But for farmers and the animals, the consequences of such a ban in the U..S. have been far-reaching and complicated.

    Until 2006, horses no longer fit for the farm, about 150,000 annually, were sent to slaughter and their meat shipped overseas to countries that find the meat palatable. But when Congress froze inspection funding - effectively banning horse slaughter five years ago - more horses were left alive and, often, left to suffer through neglect.

    Now, President Obama has effectively removed the ban by restoring slaughterhouse inspection funding.

    Here’s a roundup of some good coverage:

    These stories have generally failed to address the farmer’s point of view.

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
    3 Comments
  • What does sustainable mean to you?

    Despite this being harvest season, I’ve been pestering farmers with theoretical questions about food and agriculture labels.

    Here’s something I’ve learned: If there’s one thing to guarantee a lengthy conversation with an ag-minded person, regardless of his or her crop harvesting schedule, it might be on the farm labels.

    I’ve also learned that there comes a point when slapping a pithy saying on an agricultural method is a detriment to understanding just how a farmer does his job.

    For example, I talked to a farmer in Michigan who says people call him “Big Ag” at least once a week, and he admitted this to me with an odd mix of guilt and braggadocio. The thing is, this farmer told me, he’s not the bad guy the “Big Ag” label makes him out to be, and he wishes people could see this for themselves — but they often don’t give him a chance. So the consumer may never know that a “Big Ag” farmer, like Jeff VanderWerff from Michigan, conservatively — not flagrantly — sprays his field, or that he treats his animals with respect and care, not like chattel.

    Meanwhile, other farmers live and die by the Certified Organic stamp because it sets them apart from the conventional growing crowd. At my local farmers market, there are so many vendors who are “spray-free,” and few who can legally sell their food as organic. It makes it more difficult for those who have gone through the certification process to sell their specialty product. And as we blogged last week, the organic label may be a touch passe these days. Some progressive farmers think the heavily regulated moniker doesn’t go far enough and want go“Beyond Organic.”

    By: Jessica Naudziunas
  • Roaming with buffalo

    Carol Klein raises buffalo on a small ranch tucked into the short hills of southwestern Missouri, about 10 minutes from the Arkansas state line.  

    But Klein is more than a buffalo farmer, she’s sort of a buffalo enthusiast. Her wood-paneled walls are adorned with framed buffalo art and mounted buffalo sculpture; the towels in her bathroom have embroidered buffalo heads stitched onto each end. Klein has named her dozen or so buffalo with grand titles like King George, though others get more familiar-sounding, almost nicknames like her favorite, Tootsie.

    But after 15 years running Oakcreek Buffalo Ranch, Klein says 2011 might be her last as a buffalo rancher.  Her husband and ranch partner Joel passed away last year, it hasn’t rained almost all summer and now her adult buffalo will likely not breed this year because there’s just not enough grass to go around.

    You see, the same drought gripping Texas and Kansas is now creeping up into southwest Missouri.

    By: Jessica Naudziunas