Jim Meadows
Reporter, Illinois Public Media/WILLI report for Harvest Public Media for Illinois Public Media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before coming to Urbana, I was a reporter at public radio station WCBU in Peoria, Illinois, dating back to 1989.
Both areas have provided plenty of opportunities to report on food, farming and rural issues over the years. I’ve covered land claim lawsuits filed against Illinois landowners by the Miami tribe, the growth of the Illinois-Iowa Farm Progress Show, and increasing awareness of the importance of the Mahomet Aquifer to residents and industry in east-central Illinois.
I first thought of broadcasting as a career when I learned my local high school in the Chicago suburbs had a low-power student radio station. WRHS in Park Forest is, sadly, no longer on the air. But it gave me my first on-air experience in the 1970s, and my first opportunities to do some reporting.
You can reach me at meadows@illinois.edu.
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The Trump administration cut off nearly all funding for food and agricultural research at universities across the country as part of the Feed the Future Initiative. While some hope Congress will restore the funding, the global research continues on a much smaller scale, funded by private donors and individual universities. -
With high prices at the grocery store, legislators across the middle of the country have moved away from sales taxes on food purchases. -
The Trump administration’s tariff announcements this week are bringing uncertainty to farmers going into planting season. Farm groups warn that retaliatory tariffs will add an additional “burden” to U.S. producers. -
Foreign investors owned about 46 million acres of U.S. farmland in 2023 — which is less than 4% of all American farmland, according to a recent report. The data comes as more states consider limiting foreign ownership of agricultural land. -
The clock is ticking for Congress to address the expired farm bill. Several groups are urging lawmakers to get an updated bill to the finish line before the end of the year. -
There were at least 27 cases of grain entrapment in the U.S. last year. OSHA recently added Missouri to the list of states where it’s emphasizing grain handling safety. -
Cultivated meat — meat grown from animal cells — is touted as a way to meet growing global demand with far fewer climate impacts. Yet two states banned the sale of cultivated meat earlier this year, and there are proposals in several Midwestern states to do the same. -
Researchers and bug enthusiasts are cooking up cicadas as sweet snacks or pizza toppings this summer. Some hope cicadas will help entomophagy – the practice of eating insects – catch on. -
It’s been a year since NASA kicked off an effort to provide farmers with useful information garnered from satellite images of Earth. The program includes research at two universities in the Midwest. -
The U.S. has lost more than 2,800 newspapers since 2005, many of them in rural areas. Now some journalists are redoubling their efforts to provide local news and trying new models in a difficult industry.
