Kate Grumke
Senior Environmental Reporter, STLPRI report on agriculture and rural issues for Harvest Public Media and am the Senior Environmental Reporter at St. Louis Public Radio, my hometown NPR station.
I started at STLPR as an education reporter, covering late night school board meetings and tagging along on field trips. Before moving back to Missouri, I spent more than five years producing award-winning television in Washington, D.C., most recently at the PBS NewsHour. In that work I climbed to the top of a wind turbine in Iowa, helped plan the environmental section of a presidential debate and produced multiple news-documentaries on energy and the environment.
I graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and hold a certificate in data journalism from Columbia University’s Lede Program.
You can reach me at kgrumke@stlpr.org or follow me on social media @kgrumke.
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The flu has been found in cows for the first time, but most cattle seem to be showing only mild symptoms and recovering from the illness. Officials say the pasteurization process means milk remains safe. -
Total solar eclipses occur every year or two, but it is exceedingly rare for the paths of two of them to intersect only a handful of years apart, as it has in a swath of southern Missouri and Illinois. -
Scientists have looked at decades of data on trees and other native Missouri plants blooming. As the region warms, plants like the dogwood are reacting by changing their bloom times. -
While solar power increased, wind energy fell in 2023 in Missouri and Illinois, according to a new report from Climate Central, a nonprofit that analyzes and reports on climate science. -
As part of a policy of aggressive residency investigations, dozens of middle school students were handed disenrollment letters and shown the door in the Hazelwood School District in late February and early March. -
A dry winter, El Niño and the warmest winter temperatures on record are contributing to ongoing dry conditions across the Midwest. -
The statewide effort to clean up drinking water was prompted by a 2022 Missouri law, and more than $27 million has been set aside to fix the problems. -
Aging farmers and fewer farms in the new agriculture census should be a 'wake up call,' says VilsackThe average farmer in the U.S. is now 58 years old, according to the Census of Agriculture, released Tuesday. There are also fewer farms in the country than there were in the last census. -
The finicky plants are threatened by habitat loss and climate change, but as the Missouri Botanical Garden works to conserve them, scientists are learning the difficulties of growing native orchids in a lab. -
The Environmental Protection Agency is beginning to send nearly 5,000 electric buses to school districts around the country after a nearly two-year ramp-up. A few Midwestern districts weigh in on how the new buses are working so far.
