Katie Peikes
Reporter, Iowa Public RadioI report on agriculture and rural issues for Harvest Public Media from Ames, Iowa and am based at Iowa Public Radio.
I’ve been with Iowa Public Radio since July 2018. Before moving over to the agriculture beat in January 2021, I was IPR’s first-ever western Iowa reporter, based in Sioux City. I covered the 2019 Missouri River Flooding and the 2020 Iowa caucuses, among other things.
I previously reported on the environment, agriculture and rural issues at Delaware Public Media, tackling stories on water quality, climate change and the poultry industry. Before that, I cut my teeth at a newspaper in northern Utah, where I covered local government and education. I am originally from a suburb of Hartford, Connecticut.
You can contact me at kpeikes@iowapublicradio.org or through Twitter @kpeikes.
-
State officials and scientists are cautioning backyard flock owners to be on high alert for bird flu. The highly contagious disease has reached small flocks in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska.
-
Farmers till their land to prepare soil for planting, but a new study published in the journal “Earth’s Future” found topsoil in the Midwest is eroding on average nearly 2 millimeters per year.
-
In the Midwest, Wisconsin and Michigan are the biggest producers of maple syrup, but there is a lot of untapped potential for maple syrup in the lower Midwest.
-
Poultry producers and backyard flock owners are watching closely as a deadly strain of bird flu spreads across the eastern half of the U.S.
-
A highly contagious pig disease most recently has been detected in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
-
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced funding for pilot projects geared toward curbing greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture.
-
Vertical farms stack rows of plants on top of each other. Those indoor farms control the lighting, water and temperature to create ideal conditions to grow fresh produce year-round close to customers. But the industry relies on artificial lighting and has a large carbon footprint.
-
A group of scientists, including Iowa State University researchers, used chemistry to convert the powerful greenhouse gas methane into safer chemicals that serve as the base for some plastics.
-
Two proposals for carbon pipelines throughout the Midwest would pipe carbon dioxide from dozens of ethanol plants to rock formations in North Dakota and Illinois where the CO2 would be buried deep underground. Rock formations like the Mount Simon Sandstone offer the ability to bury the carbon for “eons of time” more than a mile below the surface.
-
United Auto Workers members at John Deere are back at work after ending their 5-week strike Wednesday night.