PHOTO BY ANITA STIENSTRA If there was ever a dynamic duo in the performing singer-songwriter world, these two seasoned performers and musicians could most certainly fit the bill. The combination of Jill Manning’s rough and ready, lovely and literate voice backed by the superb and sublime, intense and intentional guitar playing of Jaigh Lowder is […]
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Ag experts: Farm bill delay endangers food supply
As Congress wrestles over an agriculture bill that will set policy for the next five years, local farmers and ag experts worry the delay could endanger a variety of important programs when the current bill expires at the end of September. The Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate passed a so-called “Farm Bill” in June, while the Republican-controlled […]
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Neighbors must pay damages for delaying hog shed
An appellate court in Springfield says opponents of a pig farm outside Rochester must pay for delaying the project. However, neither side is overly happy with the outcome. “It’s a mixed bag,” says Springfield attorney Thomas Immel. His client, Rochester pig farmer Robert Young, won a $24,000 award of damages earlier this month – far […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Heirs to FutureGen land oppose project
All six heirs to nearly 40 percent of the land promised to FutureGen 2.0 want the “clean” coal project to go away, says Jeffery and Betty Niemann, Jacksonville residents related to the late Bill Beilschmidt. Beilschmidt, upon his death in 1999, placed more than 600 acres of land located near Ashland in two separate trusts […]
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Documentary targets toxic chemicals
Biologist Dr. Sandra Steingraber describes her 1997 book, Living Downstream, as a sort of love story between her and Pekin, the place she grew up and where she lived when she learned in her early 20s that she had bladder cancer. The book, throughout which Steingraber threads her personal story, examines evidence linking cancer to […]
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Feds censure state on farm waste
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says Illinois fails to regulate manure from certain livestock farms, calling on the state to completely revamp its system of oversight or risk losing its enforcement authority. In a report released in late September, the U.S. EPA says the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency has not fully implemented a federally mandated […]
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Why are there so few black farmers?
Urging his fellow lawmakers to release funding for a discrimination lawsuit originally settled more than a decade ago, U.S. Sen. Roland Burris last month pointed to the increasingly homogenous culture that is Illinois farming. The still unreleased funding would go to farmers, or former farmers, who had been affected by systematic racial bias in the […]
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Farmer sells produce online
Summertime farmers markets have helped Chad Wallace of Oak Tree Organics prove the worth of small-scale, organic farming. But they’ve also taught him that packing up the produce and putting on the sometimes thrice-weekly show takes about as much effort as minding the land, plants and free-range hens that surround his Ashland home. “Everybody’s got […]
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Should pig opponents have to pay?
A contested hog farm in Rochester is once again the topic of debate as the group formed to stop the farm’s construction fights to avoid paying almost $300,000 in damages. Last month, the Illinois 4th District Appellate Court ruled that Rochester farmer Robert Young was entitled to damages caused by an injunction that delayed the […]
