Award-winning investigative journalist Mc Nelly Torres will continue leading the nonprofit newsroom after two months as interim editor. She brings years of experience uncovering inequality, mentoring reporters and building partnerships across newsrooms.

Increasingly, pesticides are being blamed for rising cancer rates across America’s agricultural communities.  Hardin County, home to around 800 farms, has a pesticide use rate more than four times the...

Investigate Midwest is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Our mission is to serve the public interest by serving as a watchdog over influential agricultural corporations and institutions through in-d...

Uncovering the Hidden Environmental Impact of an Industrial-scale Hog Farm

When a poultry farm tests positive for bird flu, the clock starts. Within the first 72 hours, farmers start depopulating, an industry term for killing contaminated flocks. Despite the sweltering heat ...

After forcing the departure of several hundred U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists and inspectors who prevent invasive pest and disease outbreaks, the Trump administration is trying to reverse c...

Several hundred federal employees who help keep invasive pests and plant diseases out of the United States have accepted buyout offers from the Trump administration, which could leave the agricultural...

When faced with generic competition, Syngenta tried to prevent cheaper pesticide options from reaching farmers, court records show. The company said it was protecting its investments and helping consu...

Following judges’ orders, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has begun reinstating employees who were fired en masse in February. But now, many of those workers who are being paid not to perform any d...

More than a dozen recently fired USDA employees told Investigate Midwest that mass terminations have stalled irrigation projects, rural housing aid and efforts to combat invasive crop diseases. Remain...

More than a dozen recently fired USDA employees told Investigate Midwest that mass terminations have stalled irrigation projects, rural housing aid and efforts to combat invasive crop diseases. Remain...

Farmers have begun raising concerns about the potential impact of President Donald Trump’s mass deportations on their operations, but the president’s nominee for agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins,...

Bob Hemesath has spent his entire life on his Northeast Iowa farm, raising corn and hogs alongside his brother. His business depends on open global markets and stable trade agreements. But under Donal...

President Donald Trump has significantly reduced staffing within a civil rights office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency currently investigating dozens of complaints, including two involving...

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EPA data shows meatpacking plants disproportionately pollute low-income, communities of color. Postville, Iowa, has long dealt with the fallout.

Tyson Foods says recent plant closures ‘drove out waste from the business.’ Contract chicken farmers are now stuck with uncertainty and massive loans.

How Seaboard Foods rebuilt the Oklahoma panhandle’s economy, which ushered in a new era of groundwater depletion.

Two Mexican farmworkers died in a trailer fire in North Carolina. Their story illustrates how the nation’s most important agricultural visa program is failing the workers it is supposed to protect.

Workers were told their injuries were “break-in pain,” soreness that comes from adjusting to life in a meatpacking plant. But some injuries were severe enough to warrant additional testing and treatme...

Internal company records show the companies knew crop damage from their weed killer would be extensive. They sold it anyway.

CONESVILLE, Iowa — The deductions frustrated him.  “You earn money faster” in the U.S. than in Mexico, the man said in Spanish. But the deductions in every paycheck slowed his earnings, and he and his...

Key takeaways: * Ethics experts said the best way to avoid appearances of conflicts of interest is for public officials to sell their business interests. Pillen's most recent financial disclosure, fro...

A crew of farmworkers claimed they were sprayed with pesticides. What should have been a “rapid response” was a “big mess.”

USA TODAY and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting spent five months piecing together the pivotal moments in the Triumph Foods outbreak, interviewing more than a dozen current and former wor...

American farmers produce nearly all of the country’s food and contribute some $133 billion annually to the gross domestic product. Yet they now are saddled with near-record debt, declaring bankruptcy ...

Investigate Midwest is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Our mission is to serve the public interest by exposing dangerous and costly practices of influential agricultural corporations and instituti...