Alex Milan Tracy for Underscore
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The dozens of independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan news organizations that make up the Rural News Network are developing the broadest news alliance reporting on rural America. These newsrooms are pursuing coverage that provides a more complete picture of what it means to live and work in these communities.
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LATEST NEWS FROM THE NETWORK
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Meat Processing Plant Complaint Highlights Supply Chain Disruptions — And How the Meat Industry Isn’t Prepared
March 03, 2026
Supply chain disruptions may be on the rise throughout the industry for a host of reasons, including weather, labor issues and cybersecurity threats.
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Republicans’ New Farm Bill Takes Aim at Animal Welfare and Pesticide Regulations
February 25, 2026
But the bill faces steep odds of passage in a sharply-divided Congress.
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Manure-to-Energy Digesters Were Sold as a Climate Fix. Now the USDA Is Hitting Pause.
February 17, 2026
A 90-day pause due to “loan delinquency” may signal that the viability of anaerobic digesters is being scrutinized at the federal level.
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Cattle Raised for Beef Are Heavier Than Ever, Raising New Concerns in the Industry About Animal Health and Welfare
February 13, 2026
A retired Cargill meat scientist urged the industry to take seriously a growing list of health concerns, including lameness, heat stress, congestive heart failure and late-term deaths in feedyards.
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People Can Give Cows Tuberculosis, But We Rarely Look For It
January 26, 2026
Cattle with drug-resistant tuberculosis lead researchers to call for better monitoring of cross-species transmission of TB.
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What Surprised Us Most in 2025
December 30, 2025
Reporting on one of the most undercovered news issues of our time, industrial animal agriculture (commonly known as factory farming), means we are constantly uncovering new and surprising details in our work.
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How America’s Largest Meat Company Leverages Palantir’s Surveillance Tech
November 13, 2025
America’s largest meat company, Tyson Foods, became an early commercial adopter of the software in 2020, establishing a blueprint for how large food corporations can leverage Palantir’s surveillance technology.
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Trump’s Tariffs Have U.S. Soybean Farmers Looking for Buyers
October 20, 2025
President Trump’s trade war has hit America’s biggest agricultural export.
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How a U.S. Government Shutdown Affects Agriculture and Farmers
October 14, 2025
While SNAP payments and food safety inspections continue, disaster payments, farm loans and federal workers’ pay are on hold indefinitely.
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Police Bodycams Reveal Pattern of Deference to Meat Industry
October 10, 2025
State troopers cited concerns about animal rights activists as justification for blocking journalists from livestock crash sites.
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In the Arizona Desert, Where Your Neighbor Is an Alfalfa Farm
October 06, 2025
Water resource “hedge funds” and corporate farms are running the desert dry.
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Analysis: 96.2% of Climate News Stories Don’t Cover Animal Agriculture as a Pollution Source
September 26, 2025
Sentient Media set out to analyze how often climate news reports animal agriculture as a cause of climate change.
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EPA Drops Proposed Rules to Limit Slaughterhouse Waste Pollution
September 11, 2025
Livestock operations in the U.S. produce 1.4 billion tons of manure and other waste, much of which is stored until it can be applied to crop fields, where mis- and overapplication can lead to the leaching of nutrients into nearby waterways.
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Water Pollution Fight in Iowa Hits a Snag as EPA Removes Rivers from ‘Impaired’ List
September 02, 2025
High nitrate concentrations are driven in part by agriculture in Iowa, where livestock operations produce 109 billion pounds of manure each year. Fertilizer runoff from both synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and livestock manure washes excess nitrogen into rivers, streams and groundwater.
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In Rural Pennsylvania, a Free-Range Chicken Farm and Solar Project Is Not What It Seems
August 18, 2025
At a township hearing, a developer revealed the 350,000 chickens would be kept mostly separate from the solar panels and probably “don’t go outside much.”
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