What do you get when a chemist pokes his head into a physicist’s Iowa laboratory? Something very, very small. Two Central Iowa professors and a college-based venture capital incubator are behind the nanotechnology introduced in ExpresSeed, a new, portable genetic detection system. Developed by Aaron Santos and Derek Lyons at Simpson College, the…
The 2019 BIO World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology is headed to Des Moines. The Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) says the industry convention will be held July 8-11, 2019, and will host executives, investors, policy makers and researchers from around the world. The 2018 BIO World Congress is scheduled for July 16-19 in…
The National Farmers Union and the Natural Resources Conservation Service have developed a free tool to help farmers and ranchers improve soil conservation. The Resource Stewardship Evaluation Tool uses an evaluation to point landowners toward goals. Aaron Lehman, a fifth-generation family farmer in Polk County, was one of the first…
Successful Farming tells the story of Premium Standard Farms, which sought to modernize hog confinements in Iowa decades ago but was chased off to Missouri after working on a development near Ledges State Park.
Successful Farming reports that farms are turning to technology at a time when laborers can be hard to find. In the Corn Belt, that can mean bigger rigs with more automation — though some startups are working on smaller units that drive themselves. In California, Driscoll’s is developing robotics to pick…
Agriculture and its related industries pump $112.2 billion a year into Iowa’s economy — accounting for one-third of the dollars driving Iowa’s economy — and create one out of every five jobs in the state. Iowa farms grow more corn, raise more pigs and produce more eggs than any state…