Iowa Stops Hunger

Business Record reporter Lisa Rossi chats with Luke Elzinga, DMARC’s policy and advocacy manager, about how policy decisions and legislation can affect people experiencing hunger — directly or indirectly. They discuss the repercussions of H.R. 1, the “Big Beautiful Bill,” and Iowa’s new regulations on SNAP purchases and the revamped Summer EBT program.

Iowa State University distinguished professor and historian Pamela Riney-Kehrberg joins us once again to discuss the Farm Crisis of the 1980s. American farmers and agricultural communities nationwide — and especially in Iowa — were thrown into economic turmoil after several missteps coalesced into a farming bust. Policies and practices that helped the nation recover continue to shape the agricultural sector today.

Deb Fenton-Roe is a Wapello County Veterans Affairs Commissioner and co-coordinator of the Veterans Mobile Food Bank in Wapello, one of only two veteran-specific distributions in Iowa. As a United States veteran herself, she feels passionate about helping others who served to access benefits they need. She talks us through how she gets involved and how others can help veterans in their area.

Iowa State University distinguished professor and historian Pamela Riney-Kehrberg talks through the history of food assistance in the United States. Over the years, different administrations have reshaped the original Food Stamps model into the SNAP system we know today.

There’s just nothing like Iowa ... shrimp. Midland Co. founder Jackson Kimle in Ames explains how he plans to turn Iowa’s new shrimp farms into a jumbo business.

Through a program called Global Greens, Lutheran Services of Iowa helps hundreds of immigrants and refugees produce and sell many of the kinds of fruits and vegetables they enjoyed in their homelands. In this episode, a truly global farming team explains how the program just keeps growing.

Knowing about nutrition and putting it into practice are very different things. Katie Hassler and Corey Lewis, two health coaches with Broadlawns Primary Care Clinic in Des Moines, explain how they help clients make better choices, even if they have limited access to healthy food.

Iowa has some of the most fertile farmland in the world. Katie McVey with Central Iowa Shelter & Services explains how she makes the most of it — even in downtown Des Moines, where trainees cultivate crops and job skills at the same time.

Iowa prides itself on feeding the world, but here at home, the benefits of that legacy aren’t shared equally. Shaffer Ridgeway from Southern Goods in Waterloo and Jonathan Lawrence from the Iowa Farmers Union and Eat Greater Des Moines explain how their programs are lowering barriers for farmers of color.