Barn Raiser

Your independent source for rural and small town news

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

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[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

The food hub model has been gaining momentum since the 1990s and has blossomed in the last decade and a half in response to growing interest in local food, from Washington to Wisconsin. The USDA has taken a strong interest in hubs as a way to support and stabilize local food systems, issuing several relevant publications, offering technical assistance and grants, and maintaining an online food-hub directory.

(From 2023)

https://t.co/dJTLSgXBhq

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

In Crossing the Driftless: A Canoe Trip through a Midwestern Landscape (2015), author and long-time paddler Lynne Diebel recounts a 359-mile trip by canoe and portage that she and her husband made in 2009 from Faribault, Minn., to Stoughton, Wis. https://t.co/J6yZGcYGBH

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

A kelp farm in New York's Shinnecock Bay is helping restore marine habitat, absorb excess nitrogen, and create new economic opportunities for the Shinnecock Indian Nation. It's also the product of an unusual partnership between Indigenous women farmers and Catholic sisters. (From 2023)

https://t.co/E4FjQ3oBSR

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

Scientists warn that reducing our demand for meat is needed to mitigate climate change. Do insects provide the answer? (From 2023)

https://t.co/xZdso8L3Lr

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

On March 25, the Iowa Environmental Council and The Harkin Institute released a report addressing the rising cancer rates in the state, the result of painstaking work and 16 cancer listening sessions in all corners of the state. High levels of four major exposures—pesticides, nitrate, PFAS or ‘forever chemicals’ and radon—are all linked to cancer risk and are ubiquitous across the state, the report found.

“Iowans deserve to know what risks we are facing,” the authors of the report write.

https://t.co/gu94w0jqCm

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

From Rural Organizing: The Harris-Walz Rural Team Could Have Written the DNC Autopsy Report on Day One

https://t.co/XJS54u8Ftu

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

Farmers are searching for immigration reform like a lost desert wanderer scanning the horizon for water. But the oasis always turns out to be a mirage.

Will this finally be the year for meaningful reform?

https://t.co/RDFb8cTYIz

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

With many rural churches closing their doors, the Riverhill Baptist Church in southwest Virginia has found a way to thrive for over 150 years.

https://t.co/Fia5wvU3zu

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

The VHA is the nation’s only socialized medicine system—albeit one that serves a small slice of the American population. Like the United Kingdom or Scandinavian health care systems, the government owns and operates all VA health care facilities, and all VA employees are on salary. VA physicians are not paid on a fee-for-service basis but are salaried and thus have no incentive to overtreat patients because they benefit financially from delivering unnecessary treatments or procedures. For example, studies have shown that the VA is the only health care system that follows standard of care for patients with low-risk prostate cancer, which is watchful waiting. Outside of VA, men with low-risk prostate cancer are far more likely to receive unnecessary surgery or invasive radiation treatment.

https://t.co/xfYWNAOOWC

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

Bayer, the parent company that bought Roundup manufacturer Monsanto in 2018, has faced over 100,000 lawsuits from tens of thousands of people who say they developed non-Hodgkins Lymphoma from exposure to Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides. https://t.co/lBPZpKUFHF

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

“At 81, my time on this planet is obviously limited,” he says. “But I’m dedicated to making sure veterans, especially younger vets, receive the same kind of excellent care I’ve received at the VA.”

Bruce Carruthers is a Vietnam veteran who served in the Army and now lives in Waynesville, North Carolina. At age 81, Carruthers could be spending more of his time with his three sons and grandchildren, traveling or focusing on the woodworking projects that he enjoys. Instead, for the last six years, he’s devoted hours each week to stop efforts to privatize the nation’s largest and only publicly funded health care system, run by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

https://t.co/xfYWNAOOWC

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

With the help of a Kickstarter campaign, Rae Garringer set out on a cross-country road trip to document and preserve the stories of rural lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and Two Spirit people across the United States. (From September 2024) https://t.co/jWqCTjOxI4

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

Antitrust expert @AustinFrerick explains how corporate monopolies captured farm bill policy, and how farmers and eaters can unite locally to fix our broken food system.

https://t.co/J6yR1nox5F

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

New: The Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais could choke off Native access to the polls in the 2026 midterm elections. In response, Native communities and organizers are putting up both legal challenges and other means of protecting voting rights.

https://t.co/YOFdjYYNSw

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

Thomas Tweed’s transformative history, Religion in the Lands That Became America: A New History, reconsiders who belongs in American religious history and what should count as religion. https://t.co/sbptE7CLdI

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

"Whereas the politics of cooperating gave people a robust sense of their capacity to get big, tough jobs done together, we increasingly come to the gloomy conclusion that 'anybody can wreck anything,' so there is no purpose in trying anything. We have been practiced in the politics of alienation, separation, and blocked initiatives rather than in any 'practices of commitment' which might 'give us the strength to get up and do what needs be done,'" Daniel Kemmis wrote in 1992.

https://t.co/mSMpEgUQYp

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

For 20 years, essayist and photographer Matt Witt has been hiking in and photographing the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in southern Oregon and northern California. It’s enough to make one marvel at the breathtaking diversity of nature’s beauty—and understand why so many people have organized for so long to protect it.

https://t.co/wpHetl3MOR

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

After decades of struggle, indigenous leaders and organizers have shown how to win against billionaires and large corporations

https://t.co/Z4bmX6T7G1

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

For Cherokee communities, plants are more than medicine or food. They’re language, history and identity — and one elder is working to keep that alive. https://t.co/hyhJgLi7RY

[Barn Raiser @Barn_Raising]

Connor Barnes' New England Mobile Slaughter is a relief for many small-time livestock farmers. It means they no longer have to load their livestock into a trailer, drop them off at the nearest processing plant and pick the meat up once the job is done. https://t.co/l466LldP8m