Abbie Fentress Swanson
Abbie Fentress Swanson left KBIA at the end of 2013.
Abbie Fentress Swanson joined Harvest Public Media in 2012 and is based at KBIA Radio in Columbia, Missouri. Before that, she covered arts and culture for WNYC Radio in New York. There she was part of a team that won an Online News Association award in 2012 and an Associated Press award in 2010 for outstanding digital news coverage. In 2011, she won the Garden State Journalists Association "Best Radio Feature" award for "Music Therapy Helps Vets Control Symptoms of PTSD." Reporting fellowships prior to WNYC took her to Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, India, Germany, the Czech Republic and Belgium. Abbie's travels led to multimedia stories on a wide range of subjects -- from the World Cup in South Africa, to the gay rights movement in India, to San Francisco's immigration court. She's filed stories for The New York Times, The Patriot Ledger, KALW Public Radio, The World, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Abbie holds a master's degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor's degree in Italian studies from the College of William & Mary. Check her out on twitter @dearabbie.
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Corn production was down last year thanks to drought. This year, conditions are too cold and wet for farmers to plant the crop. Without a break in the clouds pretty soon, there may be another shortage of the crop at harvest time. -
The world's largest retailer says its investing in one of the fastest growing segments of American agriculture: local food. But small farmers say they aren't necessarily seeing the benefits.
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In the coming year, the USDA predicts that American corn exports will be at a 40-year low. That's because the U.S. drought has led to a corn shortage and high domestic corn prices. To adapt, grain exporters have had to change their business models.
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Investors looking for safer and more profitable investments have been buying farmland across the Midwest, and the price of land is rising fast. But some economists say cropland prices can't go up forever and that investors are turning farmland into a bubble.
