Feature Winners - 2024

Category description: Entries in this category take a broader or more human look at an important or interesting agricultural issue, event or experience. A feature story may be longer and more in-depth than a news story. One story or package of stories (sidebars or secondary stories) published together on a single day is a single entry in this category.

Number of entries: 49

Judge’s comments about the competition: Although I enjoyed judging this contest because of all the great stories that were entered, I found it very difficult to pick the winners because there really aren’t any losers in this contest. I grew up on a farm, so all of these stories resonate with me. The research and writing is superb, and I truly wish I could give first place to every story I read.

Judge: Patricia McNeely taught writing and reporting at the University of South Carolina before retiring in 2006. She was previously a reporter, editor and columnist for The Greenville (S.C.) News, The (S.C.) State and The Columbia (S.C.) Record.

 

Judge’s comments: Powerful and well-written account of farmers whose ancestral farm lands are being claimed through eminent domain for a pipeline scheduled to run through South Dakota. The reporter takes us through the stages of disbelief, anger, pain, hopelessness, despair and finally helplessness felt by farmers whose families have owned the land for generations.

SECOND PLACE — Madison McVan, Minnesota Reformer

Sugarland: Inside Minnesota’s massive, powerful sugar industry — 11/17/2023

Judge’s comments: The reporter dipped deeply into the $11 billion sugar beet industry supported by a protectionist federal program that raises the price of American sugar well above world levels by strictly limiting imports. With clarity and excellent writing, the reporter describes the policy that enriches the few thousand farmers who grow the crop and explains how food processors are pushed to use alternative sweeteners like high-fructose corn syrup or move operations to countries with cheaper sugar.

THIRD PLACE — Lisa Held, Civil Eats

Walmart’s ‘Regenerative Foodscape’ — 11/1/2023

Judge’s comments: Well-researched and well-written article about Walmart’s efforts to redefine itself as a regenerative company that is at odds with its low-cost model. The reporter explains how  the Walton family’s vast investments in regenerative agriculture have the potential to remake the marketplace. 

HONORABLE MENTIONS

—Grey Moran, Civil Eats

Paraquat, the deadliest chemical in US agriculture, goes on trial — 3/22/2023

Judge’s comments: Excellent reporting and writing about the lawsuits filed by thousands of farmers, linking the herbicide to Parkinson’s disease as the EPA is reconsidering its analysis of Paraquat risks.

—Gabriel Pietrorazio, Central Current
Onondaga Nation’s ‘Seven Buffalo Maple Syrup Co.’ taps into tradition — 4/3/2023

Judge’s comments: The Onondaga are one of three Haudenosaunee communities managing Nation-owned or affiliated syrup-tapping operations. This well-told story takes us inside the company that is founded and run with the traditions of their ancestors.

—Marc Heller, E&E News GreenWire
Drought parches America's breadbasket — 5/4/2023

Judge’s comments: Well-written story about farms in southwest Kansas that are desert dry in every direction during one of the worst droughts to hit this part of the Plains in decades. The reporter describes how farmers who are short on pasture and feed have sent a quarter or even a third of their cattle to slaughter, and explains that thousands of acres may not produce a meaningful wheat crop if the region doesn't receive significant and repeated rainfall.

—Mónica Cordero, Investigate Midwest/Report for America & Eva Tesfaye, Harvest Public Media


Poor regulatory safeguards leave farmworkers suffocating in the face of increasing heat waves— 8/24/2023

Judge’s comments: Well-researched article explaining that a fifth of reported heat-related deaths between 2017 and 2022 were agricultural workers, according to OSHA data. The reporters found that academics, occupational health specialists and advocacy groups are calling attention to the under-reported impact of climate change on this group from heatwaves.


—Marcia Brown, Politico
‘Rome’s burning’: Small farmers complain Biden administration is fiddling as they vanish — 9/26/2023

Judge’s comments: Good writing and reporting about small farmers and anti-monopoly groups who say the Agriculture Department’s policy changes aren’t aggressive enough to restore the ranks of America’s smaller farms.


—Twilight Greenaway, Civil Eats
This Network of Regenerative Farmers is Rethinking Chicken — 8/16/2023

Judge’s comments: Excellent research and writing in an article that describes a pioneering effort to simultaneously raise chickens while protecting and nurturing the ecosystem. The reporter describes in clear and interesting detail the process of raising the birds in one spot beside trees and other perennial crops as a way to build soil that is rich with organic matter and carbon while also capturing and storing water and making the land more resilient in the face of the climate crisis.

—Ilena Peng, Bloomberg News
Florida’s Battered Orange Growers Are Cashing in on a Housing Boom — 10/16/2023

Judge’s comments: Using excellent research and writing, the reporter describes how, after two decades of plagues, storms and freezes, Florida’s signature orange crops are in eclipse as Citrus Greening Disease kills trees and land values climb.


—Victoria Myers, Progressive Farmer/DTN
Balancing While the Bulls Run — 4/30/2023

Judge’s comments: The reporter does an excellent job of describing the hectic spring schedule as calves start hitting the ground in Colorado’s Yampa Valley amid predictions that the long-term outlook for cattle prices is expected to stay strong into 2025.