NAAJ Ongoing Coverage or Series Winners - 2024

Entries in this category contain three or more stories focused on an agricultural issue, trend or event. Entrees may be either stories published as part of ongoing coverage or in a planned series, but should objectively explore the subject in great depth from various points of view. A collection of at least three stories published on more than one day is a single entry. Limit of TWO entries per entrant. (Individual stories from this category also may be entered in one of the single-story categories.)

Number of entries: 25

Judge’s comments about the competition: This contest featured 25 entries by good journalists and teams of good writers, so I had no problem saluting six entries with honorable mentions beyond the first, second, and third place winners. More such tributes were deserved, but I had to stop somewhere. Judging from the entries, it seems NAAJ is where the best North American ag news writers gather.

Judge: Ed Maixner grew up on the Flying M Ranch and in North Dakota, reported agriculture among other things for three daily newspapers in the state. He served as agricultural aide in Congress in the 1990s, as editor of the Kiplinger Agriculture Letter for a decade, and wrote for Farm Progress News and Agri-Pulse until his retirement. He is a NAAJ past president and was an active member for 25 years.

 

FIRST PLACE — Jacqui Fatka, Agri-Pulse

The Great Farm and Food Talent Search — 2/7/2023

– Finding good help is always tough. In agriculture, it’s getting tougher

– Compensation conundrum: It’s more than just a salary

– Training the next generation of ag and food workers takes innovative approaches

– The ripple effects of ag’s immigrant challenges

– How technology can help solve agriculture’s labor woes

Judge’s comments: Jacqui Fatka’s five-part series reminds readers of the June 2023 U.S. workforce wakeup call when nearly 4 million workers disappeared in one month from the nation’s labor force. She then takes readers on a tour of factors why the recent and likely future shrinkage is happening and what that means for the American ag-food sector — addressing demographics, emerging technology, immigration and H2A challenges, trends in work habits and preferences in age groups top to bottom, where and how ag industry, groups, educators, and farms are trying to entice and prepare new workers. And more. She grabbed a bull by the horns and drug it to the turf, with clarity and solid sources. Several writers similarly attacked big targets very successfully in this series category. I thought this one was best.

Judge’s comments: Ed White’s 10 takes about rye grain and Rye whiskey are no eulogy about a minor crop fading into Canadian farming history, he says. No. He’s thinking bounce-back crop. His rye pieces take readers from European prehistory, to western Canada farms, hybrid breeding, high-yield varieties, harvest, feed, bakeries, distilleries and rye bread, which boasts a stubborn popularity in some markets. [I must here acknowledge I helped raise rye in the ’50s and ’60s on a western North Dakota farm where rye was not the main crop but a pet crop. Dad loved the limited inputs, low production costs, and the way it protected the soil and retrained weeds: rye demands little but gives a lot, he thought.].

Judge’s comments: For four months after a Norfolk Southern train derailed in February 2023 crossing through East Palestine, Ohio, Farm & Dairy Editor Rachel Wagoner did the conventional reporting well on the local disaster. The wreck included the emergency burning off of five carloads of vinyl chloride in a ditch there, which cast a huge toxic plume over the area. Besides reporting the official emergency activity and the follow-up testing of soil, crop, and water, she quickly dug into and reported on the countless efforts of residents and group in the area to help neighbors, board livestock and pets a while away from the hazardous wreck site, and finally, how nearby farms and fields were doing four months later. Local reporting at its best.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

— Katie Micik Dehlinger, Jason Jenkins, Elaine Shein, DTN/Progressive Farmer

Digital Yield Tour 2023 – 8/7/2023

Judge’s comments: News series on big crop tours aren’t a new thing, but Katie Dehlinger and colleagues are impressively thorough in a seven-part series on the annual DTN Digital Yields Tour around major corn and soybean growing areas of the Midwest and Plains. The stories advise when and where it’s coming, details how it’s done and how its system is evolving with the survey’s “array of public and private crop and environmental data including NASA’s satellite imagery, land surface temperatures, rainfall,” USDA surveys, new artificial intelligence stuff, and more, then uses top sources and video interviews to help assess why the corn and beans yield projections in each region are what comes up on the DTN screen. [Not to be picky or detract from this fine work, I hope, but as an Atlantic Coast region resident and North Dakota native, perhaps anything unusual or notable in the outlook for other corn and soybean states not in the tour itself would be good in mention, if such exceptions occur.]

— Lisa Held, Civil Eats

The Farm Bill – 3/20/2023

This Farm Bill Really Matters. We Explain Why.

Climate Change Is Walloping US Farms. Can This Farm Bill Create Real Solutions?

This Farm Bill Could Reshape the Food System. Here Are 10 Proposals at the Center of the Fight.

Judge’s comments: News reporters know they can do a robust job but get left at the altar when major players in  story disappear. Up to its usual dithering, Congress fell on its 2023 farm bill face last year instead of proceeding to pass a new bill, as the current law expired. Lisa Held served Civil Eats readers three helpings of legislative hor d’oeuvres — a readable and clear guide to some primary farm bill issues Congress faced, then left town instead of acting. Congress does that a lot. Oh well. I can’t control Congressional whimsy, either, but I can salute good reporting.

— Des Keller & Courtney Leeper Girgis, Successful Farming

In Her Field – 5/1/2023

The Cream of the Crop: Ashley Bridges McMurry knows the long road to success is seldom straight

An Early Start: Hannah Klitz started her direct-to-consumer beef business as a college sophomore. Now she sells premium products across the U.S.

The Fabric of Family: A business built on a near-tragedy and a mother’s dream

Judge’s comments: The writers joined to write about three successful farm based direct marketing operations: cotton and Guernsey Dairy Girl in the Carolinas and Oak Barn Beef in Nebraska. All three featured women following their life occupational dreams from childhood —with major support from their husbands — and they are succeeding. The stories boil down the lesson from all three: Don’t over-worry. Just start! 

— Russ Quinn, DTN/Progressive Farmer

Global Fertilizer Outlook – 12/4/2023

Global Nitrogen Fertilizer Supply, Demand Outlook Generally Favorable

Lower Prices, More Demand Globally, Thanks to Increased Phosphorus Fertilizer Supplies

Positive Potash Outlook Seen With Lower Prices, More Global Demand, Higher Supply

Judge’s comments: In December, as the deadline for this contest loomed, Russ Quinn gave farmers, crop enhancement dealers and shipper a solid three-part outlook for important 2024 supply and demand factors, each addressing one of the three main types of field crop fertilizers, just as such folks were trying to plan their crop enhancement orders and uses for this crop year. A great job weaving global and U.S. info on those factors, using solid info and sources for estimates and projections. He likely saved many of them some dollars and stress in 2024.

— Gabriel Pietrorazio, KJZZ’s Fronteras Desk

Back From the Brink – 10/16/2023

From killer to caretaker: How and why Charles Jesse Jones brought buffalo to the Kaibab Plateau

The Grand Canyon is struggling to control its buffalo population. Tribes are stepping up to help

Back from the brink of extinction: A conversation with Ken Burns on ‘The American Buffalo’

Judge’s comments: In a three-part package for this Arizona public radio outlet, Pietrorazio expands a slice of a Ken Burns’ American buffalo documentary to detail how Charles Jesse Jones brought buffalo to Arizona’s Kaibab Plateau and the Grand Canyon in the late 19th Century, along with Jones’ efforts at bison-cattle hybrid breeding (called catalo). His other piece reports the 1990s birth and current efforts of the Intertribal Buffalo Council to reestablish buffalo with western tribes and to support a robust role for buffalo with native American communities. The series ends with a Pietrorazio-Burns discussion of tribal cultural bonds with the buffalo.

— Todd Neeley, Chris Clayton, DTN/Progressive Farmer

Sustainable Aviation Fuel – 1/31/2023

Ethanol Market Taking Flight With SAF

Sustainable Aviation Fuel Future Foggy

Ag, Airlines Want GREET Model on SAF

Buis: Carbon Capture Ag’s Big Moment

Biden SAF Action Pivotal for Biofuels

Judge’s comments: This five-part series reports the birth of Sustainable Aviation Fuel  in the U.S., including the first big SAF contract between a major airline and a big ethanol refiner. It then provides a clear picture of potential impact on the U.S. ethanol industry, the emerging regulations and tax incentives to entice SAF production, and reports the Biden administration’s and ethanol producers’ hopes for a significant SAF role in climate friendly U.S. fuel usage.