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Sioux City Food Pantry Looking for a New Home, Wet Fields Delay Planting, 5:32

A Sioux City food pantry that is being evicted is looking at its next steps. 

Staff at the Midtown Family Community Center are looking for a new home. The building where they’ve served people for 11 years has been sold, and they’re being evicted this month.

The food pantry serves more than 5,000 people each month, including at least 3,000 children. Janet Reynolds is the center’s coordinator.  She calls the area a “food desert”.

(0:16) One, because there’s not a lot of grocery stores to purchase groceries and two, because of how densely populated the area is and the fact that the majority of the people that live in this are below poverty level.

The center has not had to pay rent or utilities. Reynolds says staff was told if they come up with a few thousand dollars to cover utilities, they can stay through the summer.  I’m Katie Peikes, Iowa Public Radio news.

Record-setting rainfall and the flooding that has followed continue to stymie planting for many farmers across the Midwest.  all that water may become the new normal. (:09)

Spring 2019 is living up to scientists’ predictions of increased severe weather. Iowa State University climate scientist Gene Tackle says warmer oceans and stronger air currents are delivering more spring rains to the central U.S.

0605tackle1 It’s very likely that this kind of flooding that we’re experiencing this year is going to be more likely in the future. (:06)  

Which may mean farmers have to adjust. Shannon Moeller of the Iowa Seed Association says cover crops can help fields dry out. Still, some farmers are weeks behind with corn planting.

0605moeller My own farming family, we planted some corn over the weekend in some not ideal conditions just because we were able to finally get the tractor through the field. (:10)

And even this late into the season, the trade war bailout from Uncle Sam creates an incentive for farmers to plant rather than file insurance claims for unplanted acres. 

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