The need for housing in southwest Iowa is so acute that each new obituary reads like a real estate listing.  "The joke is that good homes sell at the funeral home," said Manning City Clerk Dawn Meyer.This story of Iowans desperately looking for suitable housing is hardly unique to Manning. At the inaugural Iowa Rural Development Summit in 2016, organizers heard the same complaint over and over: There just is not enough housing outside of Iowa's booming metropolitan areas.The problem is widespread, affecting small communities in every corner of the state. [node:read-more:link]

Minnesota farmers saw thin profits in 2017 for the fifth consecutive year, with one-third of them losing net worth and median farm income down again compared with 2016. “There is a lot of slow bleeding going on out there,” said University of Minnesota Extension economist Dale Nordquist, who worked on the latest analysis of farm finances. “It becomes a crisis for some individual farms who don’t have a strong enough balance sheet to withstand this extended downturn.”The marginal profits don’t come as a surprise, since bumper crops in the U.S. [node:read-more:link]

China announced tariffs on $3 billion of U.S. products on Friday in response to President Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on $60 billion of Chinese produced goods. There are 128 items on China’s proposed tariffs list including wine, steel and fruit. But most importantly for Iowa, pork is also on the list.Iowa is the number one pork producing state in the country. If these tariffs come into place, not only would agricultural trade decrease as a whole, but pork prices could also fall.China is the second largest market for United State’s agricultural exports. [node:read-more:link]

Nonmetropolitan counties saw an increase in population over the last year -- the first such gain since 2011. The increase was slight and confined to rural counties that are closest to cities, according to a report from the UNH Carsey School of Public Policy. [node:read-more:link]

The availability of broadband soared from 2015 to 2016. Or did it? The claimed increase in broadband availability may have more to do with a bureaucratic change in the reporting system than in technology. [node:read-more:link]

Last year was the first of a new administration, but the job trends in 2017 were same-old, continuing the movement of jobs into the country’s major metropolitan areas.  The number of jobs increased in both rural and urban areas of the country. But the increase was fastest in metropolitan areas of a million or more people. These giant urban regions increased their share of the nation’s job pool. Smaller cities and rural areas lost share.  [node:read-more:link]

“Most U.S. farm households can’t solely rely on farm income, turning what was once a way of life into a part-time job,” the article explained, noting that 82% of U.S. farm household income is expected to come from off-farm work this year.That’s because current commodity prices are depressed and haven’t kept up with inflation over the long haul.  Compounding the problem are climbing input costs, the Journal wrote.   Chris Morrow was one of the farmers featured in the story. This 32-year-old Missourian “rises four mornings a week at 4:30 a.m. [node:read-more:link]

Nestle's structured sugar is claimed to help reduce sugar by up to 40% in confectionery. The sugar is said to dissolve faster in the mouth, the same as in cotton candy. The Swiss firm has released its first chocolate bar using the new technology. [node:read-more:link]

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has announced that several wild sheep and goats tested positive for a pathogen that has caused respiratory disease in Lower 48 herds.  The implications of the pathogen, called M. ovi for short, aren’t quite clear yet, but Alaska’s sheep have stayed relatively clear of respiratory disease, officials said [node:read-more:link]