News from rural America.

A border wall through Texas' Big Bend National Park gets pushback after local news coverage, advocates for small growers in Iowa argue the current Farm Bill favors big ag and doctors tracking Salmonella outbreaks say don’t kiss your chickens.

TRANSCRIPT

For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, this is the news from Rural America.

Customs and Border Protection is building massive walls along the Rio Grande.

But news coverage by rural outlets sparked bipartisan backlash to the plan among residents, ranchers and local officials, especially when it comes to border wall construction in Big Bend National Park.

A lack of publicly available information led folks to depend on local reporters, like Sam Karras at Big Bend Sentinel.

People were very scared because the term eminent domain started getting thrown around almost immediately.

Karras says small West Texas newsrooms struggle to cover huge, fast-moving stories, but with wide distribution and by creating new formats, they've been drawing outside attention.

Things are happening so incredibly quickly that has shifted the way that we think about news.

Disruptions to oil and gas markets are raising home energy costs.

Rural families in Maine and Vermont pay the biggest share of their income, with Alaska and Wyoming close behind.

The Sierra Club's Johanna Haro Torres says their data showed that last year, American households paid almost $120 more for electricity, cutting into food, housing, and health care budgets.

Low-income households are suffering the most, And there isn't things that are available to them to help offset these costs.

That's even before the U.S.-Iran war.

Moody's estimates the conflict is costing each household an average of $750 more in government spending and higher prices for gas and other products.

A long overdue farm bill is finally moving through Congress, but critics say it still favors corporate producers over independence.

The bill would channel commodity supports and disaster funds to large ag operations away from smaller ones.

And Angela Huffman with Farm Action says those smaller players are vital for many local communities.

A farm bill really needs to shift power back into the hands of farmers to grow healthy foods and not lock in more advantages for the largest corporations.

Meanwhile, contracts for popular farm conservation programs have been dramatically cut by the Trump administration.

Michael Happ with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy worries that sends the wrong message, especially given the changing climate.

The dust storms that are going on and they're more frequent these days, if we have folks who are just kind of giving up on these programs that can help, that doesn't seem like a good thing to me.

Don't kiss your chickens, say doctors tracking a multi-state salmonella outbreak linked to backyard poultry.

Washington State reports one death and 54 hospitalizations.

Epidemiologist Hannah Oltine says showing too much love risks spreading the bacterial infection.

They're so cute and so that's a real temptation for folks. but we definitely recommend not kissing or snuggling poultry and not eating or drinking around them.

For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, I'm Roz Brown.

For more rural stories, visit dailyyonder.com.