Business

Several new soybean crushing plants have opened or expanded in the Midwest in recent years, driven by demand for soybean oil from makers of renewable diesel.

Iowa Central Community College, based in Fort Dodge, serves several counties in north-central Iowa, including Wright. It has campuses in Fort Dodge…

Fort Dodge, about 40 miles southwest of Clarion, is the regional center for shopping, health care and jobs for much of north-central Iowa.

Land and machinery auctions are still a big deal in rural Iowa. A good farm auction draws neighbors, buyers from around the state and online bidders.

Fast internet is still spotty in parts of rural Iowa. Farms a few miles from town may have only slow DSL or a cellular hotspot.

The Iowa State Fair draws more than a million visitors over 11 days every August in Des Moines. It has been held at its current grounds since 1886.

In most Iowa towns, the tallest structure is the grain elevator, and most are run by farmer-owned co-ops.

Iowa raises about a third of the country’s hogs, with more pigs than people by a wide margin, roughly 25 million at any given time.

For generations of Iowa teenagers, the first paid job was detasseling seed corn.

Iowa is the top egg-producing state, with tens of millions of laying hens, many of them in large barns in northwest and north-central Iowa. Wright County…