In the Midwest, the spike in farm earnings has encouraged farmers to put more land into production, including parcels once deemed unsuitable.

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In Iowa, Farmland Expands as Crop Prices Soar

If President Obama expected to get away from the troubles of Washington by driving through the rural Midwest, he was wrong.

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Reporter’s Notebook: Far From Capital, Obama Still Finds Its Woes

Days into my tenure as mayor of Chicago, with my focus on keeping our city’s streets safe, our schools strong and our finances stabilized, I expected my attention to be in the Midwest, not in the Middle East. But as an American and the son of an Israeli immigrant, I have a deep, abiding commitment to the survival, security and success of the state of Israel. I am among the many who know that the Israeli people yearn for peace. They have taken risks for peace in spite of dangers. They will again, when they have a viable partner in the process and a region that recognizes a Jewish state of Israel with secure and defensible borders. Read full article > >

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Obama’s commitment to Israel

A series of fatal tornadoes hit Oklahoma City and its suburbs a few days after storms tore through portions of the Midwest causing especially brutal damage in Joplin, Mo., and Minneapolis. Read full article > >

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Deadly storms strike in Oklahoma, Missouri, Minnesota

Following powerful tornadoes that devastated Alabama and the southern U.S. last month, killing over 300 people, a new series of tornadoes ripped through the Midwest on Sunday, killing at least one person in Minneapolis, and an unknown number of people…

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Dozens Dead in Midwest Tornadoes

Eds: Updates with more details. AP Video. With AP Photos. Multimedia: An interactive that looks at the deadly storms that have swept across the Midwest and South and includes photos of the destruction, a timeline of historical storms and an animation of how tornadoes form is available, _national/tornadoes-2011.

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At least 4 killed in NC storms; death toll at 21

After terrorizing the Midwest, a deadly set of storms whipped its way up to North Carolina on Saturday, bringing the three-day death total to at least 26. In North Carolina alone, seven people have been reported dead as mobile homes were crushed, roofs…

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Deadly Twisters Sweep Across U.S.

Rebutting the notion of a “Reverse Great Migration” Matt writes the following : To me that mostly sounds like black people are moving to the same metro areas as everyone else. Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and Charlotte in the south and Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Las Vegas outside the south. After all, the basic dynamic of weak job opportunities in the midwest and no affordable housing in the northeast applies regardless of skin color. What’s more, this is really not a reversal of the Great Migration in any meaningful sense. Texas wasn’t a major historic African-American population center and it strains credulity to describe Miami as part of the south. If black people start leaving Chicago to move to rural Mississippi that be a reversal, but this is the same sun/permit-driven migration that everyone’s doing. Probably not :  The destinations of whites and blacks who relocated across regions in the late 1990s reveal a stronger preference among black migrants for southern destinations. This pattern is evident for migrants leaving each region, especially the Northeast. Among black and white migrants residing in the Northeast in 1995, 85 percent of blacks headed South (as opposed to the Midwest or West), compared to only 64 percent of whites (Figure 3). In the West and Midwest, too, the share of black out-migrants moving to the South exceeded the comparable white out-migrant share by about 20 percentage points. Demographers have been studying this shift for almost three decades. Perhaps the 2010 Census will show something different. But as of right now Phoenix’s black population stands at five percent. And Los Angeles isn’t gaining black people, it’s shedding them .  Matt contends that Texas has never “wasn’t a major historic African-American population center.” That will largely depend on what you consider “major.” Texas, in large measure, owes its existence to the desire to expand the South’s enslaved black population. Its demographics have always reflected that fact. In 1860, at the outset of the Civil War, a third of its population was black.  At the turn of the century, there were roughly 600,000 black people  in Texas , about the same as  North Carolina  and  Virginia . Today, of the ten metro areas with the largest black populations, two of them are in Texas.  That aside, the category leader for African-Americans returning South is not Texas, but Atlanta, a city which sits in a state which most certainly was major historic African-American population center. At the turn of the century, nearly half Georgia’s population was black .  These are the numbers, but I think they actually understate the case. It’s demonstrably true that the migration of blacks are different than those of whites, but what’s much more bracing is the thinking behind those migration patterns. Surely black people are responding to the color-blind call of job opportunities and cheap housing. But they are also following something else–a return, in large measure, to the place of their invention. My in-laws family are originally from Mississippi. They migrated up to Covington, Tennessee and then to Chicago. Over the past twenty years, a lot of them have moved back to Tennessee and out to Georgia. I assure you that, despite not literally returning to Mississippi, they feel that they’ve returned to the South, and to a greater extent, home. My own family is from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Perhaps you don’t consider it the South. But I assure you that when I’m in Tennessee, or when I’m in Georgia, or more specifically, when I’m in Virginia, it looks like home to me.  Moreover, as surely as Chicago was the mythical “Promised Land” for blacks in the early and mid 20th century, Atlanta is the mythical “Promised Land” for blacks in the late 20th and early 21st Century.  This seems to be the week of killed stories for me, so I’ll quote from a long dead piece I wrote about about black New Yorkers decamping for Atlanta to illustrate the point, ”Growing up, especially in New York, you’d see pockets, but very few of us doing well,” said Debra Harper. “And if we were doing well, we were living in white communities. In Atlanta you can do well and still live among African-Americans who are also doing well. I had never seen that before.” You may quibble with Harper’s definition of “doing well.” But the fact is that, in Atlanta, you can live in a neighborhood with a sprawling lawn, a two-car garage, four bathrooms, and see nothing but other black people around you. Moreover, you can enjoy a lifestyle–a range of food, a way of speaking, a particular bearing–which many of us experienced as children going South in the summer, and now think back on wistfully. And many of us with no such direct memories, lived around people who told such stories, and thus have shared in the collective memory. The point here is that it’s important, not simply to consider the number of people returning, but their thinking as they return. African-Americans moving South are returning to the place where much of their collective identity was formed. They’re often returning to places where they still have kinship ties, or where large swaths of people share in their culture. This is different, and specific to black people. ”The South” means something to Northern African-Americans with Southern roots (which is to say a lot of us) that it just doesn’t mean for Northern whites. The black folks who return there are not simply returning for a good job, they are, in large measure, returning to something ancestral which was never limited simply to Mississippi. 

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Homecoming Cont.

Regulators are warning that a new real estate bubble may be forming as farmland prices surge across the Midwest.

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In Price of Farmland, an Echo of Last Boom

Spring is showing its rough side across the Midwest, as melting snow and rainstorms swell rivers and streams, flooding four states. Dozens of Ohioans had to be rescued from rising floodwaters in Findlay, while a woman in Norwalk, Ohio, was killed when…

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Midwest Floods Kill Five

Just when the economic recovery seemed to gain momentum, two new threats have emerged that could undermine it. One has flared in the Midwest, the other in the Middle East.

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U.S. economic recovery threatened by events in Midwest, Middle East

Who would have thought it? Wisconsin is the San Diego of the Midwest.

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Navarrette: Problem of public pensions

“Peanut butter and jelly” chocolate handcrafted by a Midwestern bean to bar chocolatier Founded in 2006 by Alan “Patric” McClure, Patric chocolate has put the Midwest on the premium confection map. The brand, born from the founder’s deep love of chocolate and an influential trip to France, offers a variety of delicious craft-made bars. A leader in the artisanal/micro-batch chocolate community, McClure has been involved with the Craft Chocolate Makers of America since its start and is currently serving as its chairperson. Our appreciation of American craft chocolate makers—from the Mast Brothers to Rogue to fellow Missouri-based Askinosie is well documented. Patric currently offers eight chocolate bars—both blends and single origin, with standouts like the signature 70% blend helping put the brand on the gourmand map. Last year’s introduction of the PBJ OMG—dark roasted peanut butter and cacao balanced with natural bursts of berry from the chocolate—manages to pull off the salty-fruity appeal of the classic sandwich in a melt-in-your-mouth form. Marketed for ages “1-120,” this bar truly offers something for just about every palate. The line sells from Patric’s online store and select retailers (though the PBJ OMG only for a limited time) starting at $7.

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Patric Chocolate

First, the terrible storm hitting the Midwest this week caused travel nightmares for those making the pilgrimage to Sunday Super Bowl in Dallas, and now this. Seven people were injured-one is in critical condition-when accumulated ice fell 200 feet…

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Falling Ice at Dallas Stadium Hurts Seven

Maybe that ticket insurance was worth it after all. The massive storm that pounded the Midwest this week is causing travel nightmares for airlines and football fans trying to get to Dallas for Super Bowl XLV. More than 1,000 flights to Dallas-Fort…

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Fans Race Ice to Get to Super Bowl