News Summary

• Nestled in Missouri’s Bootheel is the small town of Kennett, the Dunklin County seat.
• Dunklin is among the 10 counties with the highest rates of that type of cancer in the state.
• There are about 27 million acres of Missouri farmland being cultivated and nearly 88,000 farms, according to the Rural Farm & Finance Policy Analysis Center.
• In some places, wastewater sludge containing “forever chemicals” — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — is applied on farmland as fertilizer.