Gardeners at Hope Community in the Phillips Community of South Minneapolis have been working hard this week to prepare soil and create a design for the urban agriculture space that has come to be known as the “2012 Garden,” in honor of its address at 2012 Oakland ...
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From Empty Lot to Full Blown Garden
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Dear Gov. Dayton: Consider the Economic Facts of Frac Sand
Dear Governor Dayton,
I understand you met with frac sand industry representatives yesterday. I would imagine their rhetoric included the promise of jobs and state competitiveness. Before accepting their statements as fact, I encourage you to consider the following:
• According to Industrial Minerals, Wisconsin produces more frac sand than any...
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Cooking Up Some Hope in the Phillips Community
On April 13, Hope Community intern Taya Shultz lead a cooking class at Hope's community kitchen. "The topic was breakfast. We made almond milk, vegetable breakfast smoothies and buckwheat muesli pancakes," Taya told me.
...
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Frac Sand: Let's Take a Long Term Look at Things
My great-great-grandfather moved to Houston County, Minnesota, at the end of the Civil War in 1865. I am blessed to be a lifelong resident of Houston County, living on part of our family's Century Farm, between Houston and Money Creek. All my siblings are farmers in Houston County. Six generations of our family have hunted her bluffs and fished in her streams. People from big cities think it...
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Energy Company's Actions are Downright Petty
As a retired dairy farmer, I remember the hard fought battles between family farmers and utility companies over high voltage power lines cutting across Minnesota in the 1970s.
One of the outcomes of this was the “Buy the Farm” law. Essentially, this law says that farmers and landowners have the right to require that companies purchase their entire farm if high voltage power...
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How Farmworker Wage Theft Bankrupts Our Rural Communities
A few years ago LSP organizer Doug Nopar was told of a southeast Minnesota farm operation that was withholding wages from a worker after he had accidentally damaged a door with a skid steer loader. Nopar called the farm owner and let him know this action was quite illegal. The farmer's response?
"You know, I can do anything I want.…I can treat my workers any way I want. I've got...
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Family Farms, Corporate Profits & the ‘Buy the Farm’ Law
You’ve probably never heard of the "Buy the Farm" law, but if you think corporations have too much power and that it’s time to put people before corporate profits, this is a law worth knowing about.
The "Buy the Farm" law is a result of the hard fought negotiations between family farmers and utility companies over high power transmission lines cutting across farmland in the...
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Land Access: Bite-by-Bite
On April 17, Land Stewardship Project members gathered in Menomonie, Wis., to discuss the challenges they face as beginning farmers seeking land to farm. They also discussed how to shape the initial stages of LSP’s organizing for more affordable, secure land tenure.
These farmers shared stories about how skyrocketing land prices are creating a crisis for ...
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Farm Beginnings: Stacking Up the Advantages
The temperature hovers a few degrees above zero and fresh snow swirls around their feet as Bryan Crigler and Katelyn Foerster bend into a fierce wind and head into a stand of walnut trees on a recent January day. In contrast to the wild woods, neat rows of ironwood logs are leaning on wires amidst the trees, stacked tee-pee style like firewood too pretty to burn. In fact, these chunks of...
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Main Street Vs. Eat Street
I'm not sure I would recommend this, but I recently read two books back-to-back that represent the “how” extremes of today’s food system. I started out with The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food, and, literally within minutes of...
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An Investment in Sustainable Ag is an Investment in a Positive Future for Rural Minnesota
If ever there was a shining example of a smart public investment in our food and farming future, Minnesota’s Sustainable Agriculture Demonstration Grant Program is it.
This program has been an important driver of sustainable (and conventional) farming innovations in the state for almost a...
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Farmers: CSP is on for 2013
One of the nation’s most innovative working lands farm conservation initiatives has received a financial reprieve, thanks to the continuing resolution signed by President Barack Obama on Tuesday.
The continuing resolution, which was passed by Congress late last week,...
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MinnesotaCare is a Life Line for Many
Land Stewardship is about what is good for the land, good for community and good for people. Affordable health insurance like MinnesotaCare is good for people.
I have lived, worked and attended school in the City of...
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Justice for All: U of M Must Help Protect Farm Workers' Rights
Our federal elected officials finally seem to be getting serious about passing much-needed comprehensive immigration reform in Washington, D.C. That's good. It is also important to note there's a very important immigrant worker rights issue that needs to be...
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Sustainable Ag's Most Critical Conversation
What is the most critical discussion that needs to take place to ensure a sustainable food and farming system long into the future? Is it one on policy, farming techniques, green technology, consumer preferences or soil fertility? No. It’s the conversation that takes place between Nettie and Gerald during LSP's play, Look Who's Knockin', which will be ...
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Legislature Takes Important Step Toward Creating People-Centered Health Care
On Monday, HF 5, the bill to establish a strong, people-first health insurance exchange in Minnesota, passed the final vote on its way to Governor Mark Dayton's desk. Thank you for all your calls, e-mails and letters to support a people-centered exchange—your actions made a difference!
For the past year, LSP and our allies have been working to put people, not corporations, at the...
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What CapX2020 (& Bad Public Policy) Could Destroy
As LSP's latest action alert makes clear, the companies behind the CapX2020 high voltage line are trying to get away with not paying for the true value of the Minnesota farm operations they will be destroying....
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Is That a Trophy Hunter Knockin' on the Door?
What with farmland changing hands at price levels that would make a Beverly Hills realtor blanch, one could be forgiven for jumping to an obvious conclusion: Farm Country is flush with cash these days.
Indeed, based on pure numbers, the...
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Health Exchange Should Keep the Fox Out of the Hen House
Now is the time for all of us concerned about the future of health care in Minnesota to keep the fox out of the hen house by calling our Minnesota state senators and representatives and urging them to vote for the health insurance exchange bill put forward by Sen. Tony Lourey, DFL-Kerrick, and Rep. Joe Atkins, DFL-Inver...
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Great Minds Think Alike on Mines: Comments Call for an EIS on Frac Sand
Public comments submitted as part of the environmental review process for two proposed frac sand mines in Winona County overwhelmingly call for officials there to follow the law and order an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
Land Stewardship Project members, other local citizens, state agencies and scientific experts submitted a total of about 75 comments on each mine. The comments...
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Comment Period on Winona County Frac Sand Review Extended to Feb. 6
The process of environmental review for frac sand mine proposals in Winona County has been seriously flawed from the start. But there’s still time for citizens to get involved and push for an in-depth, comprehensive review—otherwise known as an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)—that would show the full impacts...
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The (Growing) High Price of an Unreformed Crop Insurance Program
Just when you think the facts and figures around federal subsidized crop insurance can’t get any more outlandish, new numbers emerge exposing the out-of-control spending and lack of accountability for this area of farm policy.
Earlier this month, USDA released the...
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Putting People & the Land First
Below is a picture from the close of a thought-provoking, challenging and energizing two-day meeting the Land Stewardship Project hosted this week at our Minneapolis office.
Leaders and staff from state-based rural membership organizations representing 10 Midwest and
Western states...
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What's Your Farming Legacy?
What will be your farm’s legacy? We often think of our legacy as related to our farm's financial success. Our legacy will show how we were able to weather hard times — floods, droughts, hot weather, cool weather, low prices, pests, weeds, the farming crisis of the ’80s, changes in production methods and other enormous challenges. Our legacy will show that not only did our...
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Progress Toward People-Centered Health Care System
For the past year the Land Stewardship Project and our allies have been organizing to make sure Minnesota moves forward, not backward, under the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). It’s clear that our current health care system is failing working people across the state—including urban people, rural people and farmers.
In fact, lack of access to affordable care is one of the...
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