In February, I traveled to the state Capitol for the first time in my life for legislative hearings on the issue. On the June 11 trip, I was one of 11 southeast Minnesota citizens to meet with Gov. Dayton, Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Commissioner Tom Landwehr, and Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) Commissioner John Linc Stine about the importance of the state taking action to protect our communities and our natural environments from the frac sand industry. Our group included regional leaders on this issue from Fillmore, Houston, Winona, Wabasha and Goodhue counties, including members, like myself, of the Land Stewardship Project, as well as Save the Bluffs and Houston County Protectors.

We went to make the case for tough implementation of recently passed legislation to help our communities protect themselves from the effects of the frac sand industry. The Governor told us that he wanted the strongest possible interpretation of the law and that when it came to implementing these laws and issuing frac sand permits, getting it right was more important than doing it quickly.

We discussed with the commissioners why strict DNR and MPCA permit standards are needed to make a meaningful difference. We also told them that citizens need to be involved in the process of establishing these standards. In particular, we'll continue to work to make sure that new DNR permits for mining in sensitive areas within one mile of trout streams are rarely if ever given, and that strict, enforceable MPCA air quality standards for dangerous silica dust apply to frac sand mines, not just processing facilities.

I don’t believe that the frac sand industry has anything positive to offer our rural communities. I believe that people's health and well-being are more important than the profits that they reap from our earth. The relatively few jobs the industry may create cannot make up for the existing businesses it harms and the air and water pollution it will cause. If all the mines proposed near me are built, there will be hundreds or even thousands of truck trips a day on a county road that now sees 50 trucks on a busy day. To better understand this, Donna Buckbee of Houston County Protectors urged Gov. Dayton to visit the affected communities in southeast Minnesota later this summer or fall, which he agreed to do.

I believe that all of us in the affected rural communities should stand up and be counted. We need to stay informed. We need to protect ourselves, our land, our children and neighbors from the profiteers that have arrived to take what we value most.

Vince Ready is a Land Stewardship Project member who lives in rural Saratoga Township, Minn.

The upshot is that for the first time ever the Senate bill limits the degree of crop insurance subsidies wealthy farm investors and operators can receive. The bill establishes a $750,000 adjusted gross income limit, requiring the largest operators to pay more of their share of crop insurance premiums. Income limits are something that virtually all other farm programs embrace but shockingly, federally subsidized crop insurance has eluded such caps up until now.

It’s also noteworthy and encouraging that the Senate bill requires farmers who participate in the federally subsidized crop insurance program to have in place basic soil and water conservation measures for fragile landscapes.

These reforms to crop insurance, which at $94 billion over 10 years is the largest farm-orientated spending in the Farm Bill, are not nearly enough, but do represent a step in the right direction. The U.S. Senate should be applauded for inclusion of these measures in the bill. We are hopeful the U.S. House will make similar strides as it takes up its version of the Farm Bill later this month.

Crop insurance is an important tool to help farmers manage risk. But as conceived and delivered now it creates environmental and economic disparities in farm country, fueling land consolidation and concentration. It should be noted that while some programmatic reforms moved forward on crop insurance, overall Congress is looking to expand this program, which should be a concern to anyone who cares about viable rural communities and land conservation.

The Senate bill also renewed funding for key programs such as the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program, which has already helped launch various community-based farmer training programs around the country. Along with new farmer investments, embedded in the bill is a collection of needed organic and local foods measures.

The troubling news is the Senate bill reduces conservation funding by $5.6 billion. This is of particular concern given the numerous reports of severe erosion and runoff that are emerging from the countryside this spring. Now is not the time to shortchange key working lands initiatives like the Conservation Stewardship Program. Even though Congress has made it clear a new Farm Bill must cost less and contribute to deficit reduction, slashing conservation while expanding the crop insurance program is not acceptable. To make things worse, the Farm Bill passed by the U.S. House Agriculture Committee starts with even deeper cuts to the conservation title.

LSP in principle cannot support these losses to farmland conservation.

Later in June all eyes will turn to the U.S. House floor debate on the Farm Bill. This debate is sure to be much more contentious and divided than what we saw in the Senate. For a final Farm Bill to become a reality, legislation must be passed on the House floor and then conferenced with the recently passed Senate Farm Bill. That conference committee product must then make it back through both chambers before reaching President Barack Obama's desk.

As the 2013 Farm Bill debate advances, LSP and its allies will continue to work for 21st Century farm policy that includes meaningful reforms, stronger conservation investments and improvements for beginning farmers, local and regional food systems and independent livestock producers.

Adam Warthesen is an LSP organizer who works on federal farm policy. He can be reached via e-mail or at 612-722-6377.

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The final Health and Human Services Budget makes MinnesotaCare more affordable by reducing premiums 10 to 50 percent for the 130,000 lower-income Minnesotans who currently get their insurance through the program. Some of the barriers to enrolling in MinnesotaCare, namely the waiting period and asset cap, have also been removed. That means people who qualify will not have to go without insurance during a four-month waiting period, and they will qualify based solely on their income, with no test on assets like land, vehicles or savings accounts. Once these restrictions are removed in 2014, tens of thousands more people—many of whom currently go without insurance or make do with high-deductible coverage—will qualify for MinnesotaCare.

MinnesotaCare benefits will also be better starting in 2014. Most significantly, the $10,000 hospital cap will go away.

This win comes out of powerful organizing. Back in January, there were leaders in Minnesota who questioned whether or not it was a good idea to do the work necessary to keep and improve MinnesotaCare. Some considered letting the program expire and shifting participants to Minnesota's new health exchange.

But Land Stewardship Project members and allies made it clear from the beginning that MinnesotaCare was a priority. We saw an opportunity to build on MinnesotaCare's legacy to keep Minnesota moving forward, making progress towards a health care system that works for everyone, no exceptions.

LSP members joined with Minnesotans from across the state—from Duluth to the Twin Cities—to tell our own stories, the stories of real Minnesotans, urban and rural. These stories were critical to making decision-makers aware of what was at stake. A diverse coalition of people's organizations worked together to show that MinnesotaCare is important to all our communities—especially self-employed farmers, communities of color, rural and urban residents with lower-paying jobs that don't offer health insurance, and small-business people whose voices are often usurped by corporate lobbyists. Groups like TakeAction Minnesota, Churches United in Ministry (CHUM) in Duluth, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), ISAIAH and the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless, just to name a few, worked together for health care policies that would be good for all our communities.

In the end, our voices were heard loud and clear. Not only will MinnesotaCare still be available for individuals and families whose income is between 138 percent and 200 percent of the poverty line, but we also won an expanded Medicaid program that covers the poorest Minnesotans and a people-centered health exchange that will give people more collective power and better options when purchasing health insurance from big corporations.

We also asked that corporations be made to pay their fair share, and that they be held accountable for their use of public health care funds. In the whole of the state budget, some corporate tax loopholes were closed. That's a very good thing for MinnesotaCare and health care funding across the board. It helps limit the game-playing and money-shifting that is too often employed in state budgets to cover for the missing revenue the corporations owe but avoid paying.

The Health and Human Services bill also reforms the way HMOs pay surcharges they owe the state, and caps what state-contracted HMOs are allowed to account toward administrative expenses. This means HMOs won't get to hide big executive salaries under administrative expenses.

All in all, this session was a big step forward in putting people, not profits, at the center of health care in Minnesota.

Thank you for helping to make these key wins possible.

Hope owns 176 units of affordable housing, almost all of which are on one block of the corner of Portland Avenue and Franklin Avenue. In the center of this unconventional housing development is a 16-plot community garden, which is within view of many of the houses on the block. Right next to the community garden is a children's playground, where many of the neighborhood kids hang out and play.

The first few years the garden was in operation, the children were naturally curious and wanted to help adults in the garden. Unfortunately, many times their help would become a hindrance, and adults began complaining about the presence of the children. The kids would climb into the garden and throw ripe tomatoes, generally wreaking havoc on people's carefully prepared gardens.

That's where Land Stewardship Project intern Sam Johnson stepped in. During the 2012 growing season, “I originally volunteered with Hope to work in the garden, and when I let you guys know about my background work with kids, we all saw the opportunity," he told me. "A lot of the kids that were interacting with the garden were not in the fold. They didn't understand the rules, and gardeners didn't know how to interact with [the kids]. There was high pressure, high anxiety, a lot of emotions and frustration. The original goal was to be able to engage these kids in gardening, and be there as someone who could be a bridge between the kids and the garden."

Since 2012, Sam's role in the garden has grown with the children he engages.

“When we started, we were meeting two days a week, very informally. I would come with activities and count on the fact that the garden was right next to the playground; the kids were going to be there," he said. "The hope was that if we could hook them with fun activities, they would start coming back intentionally. We started doing it informally, because we didn't want to foist a program on kids—we wanted to see if it was something that would happen organically. Last year we had a core of about five to six kids and two to three of them would be there every single week. Three to four others would be familiar faces that would come every couple of weeks.”

Sam added that, “In the wintertime, we had to bring things indoors. The amount of kids decreased. We only had a few that came in, but it was nice to have those few. We recognized that this was something that had some legs to it, and would be more long-term than we originally envisioned, so it would probably be more appropriate that I would work with Dhop to do this youth work.”

Dhop, aka Andrew Hopkins, has worked as a Community Outreach Manager at Hope Community's Community Engagement program on several initiatives to engage young people. One of the most significant contributions has been a program called Learning in Community. Hope's website describes Learning in Community as “a community literacy program for children ages 6-9 where children thrive and learn in a community environment.”

This past winter, Sam led the kids in indoor gardening activities such as vermiculture (worm composting) and seed starting.

“My hope for the garden this year is consistency. We're meeting once a week on Saturdays, and I'll be around for the other two work days," Sam said. "If we can put in that consistency, we're hoping that the kids will respond in kind and we'll have a handful of kids that will be there every week. Registration is happening now. This year, we also have a little plot of our own in the community garden. In those terms, I would like to see those kids really invest in that plot and see how those plants are doing, and get the kids excited to come back every week and care for the plants.”

Anna Cioffi is a Land Stewardship Program organizer working in the Hope Community on developing community based food systems. She can be reached via e-mail or at 612-722-6377.

Ellis has documented the die-off of bees on the very day that neighboring fields were planted with corn. As the camera pans the landscape and shows bees dead or so disoriented that they can't even forage, Ellis talks about the fact that corn seeds coated with a type of pesticide called neonicotinoid is to blame. Such claims are not new, but a recent Purdue University study has made it clear we can no longer ignore the relationship between our pollinator crisis and pesticide use in farm country.

As we've written about in the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer and the Land Stewardship Letter, pollinators are the kinds of keystone critters we all can play a role in helping—or hurting. As I realized while producing two LSP Ear to the Ground podcasts (episodes 54 and 60) on the subject, everyone from beekeepers to entomologists agree on that one.

We need to keep that in mind even when doing things that are seemingly unrelated to the lives of bugs. For example, when buying a potted plant or figuring out how to control the growing emerald ash borer menace, we may want to think twice about the unintended consequences when it comes to the health of our apian workhorses.

Every third bite of food is directly or indirectly connected to the work of pollinators. And wild habitats such a native prairies wouldn’t be quite the same if bees and other bugs weren’t hauling pollen from plant-to-plant.

That’s why scientists are frantically trying to figure out why honeybees seem to be suffering so much from Colony Collapse Disorder and other maladies these days. And why are their wild cousins in decline as well (including here in Minnesota)? Is it habitat loss, feedlot beekeeping, introduced diseases or the stress of becoming the insect version of migrant workers by being transported across the country to custom-pollinate almond groves? Or is it, as University of Minnesota bee expert Marla Spivak believes, a complicated combination of factors?

One part of the mix that cannot be ignored is pesticides, which have dogged wild and domestic pollinators since they became ubiquitous after World War II. Bees and other pollinators are notoriously sensitive to pesticide poisoning. And because bees are natural born collectors, they often bring chemical contaminants back to their hives.

A Penn State study released in 2008 showed that low levels of over 70 pesticides and metabolites of those pesticides were present in hives. Most of them were common insecticides and herbicides, including atrazine, used in agriculture and around the home. Penn State researchers are particularly concerned that when the pesticides combine in a hive, they can have a synergistic effect hundreds of times more toxic than any of the pesticides individually.

Up until quite recently it was thought labeling restrictions (no spraying during the middle of the day when bees are most likely to be foraging) and a transition to chemicals of lower toxicity made it less likely bees would be killed outright by spraying. Iowa’s agriculture department has a “Bee Rule” that limits applications of insecticides labeled as dangerous to bees.

However, research has shown that a new class of pesticides could offer a more insidious threat to bees and other pollinators. In recent years, organophosphate insecticides, which are toxic to mammals and birds, have been replaced by a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. Derived from nicotine (yes, the same stuff that makes your body crave Marlboros and Copenhagen), these bug killers are systemic, meaning they are put on a plant’s seed, or injected straight into the roots or stem. They work their way up to the leaves, killing insect pests that feed on the plant.

The advantages to these kinds of bug killers are many: for one thing farmers, greenhouse keepers and homeowners aren’t spraying toxins in the open air, reducing the chance of the chemical going where it’s not supposed to. In addition, it works specifically on insects, offering little threat to other creatures, including humans. That’s the main reason neonicotinoids have become one of the most widely used pesticides—particularly in greenhouses, by landscape companies and in homes. If you bought a potted plant recently, likely it’s been fortified with neonicotinoids. And over 90 percent of all corn seed planted in this country this spring is coated with the neonicotinoid insecticides.

“I can’t impress on you how common this is on everything,” U of M entomologist Vera Krischik told me, adding that these types of pesticides can stay in a plant for up to a year.

A few years ago Krischik noticed that after feeding on some potted plants that were in her backyard, bumblebees would become disoriented, and fall to the ground where they would suffer from tremors before dying: a classic sign of neonicotinoid poisoning (the Steve Ellis video shows honey bees suffering from tremors).

She did follow-up research and found that plants containing the neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid caused high death rates in beneficial insects like pink lady beetles, green lacewings and parasitic wasps.

The effects of neonicotinoid insecticides such as imidacloprid on local non-target species such as bees is of particular interest now that the emerald ash borer, a devastating killer of ash trees, has arrived in the Minnesota and other Midwestern states. This class of pesticides is one borer-control tool being promoted by tree experts.

“This pesticide isn’t all bad. It’s just not a good idea if it finds its way into plants insects use for nectar,” says Krischik.

It also turns out this class of pesticides may not "stay" within plant tissue as much as we'd like. What the Purdue University study found was that during the spring bees near corn fields are exposed to "extremely high concentrations of neonicotinoids in waste talc." In other words, all that dust formed when a planter passes over a field isn't just dirt—it also contains neonicotinoids, and bees may be getting doused in it. That may explain why Steve Ellis' bees were suffering the same day neighboring fields were being planted with corn.

Fifteen European Union countries recently voted to ban neonicotinoid chemicals after they were linked with bee die-offs there. Bayer CropScience, the major manufacturer of neonicotinoids for corn, denies there is any evidence that its pesticide is linked to bee die-offs. But the scientific (and video) evidence is getting increasingly hard to ignore.

Spivak says it’s unlikely pesticides are the only cause of CCD or other mass bee die-offs. Typically in a CCD situation, one colony will collapse and a neighboring one won’t, although the bees often forage in the same areas where pesticides were applied.

“But the pesticides are a problem,” the entomologist told me. “And we need to pay attention to them, whether they are the root of the problem or not.”

The 2012 Garden has gone through many transformations since it was turned into a garden for community use in 2010. The lot used to have a house standing on it, which was torn down many years ago, and the foundation was packed with a sandy mix of filler soil.

When gardeners and community members realized that the property owned by Hope Community could be turned into a garden, they jumped at the chance. Since 2010 there has been a careful process of amending soil, adding compost and using cover crops to do remediation on the sandy, compacted fill material that made up the vacant lot.

Caretakers of the garden have also come and gone over the years. Participation was slow to start in 2010, and only a few gardeners used the space to grow melons and squash, as well as the other vegetables that were too large to grow in the small 5’ x 5’ individual garden plots nearby. During the 2011 and 2012 growing seasons, students from the Franklin Library Urban 4-H club tended a large patch of the garden. In 2012 they shared the space with community member Omari Chatman, who used the garden to practice the permaculture design principals he learned through his certification as an Urban Farmer at the Permaculture Research Institute.

This year, Omari is once again heading up the garden, and is working with a team of dedicated community members who have come together to contribute ideas for design, plant varieties and what to do with extra produce. Some community members would like to see produce donated to local food shelves, while others have talked about starting up a mini farmers' market to sell what is not divided up among the gardeners.

On Thursday, May 16, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Hope is hosting an open house at the 2012 Garden to welcome newcomers and finish getting the soil prepared for planting on Saturday. For more information about LSP’s partnership with Hope, see our Hope Community web page.

Anna Cioffi is a Land Stewardship Program organizer working in the Hope Community on developing community based food systems. She can be reached via e-mail or at 612-722-6377.

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 other state.

• According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, companies in Wisconsin have been mining frac sand since at least 2007.

I would guess that Wisconsin’s economy is on the smaller side among all states in the U.S. If you believe the oil and gas industry, natural gas production (fracking) is a huge contributor to the U. S. economy.

If Wisconsin is the biggest producer of frac sand in the nation, and they’ve been doing it for at least six years, shouldn’t this important industry have had a positive effect on Wisconsin’s economy by now?

According to a report released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in April of this year, Wisconsin ranks 45 out of the 50 states in long-term job growth, and dead last (50 out of 50) in short-term job growth.

I urge you to focus on protecting the health, safety and welfare of Minnesota residents, rather than the empty promises of industry when you consider frac sand mining regulation in Minnesota.

Please continue to support Senator Matt Schmit’s trout stream protections.

Sincerely,

Kelley Stanage

LSP member Kelley Stanage lives in Houston, in southeast Minnesota.

Hope Community is a place-based community development organization that is entrenched in the Phillips Neighborhood, one of the most economically challenged and diverse neighborhoods in Minneapolis. Hope provides 173 units of affordable housing that is home to some 400 people. Since 2009, LSP has been working with Hope through an initiative called “Growing Neighborhood Access to Healthy Food.” It’s an attempt to build community power and capacity to shape a strong neighborhood-scale system that ensures reliable, affordable and equitable access to healthy food.

As part of this initiative, cooking classes were held twice a month on Saturday mornings during the winter to bring community members together to share their favorite recipes. The focus was on making and sharing food that is healthy and easy to make. Other cooking classes included lentil veggie burgers with sweet potato fries, and sambusas.

"The class went very well. Community members who have been participating in food-related classes are starting to really get to know each other and become friends," said Taya, who has been interning at Hope since March. "I am glad to see that people are interested in trying new things and love the feeling they get from cooking with, eating and sharing fresh food."

Taya has also helped to organize and perform outreach for events throughout the spring such as the Vegetable Garden Basics series, and food-themed movie nights.

"I would like to see attendance expand. Maybe we could encourage people to bring their friends, and reach out to more people in the community by asking them to share their kitchen skills with us," said Taya.

Community-led cooking classes will continue through the summer, alongside programming that supports new and continuing gardeners at Hope's Community Garden space. For more information about LSP's partnership with Hope, visit LSP's Hope Community web page.

Anna Cioffi is a Land Stewardship Program organizer working in the Hope Community on developing community based food systems. She can be reached via e-mail or at 612-722-6377.

Looking across the river at what is happening in western Wisconsin with the frac sand industry, one sees roads destroyed and water and air polluted. What were once peaceful rural communities are now industrial zones, with neighboring property values greatly diminished.

We do not want that to happen here in southeastern Minnesota. Our state has a national reputation for being at the forefront of treasuring its natural resources. Coming from a farming family, we have always known it isn't just "good fences that make good neighbors." Good land use regulations are also of paramount importance. Which is why there is a call for state standards to protect the bluff country region.

Citizens by the thousands have called for passing regulations to protect our southeastern Minnesota trout streams due to the sensitive karst topography in our region. Local officials throughout southeastern Minnesota have also called for this.

Senator Jeremy Miller of Winona had the chance to be the deciding vote on passing state standards to protect southeastern Minnesota trout streams from known and unknown consequences due to frac sand mining. Instead, he cast the deciding vote (10 to 11), voting them down. He voted with the special interests wanting to push frac sand mining into our communities without proper regulations in place. Waiting to establish standards after mining begins is like shutting the barn door after the horse gets out.

A very elderly farmer who lived through the Dust Bowl years was interviewed near the end of Ken Burns recent PBS documentary The Dust Bowl. The old farmer stated in a slow, measured voice: "We want it now. And, if it makes money now, it is a good idea. But, it isn't necessarily a good idea; if the thing we're doing now is going to mess up the future, it wasn't a good idea. Don't deal on the moment. Take the long term look at things."

We are signing this postcard and taking it to the Capitol today. We are telling Sen. Miller his approach is unacceptable.

We want him to "Take the long term look at things." He must start standing with the citizens of his district who are thinking about the next six generations of their families living where they have been blessed to live. They are thinking about not having those generations' futures messed up because someone was in too much of a hurry and didn't take the time to put proper regulations in place.

An early, competent, conservative conservationist who was a well-respected retired state legislator from Houston County, Virgil Johnson, worked tirelessly throughout his long career to protect Minnesota's groundwater. When this issue reaches the Senate floor this week, it will be Sen. Miller’s last chance to continue Johnson's legacy, proving to all citizens of his district he puts our interests above the frac sand industry's desire to push into our communities without proper regulations in place, threatening our futures with unintended consequences.

NOTE: LSP member Marilyn Frauenkron Bayer read this statement in Winona this morning as several southeast Minnesota citizens prepared to travel to the Capitol to deliver a postcard to Senator Jeremy Miller. The over-sized postcard reads:

"Sen. Miller, as your constituents we were shocked at your vote to kill common-sense provisions to protect trout streams from the frac sand mining industry. The frac sand industry threatens our water, our air, our natural resources, our roads and our economy. Hundreds of citizens as well as county, city and township officials have clearly and strongly asked for strong state regulations of the frac sand industry. You have not listened. We are calling on you to start putting the well-being of the citizens of your district above frac sand special interests."

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 lines are forced onto their property. The law was intended to require utilities to fully reimburse farmers and landowners for their land, relocation expenses and lost business.

When I heard that Xcel Energy and the other backers of CapX2020 are claiming that farmers are “voluntarily” relocating their farms and any reimbursements for moving expenses and lost business would be “extra compensation,” I can’t say I was surprised.

But farmers and landowners didn’t have a choice about the high voltage lines cutting across their land. It was forced upon them. The Buy the Farm law has been on the books for 35 years, and Xcel Energy and the rest of them knew it.

But the energy conglomerate backing the project thinks that by using its considerable resources (Xcel Energy alone has 37 registered lobbyists in Minnesota), it can sidestep the law.

CapX2020 is estimated to cost $2.2 billion. With less than 100 landowners expected to file for relocation across the entire state, the attempt to shortchange farmers and landowners is downright petty.

The Minnesota House did the right thing by including in their Ag Omnibus Finance bill language that clarifies the original intent of the Buy the Farm law. That bill is in conference committee right now and the conferees from both the House and Senate should stand up for family farmers and make sure the Buy the Farm clarification is included in the final bill.

Land Stewardship Project member Alan Perish lives near Browerville, Minn.

"You know, I can do anything I want.…I can treat my workers any way I want. I've got my own personnel policy," Nopar, speaking on a recent LSP Ear to the Ground podcast, recalls the farmer telling him.

Fortunately, such an arrogant attitude is not common among Minnesota farmers. Most recognize that a day's work deserves a day's pay, no matter if the worker hails from Montevideo or Mexico. But there are signs that wage theft and other abuses of farmworkers are a growing problem in Minnesota.

The most prominent recent example was highlighted in January when it came to light that two large "model" industrial farms in southeast Minnesota were ordered to pay over $100,000 combined in back overtime wages to employees. One of the operations, Daley Farms in Lewiston, fought its fine for five years.

As rural Winona County resident Barb Nelson puts it, when something like that occurs, it puts a "black mark" on all farms in the region, as well as the community in general. And farms who engage in wage theft and other violations are enjoying an unfair competitive advantage over the operations that follow the rules.

Under Minnesota law, farms that have more than $500,000 in gross annual sales need to comply with the Minnesota Fair Labor Standards Act. Wage and hour law applies to all workers, regardless of status or documentation. LSP, working with Centro Campesino and the Latino Economic Development Center, has documented several examples of violations on industrial farms in Minnesota, including:

1) Failure to provide a final paycheck after employee’s resignation or dismissal.

2) Failure to pay for all hours worked.

3) Docking of worker wages for damage to farm equipment or buildings.

4) Failure to inform injured workers of their rights to workers’ compensation.

5) Personnel policies that are not in compliance with the law.

In LSP's Ear to the Ground podcast, Centro Campesino's executive director, Ernesto Velez Bustos, provides a shopping list of workers' rights violations he knows of in the region. Some violations can be blamed on ignorance on the part of farm owners when it comes to government labor rules. But others are contrary to what most of us would consider basic rules of human decency—you know, the kind where we treat people like we would want to be treated ourselves.

"A lot of these violations involve situations that are not too complicated to understand that something is wrong," says Bustos. "I think a lot of common sense and just everyday values and ethics would apply."

And most people want their food and farming system to be based on good values and ethics, argues Lisa Sass Zaragoza, who teaches a class on migrant farmworkers at the University of Minnesota. But because agricultural labor violations tend to fly under the radar, even people who generally seek out sustainably raised products are often "duped," as she puts it, into thinking their food is being produced, harvested and processed under conditions that are fair to workers.

"The farm worker rights piece is so crucial to being a part of a food system that is healthy, that is productive and that is dignified," Zaragoza says. "And it's the food production system many of us want."

A farming system that mistreats those who produce food is no more sustainable than one that mistreats the soil. That's why Centro Campesino, the Land Stewardship Project and the Latino Economic Development Center have combined forces and are asking allies around the state to help document farmworker rights violations.

The groups are also calling on the University of Minnesota and U of M Extension to dramatically increase their educational and research activities in the area of farm labor. After all, like many land grant universities, the U of M has played a key role in promoting the development of the kind of large-scale industrial farms that often rely on large numbers of low-wage workers. It’s time the U of M took responsibility as a public research and outreach institution and helped alleviate the problem of farmworker abuse.

The Minnesota Farmworker Justice Campaign is just one more step LSP is taking to create the kind of food and farming that builds communities of people, rather than sets them at odds with each other.

"We're not really approaching this from a do-gooder approach," says Nopar. "We need to look at this from a position of self-interest, with an attitude of 'What kind of community do you want to live in?' "

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 1970s. Under this unique 1977 legislation, farmers have the right to require that utilities purchase their entire farm if high voltage power lines are forced onto their property. This law was intended to require that utilities reimburse farmers for their land, relocation expenses and lost business.

It’s an example of public policy that doesn’t subjugate the interests of people to the interests of corporations, something that we could use a lot more of in our local, state and federal laws.

The “Buy the Farm” law has been rarely used over the past 35 years. However, with construction underway of the CapX2020 high voltage power line, the law has renewed importance to family farmers and landowners across Minnesota.

CapX2020 is a massive, $2.2 billion project, which will erect 650 miles of new high voltage power lines across Minnesota. Today, the energy conglomerate behind CapX2020 is trying to avoid paying its fair share to family farmers negatively impacted by the power lines. Using their considerable resources to blur the intent of the law (Xcel Energy alone has 37 registered lobbyists in Minnesota), they are claiming that farmers are “voluntarily” relocating their farms and that any reimbursements for moving expenses and lost business would be “extra compensation.”

Why it’s Important to Restore the Original Intent of ‘Buy the Farm’ Now

Farmers didn’t have a choice about the high voltage lines cutting across their land—it was forced upon them. The CapX2020 high voltage lines are moving ahead, taking land and slicing across farms. Right now, Minnesota family farmers and landowners are wrestling with difficult decisions about the future of their families and their livelihoods.

The least the CapX2020 backers can do for family farmers and landowners is to compensate them fully and promptly. That is the intent of the original “Buy the Farm” law. However, since the utilities have challenged that in court and won at the appellate court level, legislation is needed to clarify that it is the obligation of the utility companies to pay for relocation and lost business costs. They also must set a time frame for payment that works for farmers and landowners.

It’s About Justice

The "Buy the Farm" law is unique to Minnesota and it is a testament to our state’s commitment to justice. When the extraordinary powers of taking land from people are exercised, we, the people of this state, must do what we can to lessen the burden of those whose land is being seized. Ensuring people will be promptly and fully reimbursed by the utility companies for all expenses related to the taking of land for high voltage transmission line projects is the least we can do.

That’s why a broad range of organizations from the family farm, sustainable energy, social justice, local business and faith communities support keeping the Buy the Farm law true to its original intent.

Take Action Today

Next week the Minnesota Legislature will be taking up this issue in the Environment and Agriculture Finance Conference Committee. The House has included good language in its bill to clarify “Buy the Farm.” If the Senators on the committee agree to accept the House position, the bill will go to Governor Mark Dayton's desk, affirming our state’s commitment to putting people ahead of corporate profits.

But the Conference Committee needs to hear from you. There is a lot of legislation wrapped up in these bills and the Committee members need to know that the "Buy the Farm" law is important to Minnesotans. Please read this action alert and take a simple step that could make a huge difference to family farmers across Minnesota.

Mike McMahon is an LSP staff member. He can be reached at mcmahon@landstewardshipproject.org or 612-722-6377.

These farmers shared stories about how skyrocketing land prices are creating a crisis for them, as well as farms around them, their communities, and the land. People are making enormous sacrifices to find land, buy land, keep land and make a living off of the land they’ve got. These sacrifices are preventing people from building the farming system and rural culture that they need.

These stories are plentiful and being told in every small town and farmhouse across the Upper Midwest. Skyrocketing land prices are creating a crisis for family farmers of all stripes.

Consolidation of power and profit over land is a huge problem. Shifting this power and placing more of it in the hands of family farmers will require an equally huge effort over a long time. But that shift will be made up of small, concrete, strategic steps, and those are the steps LSP members are taking today. As the old joke goes: “How do you eat an elephant? Bite-by-bite.”

At this meeting and others around Minnesota and Wisconsin in coming months, LSP members are shaping how their organization takes these first steps toward winning affordable, secure land tenure for farmers. For more information or to get involved, please contact Sarah Claassen or Nick Olson.

P.S.: Farmers and organizations around the country are organizing around this issue. Check out this op-ed by Lindsay Lusher Schute of the National Young Farmer's Coalition for her take on the real economic viability of community based farms. It's a great piece.

Sarah Claassen is an LSP Farm Beginnings organizer working on land access issues. She can be reached via e-mail or at 612-722-6377.

While examining the woody row crop, Crigler reflects on one thing he learned while taking the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings course in 2008-2009: when considering starting a farming operation, it’s best to consider one’s “unfair advantages.”

He and Foerster feel they have many: access to land, jobs they can work in the off-season, good communications skills, connections to established farmers as well as restaurants and other food retailers, a relative who designed a really cool farm logo for them—you get the picture.

“Our list keeps growing,” Crigler, 34, says.

And as he and Foerster, 25, consider their next steps in adding some permanence to their mushroom and Community Supported Agriculture operation, Herbal Turtle Farms, they will need to take advantage of as many of those advantages as possible.

Renaissance Farming

Crigler says one of his original unfair advantages was that he was exposed to an alphabet soup of farming enterprises when he was younger. In the 1990s, Crigler’s father Jim bought approximately 200 acres of hardwood forest, hay ground and pasture in the back of one of the coulees that lie on the outskirts of Winona, in southeast Minnesota. Saint Mary’s University and a smattering of sprawling development are within a mile of the farm, but the land sits on a dead-end, isolated part of a road. Such a location provides a good balance of solitude and access to markets, says Crigler. The other advantage is that the farm has been home to numerous small enterprises over the years.

“I was exposed to a lot of things—chickens, mushrooms, turkeys, vegetable gardening, miniature goats, miniature donkeys, lamb, Scottish Highland cattle. You know—hobby farm,” says Crigler with a laugh.

Researching the Market

Crigler has a degree in communications from Winona State University and worked in telecommunication sales and corporate communication after graduation. Six years ago, he quit without a backup plan. “I decided I really wasn’t built for cubicle work and suits and ties,” recalls Crigler.

But he liked working the various enterprises on his family’s farm and started thinking seriously about making a career out of agriculture. Crigler talked to established farmers, co-op managers and chefs in the area, researching enterprises that would work well on the heavily wooded land, but which would not invade an already crowded market.

“Luckily we have a community where there’s people who are willing to share information—between co-op managers and chefs, as well as other farmers,” says Crigler. “I didn’t want to jump into a market that was over-saturated already, because it doesn’t help the farmers that are already here and it certainly doesn’t help us.”

One of the farmers he networked with was Heather Secrist, who owns and operates Suncrest Gardens Farm in nearby Cochrane, Wis. Secrist, a 2003 Farm Beginnings graduate, recommended that Crigler enroll in the class himself. The Farm Beginnings course, which LSP has been offering since 1997, has become a national model for providing wannabe farmers with training in innovative business planning, marketing and goal-setting, among other things. Farm Beginnings is also known for its use of established farmers and other agricultural professionals as class instructors.

Soon after he started the class in 2008, Crigler noticed that it emphasized not getting too hung-up on one type of farming enterprise. Rather, students are encouraged to take a broad look at the resources — also known as “advantages”— at their disposal, and to take a big picture view.

That was an important message for Crigler. He was originally very focused on marketing black walnuts from his family’s property. But it turns out selling walnuts for products like ice cream mixes has very low margins.

“Farm Beginnings gave me the ability to break down each enterprise and see if it was making money,” says Crigler. “That was valuable. It made it easier to figure out what to zero in on.”

Crigler’s interaction with Secrist altered the trajectory of Herbal Turtle Farms in another important way. At the time, Foerster was interning at Suncrest, and she and Crigler eventually became a couple.

Foerster has a degree in international relations from Winona State and much of her extended family is involved in corn and soybean farming in southwest Minnesota. But while interning at Suncrest, she got interested in the Community Supported Agriculture model. Also called CSA, it involves selling shares in a farm, usually a produce operation, before the growing season. In return, the farmer delivers produce to “members” on a weekly basis. It turned out to be a good fit for Herbal Turtle, although Foerster concedes that she and Crigler got into CSA vegetable farming a bit by accident. In 2009 she planted what she thought was just enough vegetables for their own use.

“It turns out I can’t raise vegetables for one family,” she says with a laugh. “I ended up planting 150 tomato plants. That’s when I knew we were in trouble.”

To deal with the excess, that year they sold shares to seven families in the area. Since then, the CSA enterprise has steadily grown to where this season there will be 60 shares. The couple may have stumbled into it by accident, but it turns out the CSA enterprise is a good way of guaranteeing income without investing huge amounts of resources into marketing during the season, something Foerster calls “small farm insurance.” It’s also a way for the farm to make deep connections with the local food community.

“I really just like the diversity of vegetables you can grow using that model and the connection to all the people you’re growing for,” says Foerster. “People are so excited about what we’re doing out here and interested in what’s happening on a day-to-day basis. And I think the fact that they are willing to share in the risk with us is huge.”

The shiitake mushroom business, on the other hand, is more of a solitary operation. Shiitakes require drilling holes in the logs—in this case they are waste ironwood pieces from a local logger—and planting spawn in the holes, which are plugged with wax. It takes up to a year for the first mushrooms to fruit. In the meantime, the logs—they weigh around 30 pounds each— must be soaked periodically (they use old livestock watering tanks).

“You have to be patient to be a mushroom farmer,” says Crigler. “It’s very labor intensive. We pick up maybe one log 10 times per season, times that by 3,000 logs, and we get pretty buff during the summer.”

Invasive fungi can be a problem, as well as drought conditions such as what the region experienced in 2012. But all the hard work and stress can pay off. Herbal Turtle can count on two to three fruitings per log from April to October, and each fruiting can generate a quarter-pound of mushrooms. High quality shiitakes can go for $16 a pound on the wholesale market.

They market to restaurants in the region, as well as food co-ops and the farmers’ markets in Winona and Rochester. Mushrooms are also offered as part of the CSA members’ shares.

“We charge a higher premium for our mushrooms, and we want to focus on the quality of the mushroom to make sure it’s justified, that a local chef would want to look at our mushrooms as compared to mushrooms shipped in from Oregon or China or wherever, and say this is clearly a superior mushroom, this is what I want to give to my clientele,” says Crigler. “We want something we can stand behind.”

The past two growing seasons, Herbal Turtle’s overall income has been pretty much evenly split between the CSA and the mushroom enterprise. Both Crigler and Foerster have off-farm jobs–he telecommutes as a high-tech recruiter and she cooks during the winter at the Blue Heron, a Winona café that showcases locally produced food, including produce and mushrooms produced on Herbal Turtle. Foerster sees her connection to the restaurant as yet one more advantage the farm has.

“It’s been really wonderful to see how chefs like to receive foods, what they want them to look like, what they do with them once they actually get them,” she says.

A Third Enterprise?

The couple is now looking for one more enterprise to add to the mix, one that will allow them to increase income without adding employees and that won’t “bump up against” other farming operations in the area as far as market share goes.

They also need an enterprise that’s somewhat “portable,” since someday they will face the prospect of having to move Herbal Turtle to a more permanent home, preferably to land they own.

For now, Crigler and Foerster are continuing to build their mushroom and CSA business, while generating income with their off-farm jobs to help them when it comes time to get that loan from the bank for farmland.

“If we go to a bank for a loan to buy our own farm, we can’t go with a dream,” says Crigler. “You have to show you have a steady, good income.”

Crigler and Foerster are also interested in enrolling in LSP’s Journeyperson Farm Training Course.

In other words, that list of “unfair advantages” is set to get even longer.

As the titles imply, the former book is a bit of a feel-good, if complicated, look at what can go right about food (and farming). The latter work is an in-depth, often depressing, look at what has gone so very wrong with the way we process our vittles.

Talk about whiplash. Let’s start with the good news contained in The Town That Food Saved. In an engaging book, Ben Hewitt writes about Hardwick, Vermont (pop. 3,200). During the past half-a-dozen years or so, the community has become home to businesses that do everything from provide seed to organic farmers to put locally produced food in front of diners.

As Hewitt points out, a few of these enterprises have been around for well over a decade, and in the case of farmers producing for local markets, many have been around for several decades. But the ones that have caught the imagination of sustainable agriculture and local food promoters have arrived just within the past few years.

“Indeed, the sudden growth in Hardwick’s ag infrastructure has been nothing short of explosive, with numerous food-based businesses and organizations settling in the region, seeking to become part of the town’s answer to the vexing question of what a healthy food system should look like,” writes Hewitt.

Based on various measures, this has been a success. Farmers in the area are increasingly seeing that if they convert to sustainable production methods there will be an infrastructure in place to support them. And by Hewitt’s count, this recent growth in new food-related businesses has brought nearly 100 jobs to a town that is desperately in need of economic development.

But, as the author admits, there is more to the story.

Hewitt writes with an insider’s eye: he grew up in the area and still lives and works on a small farm there. He is friends with many of the players in Hardwick’s local food renaissance, which at first blush would seem to make the writing of this book a relatively easy task. But to Hewitt’s credit, he doesn’t take the easy road and just write an “ain’t it great” story. In 2008, Hardwick’s “success story” was splashed all over the national media, including the New York Times. People are hungry for a story that goes against the grain, especially one fueled by compelling personalities like Tom Stearns, the outspoken, entertaining owner of Hardwick’s High Mowing Organic Seeds.

As often happens when a small community becomes a media darling, such publicity brought mixed results for Hardwick, which over its history has experienced boom and bust economies based on quarrying and dairying. Some long-time residents felt the story was being spun as a “new arrivals bring positive change to a backward hick town” kind of narrative. Plus, all of a sudden people from across the county were looking to the community as some sort of magic model for how to counter an “industrial food system run amuck” as Hewitt describes it.

But the local boy does an excellent job of going beyond the headlines and doing what journalists call “a second day story.” In some ways, he feels it’s the least he can do; after all, a feature article he wrote for Gourmet magazine was part of that national media blitz.

So Hewitt starts asking some hard questions. Is a local food business no longer a “local food business” when it starts sourcing and selling products out of the region? Is it really sustainable to produce local cheese that costs $20 per pound, putting it out of the price range of just about anyone between Hardwick and New York City? When people like Tom Stearns brainstorm such ideas as starting a 10,000-member Community Supported Agriculture operation, is this simply one more innovative way to bring healthy food to more people, or is it the death knell for a sustainable local food economy? In other words, what is appropriate scale?

Hewitt travels the roads and streets of the Hardwick area searching for those answers, talking to the owners of these exciting new businesses as well as long-time farmers and even back-to-the-landers living off the grid. In the process of relaying the results of all these interviews to the reader, Hewitt doesn’t so much answer the big questions, as debate them on the page. Perhaps that’s an unsatisfying result for anyone looking to find a quick-fix solution to our dysfunctional food and farming system, but it’s probably more honest.

Hewitt makes it clear Hardwick is in many ways unique, and what works there can’t be easily transferable. It’s also in the very early stages of building an economy based on local foods, and so many of the questions the author asks won’t be fully answered for several years. Local food hasn’t saved Hardwick just yet—maybe Hewitt should have reserved that book title for a sequel written five years from now.

Punch to the Stomach

After reading Michael Moss’s Salt Sugar Fat, it became clear to me we are going to need a whole lot of Hardwick success stories to save us all from the industrial food system. Moss is an investigative reporter who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for his coverage of contamination in the food industry.

Salt Sugar Fat goes beyond issues of contamination and provides an in-depth look at a business that sees eaters as just so many guts to be filled—the industry literally refers to “stomach share,” or the amount of digestive space that any one company’s brand can grab. Basically, nothing is off–limits in the rough-and-tumble world where firms like Philip Morris, General Mills, Cargill (the world’s number one supplier of salt) and Coca-Cola battle to get as much salt, sugar and fat down our throats.

As Moss documents, that means everything from formulating food to make it more addictive and to fool our brains into thinking we’re not full, to using cartoon characters to vilify healthy foods like apples while making fake health claims that the added sugar in cereal will raise kids’ grades. As Robert I-San Lin, a former chief scientist for Frito-Lay, told Moss: “I feel so sorry for the public.”

Moss pulls together documents that show just how insidious our industrialized food system is. Perhaps the most damning are the meeting minutes, memos and other written statements he has dug up proving the food giants have long known their products are not healthy. Some feeble attempts have been made to lower the salt, sugar and fat content over the years, but, according to Moss, almost all have gone down in flames, often because Wall Street is so concerned that less of the bad stuff in food will result in less consumption, which is bad for business.

Reading this book, one gets the sense that the industry is caught up in a kind of arms race—no one wants to be the first to lay down their most potent “market share” weapons for fear competitors will eat their lunch, so to speak.

We shouldn’t be surprised at this, argues Moss. After all, these companies are in business to make money, and food that’s bad for you rings a lot of cash registers.

“It’s simply not in the nature of these companies to care about the consumer in an empathetic way,” he writes.

If ever there was a need for a leash to be placed on an industry, this would be it. But Moss’s description of how the USDA and other government agencies have repeatedly failed to take on Big Food—and in some cases have enabled its efforts as a kind of perverse partner—won’t be news to most of us.

Salt Sugar Fat would be a complete downer if it wasn’t for the fact that Moss supplements his detailed documentation with interviews of real people. His surprising access to the scientists, executives and marketing geniuses behind the food industry reminds the reader that ultimately real human beings are behind this mess. They have families, live in communities and don’t want to die an early death because of a bad diet (most of them don’t eat the food they sell, reports Moss).

These are people like Robert I-San Lin, who has deep regrets about how his scientific expertise was abused by his employers. Another Moss source, Michael Mudd, is a former top executive at Kraft. He tried to not only reform his own company but once stood before the heads of the most powerful food companies in America during a meeting at Pillsbury’s headquarters in Minneapolis and compared their industry to the tobacco business. Mudd left the business in 2004, frustrated with its lack of ethics, but his name popped up in the news on the very day I finished reading Salt Sugar Fat. In mid-March he penned a commentary in the New York Times calling for regulation to make the food industry do what it will never do voluntarily.

“I could no longer accept a business model that put profits over public health—and no one else should either,” wrote Mudd.

As Moss acknowledges at the close of his book, such measures are not likely anytime soon. That’s why the Hardwicks of the world may be more important than ever.

Brian DeVore is the editor of the Land Stewardship Letter.

This program has been an important driver of sustainable (and conventional) farming innovations in the state for almost a quarter-century. Farmers who qualify for these competitive grants are able to do the kind of on-farm research that they would normally never have the resources to undertake. They then report those results in the widely-read and popular Greenbook, which helps get that information to farmers across the state and even across the country.

A typical Greenbook provides summaries of practical, on-farm studies of everything from the basics — improving quality of forages in grazing systems and establishing cover crops — to the more exotic — using solar energy to heat soil in high tunnel vegetable production.

This is the kind of practical research you won't see featured in scientific journals, but will see replicated on farms throughout the state.

"This is a good incubator for good ideas in agriculture," says Dennis Johnson, a retired U of M dairy scientist who did cutting edge work on grazing systems while at the West Central Research and Outreach Center.

Josh and Cindy Van Der Pol recently traveled to the Minnesota Capitol to talk to legislators about how their sustainable ag grant "helped us develop into what our farm is today," as they put it. In the late 1990s, the Van Der Pols used their grant to research how they could lengthen their sow farrowing season using deep-straw systems and other low cost, non-confinement methods. As a result of that research, the Van Der Pols' Pastures A' Plenty Farm in Kerkhoven now supports two families and supplies natural pork directly to eaters in the Twin Cities and elsewhere. Their latest innovative step is the construction of a farrowing building with a geothermal cooling system.

"We're a pretty successful farm and part of that reason is because the sustainable ag grants and the Greenbook helped good ideas get shared," says Josh.

This kind of practical research is particularly critical at a time when farmers are seeking ways to profitably diversify crop rotations to improve soil health while reducing erosion and a reliance on chemical inputs. The most recent Greenbook features examples of farms that are, for example, using livestock to make soil-friendly cover crops financially viable.

The agrichemical industry isn't going to fund that kind of research — it's not good for their business but is good for the economy and environment in our rural communities. In other words, it's a public good.

But here's the problem: the nationally respected Sustainable Agriculture Demonstration Grants Program has been the victim of an extremely uneven funding cycle over the years. In 2009, for example, annual funding went from $160,000 to $100,000, plus then-Governor Tim Pawlenty vetoed the second year of funding. This almost decimated the initiative's ability to provide even the most basic grants.

In 2011 the Legislature continued this inequity when it passed language that only "allowed" MDA Commissioner Dave Frederickson to spend up to $100,000 annually on the program — no actual funding was mandated. The bottom line: the MDA's sustainable agriculture initiative has no real commitment in solid funding. In the MDA's current proposed budget to the Minnesota Legislature, it continues this unfairness toward sustainable agriculture for the upcoming two-year budget cycle.

Sustainable agriculture deserves its fair share of permanent funding like the rest of agriculture gets, and that hard money needs to be provided by the Legislature this session. Our lawmakers will be deciding what sectors of agriculture will get permanent funding in the agriculture appropriations bill during the next few weeks.

Now is the time to tell them to dedicate $280,000 per year for the upcoming two-year budget cycle for the Sustainable Agriculture Demonstration Grant Program and Greenbook. Organic and sustainable agriculture makes up a significant and growing portion of our state's farming sector and deserves fairness.

Paul Sobocinski farms in Wabasso and is a Land Stewardship Project organizer.

The continuing resolution, which was passed by Congress late last week, appropriates funds to federal government agencies through the remainder of the government’s current fiscal year. The Continuing Resolution also removes previous cuts to the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP).

This is important: previous to passage of the continuing resolution, it was unclear if any CSP sign-up was going to take place this year. But now we’re expecting 12-million acres across the U.S. to be enrolled in CSP this year. That’s good for farmers and good for the farm and conservation landscape.

Since 2009, 50 million acres nationwide have been enrolled in CSP, more than any other farm conservation program over that same period. As this LSP fact sheet shows, Minnesota ranks tops in the nation when it comes to CSP, both in terms of number of contracts (3,232) and dollars obligated (over $260 million). Program demand in Minnesota has remained high, with 1,594 applications submitted in 2012 alone.

Offered through five-year contracts, farmers have used CSP to protect and improve water quality, soil health and wildlife habitat options on land in current production. (To read about how southern Minnesota farmers Arvid and Lois Jovaag have used CSP, see this profile.) The program is available for all types of farm operations, including cropland, pastureland, rangeland or forested acres.

“I enrolled my farm in the Conservation Stewardship Program in 2009 and was able to establish a better resource conserving crop rotation, upgrade my field spraying equipment with innovate technologies and renew a farmstead tree shelterbelt,” says Sibley County, Minn., dairy farmer Darrel Mosel. “All of these practices are good conservation enhancements to my farm and the local community.”

County and regional NRCS offices are currently accepting applications for CSP contracts. LSP's updated CSP fact sheet has details on how to begin the process of applying to the program. If you're already practicing conservation or are interested in adopting more stewardship measures, it's well worth your time to check out this program.

LSP federal policy organizer Adam Warthesen can be contacted at 612-722-6377 or adamw@landstewardshipproject.org.

I have lived, worked and attended school in the City of Winona for nearly 40 years. My parents moved here in 1989 to spend the end of their lives with me. I was the Director of Security at Saint Mary’s University. I reaped all the benefits that a professional position has to offer: health care, vacation, a workable budget. I left Saint Mary’s in 1993.

A series of personal events altered my work patterns. My younger brother was killed tragically in 1991. My best friend passed away suddenly in 1993. While we were negotiating my brother’s estate my father was diagnosed with cancer and died in 1994. My mother was 75-years-old. She had never lived alone.

Mom was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. She was already physically stressed with insulin- dependent diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. I admit my dad had always spoiled her a bit and now I became her sole caregiver. I worked jobs that would accommodate her needs. When one job would interfere with the kind of schedule she needed, I‘d just find another one. She passed away in 2006.

I have had a wide variety of jobs. I have delivered pizza and flowers, driven a school bus, motor coaches, a city bus and a taxi. I have done bookkeeping for tax preparers, a home health care agency and an electrician. I worked at a convenience store and have been a security guard.

Most of these jobs had varied hours each week. I often had two of these jobs at a time. They all have one thing in common though—not one ever offered me a health insurance plan. I was without insurance for over 15 years. I paid my medical bills totally out-of-pocket.

In 2011, I found MinnesotaCare. I am plagued with osteoarthritis and my knees deteriorated to the point that I could barely walk. I was 59-years-old. MinnesotaCare gave me two total knee replacements. MinnesotaCare gave me good prescription coverage. MinnesotaCare allowed me to work at jobs that did not offer health insurance. MinnesotaCare gave me hope and a healthier mental outlook by giving me access to doctors of my choice. These doctors helped to reduce my pain and improve my health.

I believe all Minnesotans should have health insurance. I believe MinnesotaCare is the helping hand that working people need to obtain health insurance when it is not available. I wish I had found it earlier. Prevention could have reduced some of the complications that have risen now that I am in my 60s. I think there are a lot of people out there that could benefit having access to MinnesotaCare. It would be terrible to lose a program that is this good for working people.

Thank you to the people that support this program and recognize the number of uninsured working poor there are in Minnesota.

Increasingly known as "wage theft," we have heard, in particular, about workers on large-scale dairy and hog farms in Minnesota not receiving full compensation according to the law. As our state's primary supplier of production agriculture information, the University of Minnesota and U of M Extension must play a key role in making sure this problem is addressed.

The time to act is now. In recent years, Centro Campesino (the Farmworker Center), the Land Stewardship Project and the Latino Economic Development Center each have received multiple reports from immigrant workers of unjust and illegal labor practices on some of the largest farms in the state. Each report we receive begs the question: Does industrial-scale livestock production create a climate that is ripe for the exploitation of immigrant farm labor?

Keep in mind that a lot of people's lives are affected by this issue. A Minnesota farm group representative told Agri News this week that, "If we were to remove all the immigrant labor in Minnesota, half of the cows would not get milked tonight."

While we don't know for certain how widespread labor abuses are, there are enough reports coming in to indicate there is a significant number of troubling incidents. Complaints have included:

• Failure to pay overtime to hourly employees.

• Docking of wages for damage to equipment or facilities.

• Failure to provide final paycheck after dismissal or resignation.

• Employers developing and implementing their own personnel policies that are not in compliance with the law.

• Employees being let go after an injury is reported.

• Employers failing to inform injured employees of workers' compensation benefits.

When workers are being taken advantage of on factory farms, it not only hurts the workers themselves, but it puts at a competitive disadvantage those farms that are abiding by the law. In addition, when these practices are common, it serves to lower the wages of all workers in the rural community, no matter where they are employed.

Two legal cases came to light in the last few weeks that centered on two of the largest industrial farms in southeast Minnesota not paying required overtime wages to their hourly workers. When combined together, these farms owed their workers $100,000 in back wages. They were forced to pay up only after intervention by the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, and in one case, the Minnesota state court system as well.

We hope that cases like these are the exception and not the rule. When they surface, they give a black eye to agriculture.

In truth, we don't know how prevalent these cases of wage theft are, only that we've heard enough similar stories to know that these are certainly not isolated cases. That's why we need some University-level research and education on the treatment and compensation of farm workers. The same investment in agricultural research that's been applied to crops, livestock, machinery, farm finances, animal housing and feed now needs to be devoted to the issue of farm labor.

It is important to note that labor rights laws apply to workers regardless of their legal status. Yes, even though undocumented workers may be fearful of reporting problems at work for fear of being fired or singled out for deportation, worker protections still apply to them.

Our three organizations have made three clear requests of the University and Extension:

• Expand and improve education for livestock farm employers about the employer's obligations to know and comply with labor rights laws.

• Conduct research within immigrant worker communities, in conjunction with Latino community groups, about the extent of labor violations on large-scale hog and dairy farms.

• Inform agricultural workers throughout the state of their rights.

The University and Extension have critical roles to play. They need to specifically acknowledge and address the issue of wage theft and other violations of worker rights occurring on farms in the state. They must understand that righting these unfair labor practices benefits workers, farm owners and rural communities. And they need to invest deeply in the research and education necessary to make certain that the issue of workplace injustice will not be tolerated, ignored or tacitly accepted.

We certainly expect and hope that the U of M and Extension will fulfill this critical need in our rural communities. These vital public institutions have the opportunity to help ensure that agriculture truly is healthy and just for all.

Ernesto Velez Bustos is executive director of Centro Campesino and Doug Nopar is a Land Stewardship Project organizer.

Nettie and Gerald’s talk is at the core of this one-act play, which was developed by LSP and has played to packed houses in southeast and western Minnesota during the past two years. It has also been presented in Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota and Illinois. The play features the elderly couple and their struggle with figuring out what to do with their farm when it is no longer possible for them to work the land. They face a dilemma: do they sell the land the largest farm operation in the county, or give a young entrepreneurial couple an opportunity to launch their own enterprise?

The former choice provides almost instant financial security, since the large operator can pay top dollar, cash-up-front. Such a dangling carrot is extremely attractive to someone who has worked from dawn 'til dusk for five decades and doesn’t have a company pension to draw on upon retirement.

The latter choice is more risky. It may mean renting (at a lower price than the big boys can pay) to the couple for a time until they are in a position to buy (also at a lower price) the farm. It also means putting trust in the young couple’s ability to make a living utilizing methods that Gerald and Nettie aren’t familiar with, such as grass-based livestock production and direct marketing.

But the “help the young farmers out” choice also comes with a tremendous potential upside. It could help the retiring couple continue the legacy of an award-winning conservation farm, a legacy they inherited themselves 50 years ago. The decision of which way to go weighs most heavily on the cantankerous Gerald, who has experienced fainting spells lately. His concern is that his life partner, Nettie, will have to deal with things on her own sooner rather than later.

A version of this conversation—at turns funny, angry and heartbreaking—is taking place all across Farm Country. We have an entire generation of farmers who launched their careers on the land during the past half-century, and are faced with deciding what to do with a business that has also become a way of life for them.

This play is not only aimed at those folks who are having that conversation, but perhaps even more importantly, those who are not. It’s not a fun topic to pick up, but it’s a necessary one if our rural communities are to have a sustainable future. Sometimes a good ice breaker can be seeing someone else, even if it’s two actors, having the same conversation you need to be having.

How these conversations—current as well as future ones—conclude will play a key element in whether diverse, sustainable farming gets a permanent foothold in Minnesota and across the country. Whether it involves organic vegetable production, grass-based livestock or diverse field cropping techniques, sustainable agriculture is management intensive. And management intensive systems require more eyes to the acre—more farmers, in other words. Without those farmers, all the innovative production and marketing methods in the world won’t make a difference.

Look Who’s Knockin’ will ring true for a lot of retiring and beginning farmers for a reason: as the play’s author—LSP organizer Doug Nopar—makes clear in an Ear to the Ground podcast, it’s based on dozens of conversations LSP staff have had with farmers and other community members in recent years. All good dramatic performances are a reflection of the reality in our own daily lives, and Knockin’ is no exception.

One reality LSP has run up against is that many of the new entrepreneurs that pass through our Farm Beginnings course find themselves stymied by a lack of access to land. This barrier is the result of many factors, including land values inflated by government programs and a record-breaking commodity market.

But perhaps one of the most daunting barriers beginning farmers face is the attitude of their elders. Rural areas are permeated with a malaise that there are no opportunities for young people in production agriculture, unless they want to work for a mega-operation as a barn janitor or tractor jockey. Many farmers who got started after World War II feel they were the last of a breed—entrepreneurial farmers who could make a go of it on the land with the help of some sweat equity, innovative management and profitable markets.

One can’t blame them, what with the mega-trends in agriculture: bigger and fewer farms, shuttered Main Streets, monopolized markets. But as we’ve seen through Farm Beginnings and the community based food movement, opportunities are emerging in agriculture for beginning entrepreneurs. Among other things, demand for food produced using organics and other sustainable methods is creating that opportunity. We also have an entire generation of farmers who decades ago were pioneers in sustainable agriculture, and who now have knowledge and experience to pass on to the next generation.

I've spent time in Wisconsin’s Jackson County, where a loose confederation of community members—everyone from established farmers to a lender and a veterinarian—have taken it upon themselves to help the next generation of farmers get started. The positive attitude present in that region was absolutely energizing.

As one young dairy farmer from the area shared with me while he was doing the evening milking: “The previous generation has to be positive about agriculture to really make it possible for the next farmers.”

Look Who’s Knockin’ addresses the “there are no opportunities in agriculture” issue as well. Gerald, worn down by his poor health and worried about his family’s financial security, is mostly unimpressed by the two young farmers who have shown an interest in taking over their farm. He’s also worried about peer pressure—what will happen when the other retired farmers at the coffee shop find out he got less than top dollar for his farm?

Nettie sees a little of her and Gerald in the young couple, and is excited about how their new production and marketing ideas could provide the basis for continuing their farm’s legacy.

“Now we have a chance to help someone else—young people that were just like we were in so many ways,” she says. “Wouldn’t that be something to be truly proud of?”

The conversation continues…

For the past year, LSP and our allies have been working to put people, not corporations, at the center of Minnesota’s exchange. This week, by passing HF 5, we won a health insurance exchange that has no corporations on the governing board and which gives community organizations the ability to help people “navigate” the exchange. We also won strong “active purchaser” powers for the exchange to negotiate with insurance companies for better deals for people.

This is an important win. The insurance industry, the Chamber of Commerce and other corporate interests fought tooth and nail to construct an exchange that put profits before people. They wanted to run it and have it paid by the public treasury.

They thought they could weaken the exchange so that it would bring them more customers and more profit, but not make them give people better, more affordable, less complicated health insurance.

They underestimated the power of people.

The insurance corporations did get their pound of flesh, though. They won a delay until 2015 to the implementation of the active purchaser power of the exchange. That is not good—it means that insurance companies will be allowed to flood the exchange with shoddy “choices” in 2014, the first year it is up and running.

But a strong board will be able to hit the ground running in 2015, and make companies remove bad plans and offer better, easier to compare insurance policies so that people can make the best decisions for themselves, their families and their small businesses. Key in the upcoming months is Gov. Dayton appointing a strong exchange board.

Senator Tony Lourey (Kerrick), one of the chief authors of the exchange bill, said yesterday that this exchange will be a “starting place,” and a “foundation on which to make sure Minnesotans have access to the care they need.”

The Land Stewardship Project agrees. Our members are clear: our health care system doesn't work for people, and is in need of far-reaching reform. Winning a people-first Minnesota Health Insurance Exchange can be a first step towards a health care system that works for all Minnesotans, no exceptions.

Of course, there's more work to do this year, including making sure the Legislature passes a bill that will allow Minnesota to keep and improve MinnesotaCare. We'll be in touch about the MinnesotaCare bill (the bill numbers are Senate File 184 and House File 214) in the coming weeks.

But for now we wanted to let you know of this important, positive step forward. It's progress, and LSP played a key role.

Great work. Stay tuned!

Megan Buckingham and Paul Sobocinski are LSP organizers working on health care issues.

But allowing such a way of thinking to dominate public policy is incredibly shortsighted, especially at a time when it's becoming increasingly clear that production of food in our own backyard is an economic and environmental boon to our communities. The Minnesota Legislature could determine the fate of many ag operations sitting along CapX's route as early as Monday or Tuesday of next week. Lawmakers need to hear from anyone concerned about local food, family farms and sustainable land use.

No farming operation in the path of CapX2020 better represents the public goods provided by sustainable food production more than Cedar Summit Farm. As the folks at Cedar Summit have pointed out repeatedly during the battle over CapX, their certified organic, grass-based operation is not compatible with a high voltage line. The farmers will have to move, and they are not doing it voluntarily. CapX needs to admit that and compensate farms like Cedar Summit accordingly.

In some ways, the benefits that the owners of Cedar Summit—Dave and Florence Minar, along with their children—provide the local and wider community is incalculable. However, not paying them enough to relocate elsewhere in the region would be a devastating loss not only for the local food economy, but for the landscape and a generation of beginning farmers who look to the Minars as their model for how to balance profitability and ecological health.

The Minars have been having a positive impact on their community and the wider region for a long time. In the 2002 book, The Farm as Natural Habitat: Reconnecting Food Systems and Ecosystems, I wrote about the Minars' pioneering work to reach out to consumers and their non-farming neighbors. At the time, they were just getting their on-farm milk processing enterprise off the ground (it's now thriving, as anyone who shops in the Twin Cities knows), and most of their direct-marketing was centered around meat. A lot has changed since then, but this family's commitment to the land and their community has not.

Below is an excerpt of what I wrote about the Minars over a decade ago. I find it particularly poignant given Dave's assertion in the last paragraph that, "We intend to stay here." Such an attitude shows that the Minars will not be moving voluntarily and that recreating Cedar Summit's magic elsewhere is a huge undertaking. It also shows why the Legislature needs to make it possible for the "buy the farm law" to treat operations like Cedar Summit as they deserve to be treated: valued members of the community with deeper roots and more to offer than the most powerful, lobbyist-packed energy company.

Why Do They Do It?

(From The Farm as Natural Habitat, 2002, Island Press)

In 1993, the Minars converted to grass-based livestock production and started making a serious foray into direct marketing for sustainably raised beef, pork, chickens and turkeys. In 2001, they broke ground on a milk processing facility right on their farm. They are hoping to use that facility to direct market their milk in the form of yogurt, cheese and other products.

They now sell pork, beef, chickens and turkeys to more than two hundred customers, who pay a premium price. Milk sales still make up most of their income, but by 2001 direct-to-consumer meat sales were about a quarter of their gross profits. The Minars are well known for their devotion to producing food in an environmentally sustainable manner. In 2000, they joined with area conservation agencies and nonprofits in a project to reclaim a highly eroded portion of Sand Creek, which winds its way through their farm.

The project is attempting to prove that low-cost methods using excavating equipment, logs, cattle and grass seeding can improve a stream bank cheaply and effectively. The project has some major implications. Sand Creek is one of the main sources of siltation in the heavily polluted Minnesota River. In addition, it's believed by an increasing number of ecologists and conservation technicians that low-cost methods of ecosystem reclamation are what are needed in farm country—methods that utilize the farm's own resources and tools.

I've been to the Minars' many times when their customers pick up meat from their walk-in freezer or attend an open house that features not only the farmers, but also the people who do the meat processing for them. The Minars consciously do not deliver any of their products. They want their customers to see their farm and meet their family, which includes five children. These customers, many of whom are recent immigrants from the Twin Cities, show their support for this kind of agriculture with their pocketbook. But they also provide verbal pats on the back and end up telling others about this wonderful source of family-farm meat.

 Given their environmentally friendly reputation, I asked Dave if that pays off in their direct marketing. Even though they tout their eco-methods in brochures and sales material, Dave said in the end the thing most consumers are interested in is whether the meat is chemical and antibiotic-free (it is).

That the people Dave and Florence Minar sell sustainably raised meat to are first and foremost focused on their own health is understandable. After all, that's what has prompted many a hard look by farm families themselves over the years. But just as a case of the pesticide flu can be one of the factors that leads a farmer to look at the bigger agro-ecological picture, consumer concerns about food safety offer a teachable moment, a door into a wider understanding about the importance of supporting sustainable farming systems.

For example, the Minars are able to raise drug-free beef because the cattle are out on well-managed pastures where health problems related to confinement are not present. Those pastures keep contaminants out of the air and water, and recycle nutrients efficiently without the use of mega-manure lagoons. And the low capital costs of such a system allow a family like the Minars to live on the land and make a living from it.

Gaining the moral support of residents in the area is becoming more important to the Minars literally by the day. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, their home county, Scott, is the fastest growing in the sate. In fact, local government officials project that by 2010 Scott County will have 109,000 people living there—up from less than 60,000 in 1990. (Update: In fact, according to the latest U.S. Census figures, as of 2011 Scott County had a population of 132,556.) Subdivisions are sprouting all around the Minars' pastures. This concerns the family, but they aren't about to move.

In his typical laid-back way, Dave told me they see such growth as "bringing our customers close to us." And if those customers can associate agriculture with a direct source of food, as well as beauty (the Minars often don't have to provide directions to their place to even newcomers because their verdant pastures are so well known) and clean water, so much the better.

But it's not just about safe food, clean water, or scenic vistas. The Minar farm fits into a larger ecosystem that blends all of these factors and more. This ecosystem is many things to many people, but as far as Dave and Florence are concerned, at the core of it all is that it is their family's home.

"We intend to stay here, and part of it is having the animals out and not contributing to the smell and being a good neighbor," said Dave. "And if that means providing meat directly to consumers then that's part of it too."

Indeed, based on pure numbers, the statistics are impressive. Midwestern farmland values increased 16 percent in 2012, the third largest gain since the late 1970s, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Armchair economists say it’s simply a matter of supply and demand. Market prices for commodities like corn and soybeans are at all-time highs, so it naturally follows that prices for the soil that can produce those commodities would also be through the roof (it doesn't hurt that interest rates are at rock bottom levels as well). Supply and demand is partially responsible, but other non-market factors are at work here as well.

For example, government policies like crop insurance remove virtually any risk from farming land that in the past may have been considered too poor to raise a crop on profitably. This has made it quite lucrative for large landowners to bid up prices on even highly erodible, marginal land.

It also turns out that the conventional wisdom that high land prices always result in a healthier rural economy is also pretty simplistic, and in most cases, downright wrong. For example,  Bloomberg News recently did a fascinating analysis that showed an uncomfortably close relationship between farmland values and income disparities. The focus of Bloomberg’s reporting was Iowa, which has traditionally had a relatively narrow gap between the richest and the poorest residents.

A wide income disparity gap has long been more closely associated with metropolitan areas—think New York’s Park Avenue and Harlem’s slums, for example. However, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, less populated areas now dominate the ranks of U.S. counties where income inequality increased the most sharply in recent years.

Some of the disparity can be attributed to the land boom. Take O’Brien County, Iowa, for example, which had the state’s highest—$9,513—average per-acre land value in 2011. According to Bloomberg, in that county, “The top 10 percent of wage-earning households collected 54 percent of the county’s income in 2010, compared with 40 percent a decade earlier. Of more than 3,000 U.S. counties, O’Brien had the 23rd highest jump in income inequality from 2000 to 2010.”

Families that sell out to the highest bidder are often not living in the community any more, meaning their wealth isn’t staying local. In addition, when a farm is sold, it’s more than likely bought to add acres to a larger operation, not to serve as a basis for a new start-up.

“Iowa had had historically low levels of inequality, but now it is skyrocketing,” Iowa State University sociologist David Peters told Bloomberg. “Today you have far fewer farmers and a small number earning larger and larger incomes. It doesn’t spread through the economy like it used to.”

This is bad news for Main Street businesses as well as local institutions like churches and schools, which rely on warm bodies to stay viable, no matter what land is selling and renting for. It’s also bad news for beginning farmers, who are priced out of even renting land, let alone buying it.

As the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings program has shown, this means it’s a critical time to ask an important question of landowners: is getting the highest price possible for that acre of land worth the price it imposes on the community? That's a question that will be posed March 22-23, when LSP's popular one-act play about the future of farming, Look Who's Knockin', comes to St. Catherine University in St. Paul.

Dealing head-on with this question couldn't be more timely. A few days ago I was forwarded an e-letter that had been sent out by a Texas financial adviser to his clients. The memo, written in that breathless, excitable style only bubble-market loving financial wonks can pull off with a straight face, makes the argument that Midwestern farmland is now a "trophy asset" that should be captured, drug home and put on display, so to speak. Here's an excerpt:

"Trophy assets are the world's most valuable assets. These are the types of assets that wars are fought over. We're talking about assets like the Grasberg Mine in Indonesia, the world's most productive copper and gold mine… gigantic casinos on the Las Vegas Strip… prime Manhattan retail space… and Texas' giant oilfields.

"When you can acquire the world's elite mines, oilfields, retail locations, and casino properties for bargain prices, they are 'one decision' financial moves. You buy them… and never sell. You sit back and collect huge rents and capital gains. You can pass these assets onto your children (if you can stand them).

 "Most people don't realize how important the black earth of Iowa and its neighboring states was to the formation of the American empire. To this day, the farmland of Middle America is a key component of America's dominance. On the geopolitical stage, it's 1,000 times more important than Las Vegas casinos.…

"No other region on Earth can produce such huge amounts of food and ship it at such low costs. Farming this region allowed America to develop a massive, well-fed population. It allowed capital to flow into railroads, factories, and cities. It allowed the build-out of the most powerful military on Earth.

"Thus, the farmland of Middle America is a 'trophy asset' on par with the oilfields of Saudi Arabia."

I suppose it's a bit flattering to hear that a big-time Texas financial expert thinks so highly of our farmland. In fact, I agree that our fertile topsoil is "1,000 times more important than Las Vegas casinos." But overall, this guy's "trophy asset" attitude is pretty sickening. Trophies are items you hunt down and conquer, not a resource you steward for coming generations.

We should all get a little queasy when farmland is compared to an extracted resource like oil or copper. Part of the problem with agriculture today is that we're already mining the soil like it's just so much coal to be dug up and burned, making our food production system less sustainable every year. Keeping land productive for the long haul requires a farming system based on a living, biologically-based cycle, not an extractive, one-way industrial process.

And a truly sustainable agriculture requires people actively living on and working the land. Trophies are to be mounted on walls and admired remotely; they aren't an active part of our everyday lives. What's next: a Manhattan investment banker showing off a glass case full of Lester Loam at his next cocktail party? "And this baby cranks out 200-bushel corn!" he crows while mixing martinis for his buddies.

The idea that you "never sell" and just "sit back and collect huge rents" leaves no room for the next generation of farming entrepreneurs. It's a recipe for exporting even more wealth, soil, water, and eventually, people, out of our rural communities.

Treating soil like dirt isn't the answer, but putting it up on a pedestal only reachable by a select few  isn't sustainable either.

The "conflict of interest" portion of the bill would ensure that the health exchange would represent the best interests of everyday Minnesotans by preventing insurance companies and their representatives from sitting on a health insurance exchange board.

I’m a farmer in Wrenshall and have personal experience trying and failing to find health insurance that is affordable and that actually offers health care. I’m on Medicare now, but in 2008 I spent a third of my income on a policy that required me to spend an additional $6,000 before I received any benefit.

That is why the "active purchaser" provision of the bill is so important to me. The "active purchaser" provision would allow the health insurance exchange to negotiate with insurance companies for better deals and require the companies to provide clear options that are more affordable and easier to compare.

Even though Lourey and Atkins have been subject to intense insurance company lobbying, they are holding fast in order to ensure that Minnesotans get a fair deal in the health insurance market.

Please call your senators and representatives and urge them to vote for and actively promote Senate file No. 1 and House file No. 5, as introduced.

LSP member John Fisher-Merritt's Food Farm CSA is near Wrenshall, Minn.

Land Stewardship Project members, other local citizens, state agencies and scientific experts submitted a total of about 75 comments on each mine. The comments pointed out the many serious inadequacies in the Environmental Assessment Worksheets (EAWs) prepared on the proposed Yoder and Dabelstein mines, and called for the much more in-depth EIS, which must be ordered if the EAW process shows a project to have the potential for significant environmental impacts.

An EIS fully analyzes all aspects of a proposed project and explores alternatives that would prevent or mitigate major environmental harm, including not building the project. Under state law, no permit for the project could be issued while an EIS is in progress, and the costs of the EIS must be covered by the project proposer.

Many comments, including those submitted by the commissioners of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) and Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), point out that the two mines are in fact part of a much larger project which triggers a mandatory EIS. Both agencies’ letters note that the Yoder and Dabelstein mines in Saratoga Township, together with the several other mines proposed by the same company (Minnesota Sands, LLC, also doing business as Minnesota Proppant, LLC) in the immediate area, would total well over the 160-acre threshold for a mandatory EIS on non-metallic mineral mining projects.

As both the Star Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio News have reported, the commissioners also call for proposed frac sand processing activities to be examined in the same EIS as part of the same project. This would include Minnesota Proppant’s plant proposed near St. Charles, which, if built, would be the largest frac sand processing and rail transport facility in North America.

Along with pointing out the true magnitude of the proposed project, comments submitted described its potential for a wide variety of significant environmental effects.  University of Minnesota geology professor E. Calvin Alexander, Jr., considered the state’s leading expert on karst geology, submitted extensive comments on the mines’ potential to cause groundwater contamination (see Alexander cover letter here and Alexander comment here). He cites numerous problems in the EAWs’ discussion of geology and water quality issues and concludes that a full EIS should be required.

Dozens of Winona County LSP members, including Scott Lowery and Joe Morse, submitted comments detailing the proposed mines’ potential for serious, harmful impacts on the land and people.

LSP members and other local citizens called for an EIS on the project due to a wide range of significant potential effects, including groundwater pollution, groundwater depletion, air pollution from crystalline silica and diesel fumes, destruction of farmland and wildlife habitat, and safety risks and other impacts of heavy truck traffic. Citizens joined MPCA and MDH in calling for an EIS to fully study the cumulative potential effects of all proposed frac sand mining, processing and transportation activity in the area.

The final decision on whether to order an EIS will be made by the Winona County Board of Commissioners on March 5. The Winona Daily News reports that the County Board and Planning Commission will hold a joint public hearing on the decision on Thursday, Feb. 21, at Southeast Technical College in Winona.

Johanna Rupprecht is an LSP organizer based in our southeast Minnesota office. She can be reached at jrupprecht@landstewardshipproject.org or 612-722-6377.