2024 Minnesota Legislative Session Update: Less Than One Month Left!

There is less than one month left in the 2024 Minnesota legislative session. This week, the House and Senate are finalizing and passing their separate omnibus policy and supplemental budget bills, which will then be sent to conference committees where differences between the proposals will be hammered out.

This session, the Land Stewardship Project has primarily focused on engaging on time-sensitive issues, such as the southeastern Minnesota water quality crisis and the prioritization of emerging farmers within Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) programs, as well as building a strong foundation to hit the ground running with larger proposals in 2025. This is because (a) political will (and energy) at the Capitol has been low following last year’s historic wins and (b) it’s a “policy year,” where lawmakers focus primarily on revenue-neutral policy changes.

LSP at the Capitol

Despite this legislative session being less active than usual, LSPers have been making their voices heard at the Capitol over the past few months:

Dozens of LSP members have shared their stories by testifying in legislative hearings focused on water quality, emerging farmers, soil health, and more.
In February, members of LSP’s Climate Policy Steering Committee spent a day at the Capitol to meet with Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Aric Putnam, Senate Environment Committee Chair Foung Hawj, House Agriculture Committee Vice Chair Kristi Pursell, along with the Governor’s office, about LSP’s climate priorities.
In March, LSP held our largest-ever Family Farm Breakfast & Day at the Capitol with approximately 305 attendees, about 140 of whom stayed to meet with their legislators. Thirty-four percent of attendees were farmers this year. During our Lobby Day, we also held a Town Hall Meeting with Attorney General Keith Ellison, Rep. Pursell, and MDA Emerging Farmers Office Director Lillian Otieno.
Last week, 10 LSP rural, urban, and farming members participated in LSP’s Animal Ag Day at the Capitol, where we delivered a letter from 85 farmers asking legislators to co-author our manure management reform bill. Folks met with and shared their stories with eight legislators, several of whom have agreed to co-author our legislation!
Nearly 800 people have taken action by signing a petition, adding their name to a farmer sign-on letter, or contacting their legislators about LSP’s legislative priorities.
Over 400 people have attended virtual or in-person LSP policy campaign events, other than the Family Farm Breakfast.

Land Access & Emerging Farmers

→ Prioritization of Emerging Farmers in MDA Programs

Last year, the Land Stewardship Project celebrated the historic investments in emerging farmers that, alongside legislative and organizational allies, we won at the Minnesota Capitol. One of these wins included doubling the funding for and prioritizing emerging farmer applicants within the  Minnesota Farmland Down Payment Assistance Program. “Emerging farmers” are farmers from historically underserved communities, including Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), immigrants, women, veterans, persons with disabilities, young and beginning farmers, LGBTQ+ farmers, and others.  

However, earlier this year, a right-wing, California-based law firm began waging a discrimination lawsuit aimed at this innovative program. Unfortunately, due to the state of our nation’s courts, our legislature is now forced to choose between the future of programs like the Farmland Down Payment Assistance Program and the prioritization of emerging farmers within them.

Because LSP has the capacity, legislative experience, and relationships with lawmakers to dedicate to this issue, we have helped coordinate a group of emerging farmer-led and emerging farmer-serving organizations to ensure the new statute is strong and to raise our voices in hearings about the pervasiveness of racism in our farm and food system. As a group, we have worked closely with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and met with the House and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairs to ensure that legislative changes work for emerging farmers. While there is still more to work out, we feel like we are on the right track and will end this legislative session in a good place.

To read the full context on this issue and to compare the House and Senate proposals, read our recent blog, updated this week: “Who Benefits When Emerging Farmers Can’t Succeed?”

LSP and partners engaged on this issue are working with each other, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, and the House and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairs to finalize language that works for Minnesota’s emerging farmers. Please let us know if you have feedback.

→ Next Generation MN Farmer Act

This legislative session, LSP’s Land Access and Emerging Farmers Policy Working Group has been working to update and re-introduce the  Next Generation Minnesota Farmer Act,  which would create a fellowship program through the state Department of Labor and Industry for aspiring farmers to get hands-on farming skills and farm business management skills on a small or mid-sized farm while being paid a living wage and subsidizing the cost of labor for small and mid-sized farms. The hosting farm would pay the fellowship recipient minimum wage while the state bridges the difference between minimum wage and $20 per hour. The bill has been introduced in the Minnesota House by Rep. Pursell (DFL-Northfield) and we are on track to introduce it in the Minnesota Senate yet this session.

Animal Agriculture

→ Manure Management Reform

This legislative session, LSP’s Animal Agriculture Steering Committee has been working to introduce and build support for comprehensive manure management reform. Decades of overapplication of fertilizers and manure have led to a nitrate crisis in southeastern Minnesota. While the Legislature is taking steps to help folks access safe drinking water, we also need to address the root of the problem. Moreover, Minnesota feedlot rules have not been updated in nearly 25 years. According to data from the 2022 U.S. Census of Agriculture, between 1997 and 2022 Minnesota lost 78% of our dairies and the average dairy herd increased in size by 277%. Our current rules and regulations do not reflect what our agricultural system looks like today.

That’s why LSP farmer-members have come together to write and advocate for legislation that:

Lowers the threshold for required manure management plans to include the largest 16.75% of feedlots.
Adds the testing wells and application fields identified in or affected by a manure management plan for baseline nutrient load levels as a part of approving a manure management plan.
Requires mapping of manure management plans to identify overlapping manure management plans and areas of potential over-application.
Creates a tiered fine system for unremedied violations directed toward improving water quality in the fined feedlot’s watershed.
Strengthens setbacks for manure application from municipal and private wells, hospitals, sinkholes, bodies of water, or wetlands.
Slowly increases county feedlot inspection rates from 7% of feedlots in the county each year (approx. once per 14 years) to 20% (once per 5 years). 
Increases MPCA feedlot inspection rates for the largest 13% of feedlots to once per year.

The bill was introduced by Rep. Andy Smith and Sen. Mary Kunesh in March. Our goal this legislative session is to show legislators that small and mid-sized farmers want our lawmakers to prioritize this proposal in 2025 and to secure 40 legislative authors on the bill. So far, we have 15 authors and are on track to reach our goal of 40 by the end of the legislative session.

→ Large-Scale Anaerobic Manure Digester Oversight Reform

LSP’s Animal Agriculture Steering Committee has also been working on introducing legislation to lower the threshold for required environmental review large-scale  manure digesters, which are being touted by Big Ag as climate solutions . Instead, these facilities have great potential to make the problem worse while contributing to the consolidation  of the livestock industry. This legislation, which we are in the final stages of drafting before it is introduced in the Minnesota Senate, would also classify digestate as a fertilizer, rather than a manure product, as it is significantly more potent in nitrate content than natural manure.

Water Quality in Southeastern Minnesota

All eyes have been on the Legislature for how it will respond to the Environmental Protection Agency’s push to have state agencies resolve the water quality crisis in the karst region of southeastern Minnesota due to nitrate contamination. For years, LSP members have been cognizant of how the unique karst topography, combined with the trend toward less diversified agriculture, have impacted groundwater, aquifers, and what residents can expect to come out of their kitchen taps. Most recently, LSP, along with the Water Coalition, League of Women Voters, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA), Minnesota Well Owners Organization (MNWOO), and others, co-hosted several water forums for southeastern Minnesota residents.

Several legislative committees have been responding to this issue, including the Health and Human Services Committee, Agriculture Committee and the Environment Committee. They have held informational hearings to learn about the complicated issue. Although few proposals get at the root of what is causing nitrate contamination — (over) application of synthetic fertilizers and manure — there is funding to make sure residents in the eight-county karst region have access to uncontaminated water and that we are better tracking nitrate contamination. A few proposals also invest in soil health programming.

→ Drinking Water Remediation

There is a little over $3 million within the House agriculture proposal to cover home water treatment systems for private well drinking water that is over the Environmental Protection Agency safe drinking water standard of 10mg/L in nitrate contamination. The Senate includes $750,000 for this proposal.
The House Agriculture committee committed $233,000 for the private well drinking water assistance program and the Senate included $2 million. The program would establish a mitigation program for contaminated wells, including testing, repairing, and replacing wells and providing home water treatment for private wells that tested at or above the maximum contamination level of 10mg/L in the eight-county region.
The House Agriculture Committee also established a new private well drinking water assistance account for community health boards to cover bottled water delivery, reverse osmosis treatment, or connection to a public water system. This account is funded by the existing fertilizer tonnage fee of 40 cents per ton, which currently goes to the Agriculture Fertilizer Research Education Council (AFREC).

Soil Health

→ Soil Health Financial Assistance Program

The MDA’s popular soil health financial assistance program is the first and only MDA program to provide cost-share for the purchase and retrofit of soil health equipment. This has allowed farmers, Soil and Water Conservation Districts, and producer groups to purchase equipment like no-till drills, strip tillers, etc. to expand the adoption of soil health practices. The Senate Agriculture Committee has passed a one-time infusion of $500,000 for this program, prioritizing projects in the eight county southeastern Minnesota region. The House has passed an additional $300,000 for the program and added policy changes that grantees must become Agriculture Water Quality Certified within two years and that grantees cannot lease, rent or sell the equipment for economic gain. LSP strongly believes that farmers/SWCDs/producer groups should have the ability to rent and lease this equipment so that these practices can spread to as many acres as possible. We are working with legislators to ensure that ability continues.

→ Expanding the Successful Olmsted County Soil Health Program

LSP’s Climate Policy Steering Committee worked to advance a bill that would create a new program modeled after the successful Olmsted County Soil and Water Conservation District Groundwater Protection and Soil Health Program, which takes a results-based payment approach by incentivizing cover cropping, grazing, and a third crop rotation. The program has measurably reduced the amount of nitrogen fertilizer and nitrate contamination produced by farms enrolled in the program. The bill, championed by by Rep. Pursell, Rep. Larry Kraft (DFL- St. Louis Park), and Rep. Bjorn Olson (R- Fairmont), had two hearings in the House House Agriculture Committee, but unfortunately, most parts were not made part of the omnibus bill. LSP’s Climate Committee met with legislators in Saint Paul early in the session to discuss the need for this type of program and will continue to advocate for more results-based soil health programs that are holistic in nature and are easy for farmers to apply for.

Regional Food Systems

This session, LSP continues to advocate for increased funding for the popular Farm-to-School and Early Care grant program that reimburses school districts and childcare centers for purchases from Minnesota farmers and for equipment to be able to do more scratch cooking. This program for fiscal year 2023 had just over $6 million dollars in requests.

Last session, LSP, along with our allies at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), worked to increase funding up to $1 million per year for this grant program and secured a full-time farm-to-institution coordinator at the MDA. Even so, demand still outpaces funding available. LSP worked with Sen. Heather Gustafson (DFL-Vadnais Heights) and Rep. Pursell to introduce a bill to increase the farm-to-school grant program to $10 million and with Sen. Gustafson and Rep. Matt Norris (DFL-Blaine) to expand eligibility for grant recipients to include in-home childcare providers. Expanding eligibility to these providers is especially critical for our rural communities, where many families rely on in-home childcare and do not have access to childcare centers. In 2019, there were over 1,700 childcare centers and more than 7,600 licensed family in-home childcare programs in Minnesota.

Given the low budget amounts allocated for the Agriculture Committee of just over $7 million, with the majority going toward nitrate treatment and remediation for drinking water in southeastern Minnesota, we are excited that the House Agriculture Committee included a one-time $200,000 increase to the Farm-to-School and Early Care program and the Senate included a one-time $100,000 increase. Both the House and Senate expanded eligibility to include in-home childcare providers.

Lastly, LSP worked with Rep. Samantha Sencer-Mura (DFL-Minneapolis) and Sen. Gustafson to introduce a bill for regional local foods coordinators that will help scale up the purchasing of local food products sold to institutions such as schools, hospitals, and additional new markets. Year-after-year, we hear about the need for dedicated regional, community-based staffing for farmers to work with that can help navigate new wholesale markets. We also hear of a need for a point person that works with food service directors to make it easier to develop relationships with farmers and who understands what their questions and barriers are to sourcing locally.

Get Involved!

We need all of us to make our vision for a just and sustainable farm and food system and healthy communities a reality. If you have five minutes, an hour, or a day, we need you with us. Here are three ways to take action:

1) Attend an Upcoming Campaign Action Meeting

Register for an upcoming Campaign Action Meeting for one of our four core campaigns: Climate, Animal Agriculture, Land Access and Emerging Farmers, and Regional Food Systems. At these monthly Campaign Action Meetings, LSP members and supporters will work together to plan and execute tactics to advance our priorities for people and the land. All meetings are listed on this web page.

2) Sign our Manure Management Reform Petition!

If you are a Minnesotan, please add your name in support of LSP’s manure management reform bill! Our goal is 1,000 signatures and we are currently at 556 signatures. Learn more and sign here. For more ways to make your voice heard, check out our Action Alerts page.

3) Join LSP as a Member, Renew Your Membership, or Make a Special Gift

LSP’s power comes from each of us, our members. Consider joining LSP as a member, renewing your membership, or making a special gift today with a tax-deductible contribution of any amount that’s meaningful to you.

LSP policy manager Amanda Koehler can be reached at akoehler@landstewardshipproject.org; LSP policy organizer Laura Schreiber is at lschreiber@landstewardshipproject.org.