Over the past few decades, the dominant push in agriculture has been for farms to grow larger and for the industry to consolidate into a few hands to maximize profits. One of the many ways the biggest have been able to get bigger at the expense of small and mid-sized farmers, rural communities, and our water and climate is by externalizing the costs of pollution. When an aquifer becomes contaminated due to agrichemical and manure runoff, the people who draw from that aquifer are forced to spend up to tens of thousands of dollars to access safe drinking water. If the operation itself had to pay the costs for getting clean water to the community, it would most likely have to do business quite differently or not exist in the first place.
In southeastern Minnesota, for example, approximately 9,000 people have unsafe drinking water. Meanwhile, the Legislature is using public dollars to assist with getting these people access to clean water while doing little to address the root of the problem. The Land Stewardship Project strongly supports funding to ensure Minnesotans have safe drinking water, but without a more holistic approach taxpayers will spend decades subsidizing Big Ag’s pollution with no end in sight.
In fact, Minnesota feedlot rules have not been updated in nearly 25 years. According to data from the 2022 U.S. Agriculture Census, 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, this Minnesota legislative session LSP’s Animal Agriculture Steering Committee has been working to introduce and build support for legislation that supports comprehensive manure management reform. The bill was introduced by Rep. Andy Smith and Sen. Mary Kunesh in March. Our goal this legislative session is to show legislators that Minnesotans want our lawmakers to prioritize this proposal in 2025 and to secure 40 legislative authors and co-authors on the bill. So far, we have 15 authors.
To make sure we reach our goal, we need your help. Can you take just two minutes to ask your Minnesota Representative to co-author this legislation, if they aren’t already?
Take Action HERE!
The Bill:
• 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 (approximately once per 14 years) to 20% (once per five years).
• Increases Minnesota Pollution Control Agency feedlot inspection rates for the largest 13% of feedlots to once per year.
Please take action now and ask your Representative to co-author this legislation today!
Want to get more involved in LSP’s Animal Agriculture Campaign? Join our next Animal Ag Campaign Action meeting on Tuesday, May 28, at 7 p.m., via Zoom. Learn more and register here.