The Star Tribune newspaper recently ran an in-depth series of articles about the environmental risks faced by our Minnesota waterways, focusing on the Upper Mississippi, the Red River and the Chippewa River. The last article in the series highlighted the Land Stewardship Project’s work related to the Chippewa 10% Project, which is helping farmers and… Read More →
*This blog contains new information as of Nov. 1* The individual health insurance market, the place where many self-employed individuals purchase medical insurance is — candidly — a mess. Many Land Stewardship Project members are adversely affected by the current state of this market: premiums exploding, coverage choices dwindling, provider networks shrinking. What are the… Read More →
The telephone rang late one afternoon in early October. It was a call from a jubilant, if exhausted, dairy farmer who said he’d planted 20 acres of rye the previous night. He said he’d been attending Land Stewardship Project cover crop/soil health events and that despite the pitfalls of harvest, machinery and too much rain,… Read More →
I have been a member of the Land Stewardship Project since 2008, first joining through the Farm Beginnings program. Since then, and even before, as a grass-fed beef farmer, a professor of sustainable agriculture law issues, and now renting our farm fields to Farm Beginning’s graduates, I have observed and participated in LSP’s campaigns and… Read More →
Sometimes the rules of simple cause and effect don’t directly apply. Take, for instance, the fact that cattle are ruminants, and like all ruminants they utilize a wonderfully complex digestive system to turn forages and grain into meat and milk. A major side effect of all that fermentation on four legs is the production of… Read More →
In Boone County, Iowa, fertile farmland stretches as far as the eye can see. But as our van of Land Stewardship Project members rounded the corner on a rural road, we saw a disturbing sight: miles of black, vacant land where the landscape has been shaved to make way for the Dakota Access Pipeline. On… Read More →
Andy Cotter and Irene Genelin bring an eclectic background to farming. He studied mechanical engineering in college and she was a French major. They met while competing as elite unicyclists and were national champions in the pairs competition (think ice dancing on one wheel), as well as individual world champions in various categories. They also… Read More →
Dear Senator Klobuchar: In considering whether or not to support the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, I hope you will look beyond the positions of main stream economists who believe in more globalization of economic activity and seek out those economists who think more deeply and comprehensively about economic and social realities and believe in… Read More →
As Laura Lengnick makes clear, “resiliency” is all the rage these days. It seems the term is being tossed around by everyone from Wall Street investment bankers to wildlife biologists. That the term is in such vogue is a good thing. It’s an acknowledgement that whatever system we’re talking about—economic, ecological or sociological—it often lacks… Read More →
It’s been said that soil without biology is just geology—an accumulation of lifeless minerals unable to spawn healthy plant growth. And as intense monocropping production practices increasingly remove more life from the ground than they return, it sends that soil closer to fossilization via what conservationist Barry Fisher calls, “the spiral of degradation”: eroded, compacted… Read More →
