Sign Up for E-mail Delivery of The Land Line

Stevens County OKs Permit for Expansion of Riverview’s West River Dairy

(9/8/26) The West Central Tribune reports that the Stevens County Board of Commissioners has given the green light to what will be the largest dairy operation in Minnesota history. Highlights:

• Morris, Minn.-based Riverview is seeking to expand West River Dairy to a maximum capacity of 18,855 mature dairy cows, an increase from 7,855 cows currently. This proposal is part of a major expansion of Riverview’s control of the dairy industry throughout the region, including in North Dakota and South Dakota.
• Following this approval, the remaining step for Riverview is receiving a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources water permit, which is still in process.
• During a meeting of the County Commissioners, Matthew Sheets, an LSP organizer who lives in Morris, shared that the County Board was sent a letter signed by 190 people pushing for additional conditions. Some of those conditions include a more in-depth hydrology study. Sheets called on the Commissioners to not take action on the Riverview conditional use permit until after the conclusion of a lawsuit filed by LSP and Food & Water Watch against the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for its approval of Riverview’s permitting for this project.

As a result of the concerns raised by LSP members and our allies related to the West River Dairy proposal, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture is accepting public input on the socioeconomic impacts of large-scale dairies (operations with 10,000 or more cows). These comments will be summarized for the Minnesota Legislature ahead of the 2027 legislative session. For details on how to submit comments by Oct. 1, see LSP’s action alert.

♦ ♦ ♦

♦ ♦ ♦

Fight Over Nitrates Heats Up After Minnesota Ag Officials Defend Groundwater Rule

(9/5/26) The Minnesota Star Tribune reports that the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) has announced that its controversial groundwater protection rule adequately guards against nitrate pollution. Nitrate pollution mostly stems from large-scale agriculture manure and fertilizer. About 90% of the nitrate in southeastern Minnesota’s water comes from fertilizers spread on croplands, a state study found in 2013. Highlights:

• Minnesota’s groundwater protection rule, enacted in 2019, prohibits farmers from using commercial fertilizer on their lands in the fall or on frozen soils in parts of the state that are vulnerable to nitrate pollution, which includes southeastern Minnesota and parts of central and northern Minnesota. The rule also governs how communities should respond if public well systems are affected by nitrates. MDA officials opened the rule for comment earlier this year and got a mixture of feedback from farmers, environmentalists, and trade groups, among other people. Some commenters wanted MDA to expand the rule to cover private wells instead of just public water spots, while other commenters said it was too soon to tell how well the groundwater regulations work.
• Environmental advocates argue the groundwater protection rule doesn’t require the significant steps needed to clean up southeastern Minnesota’s water supply and protect private well owners from potentially serious health issues. “If you’re not making meaningful changes to the way that people, that producers apply commercial fertilizer, you are not going to get changes in the water quality,” said Joy Anderson, lead attorney for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, the group spearheading a lawsuit that was filed to hold Minnesota to its 2024 promise to address nitrates in southeastern Minnesota waterways.
• Clean water advocates are looking for changes in a variety of programs, not just the groundwater protection rule. Some groups pointed to a recent legislative auditor report released in July finding weaknesses in MDA’s water quality certification program for farmers as evidence Minnesota needs to make major changes more quickly to protect its water.

LSP recently launched its “Rethinking Nitrogen”campaign to build a farmer-led, public movement that shows the power of nitrogen-reducing practices and to create the political momentum needed to pass strong nutrient reduction policies during Minnesota’s 2027 legislative session. For more information on this campaign and to provide input, click here.

♦ ♦ ♦

Excess Nutrients Can Lie Dormant in Soil for Years Before Polluting Rivers, Study Finds

(9/6/26) The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has found that nutrient pollution increased in many streams and rivers across the country between 2000 and 2020, according to Harvest Public Media. The dominant source was the release of old nitrogen and phosphorus stored in soil and groundwater. Highlights:

• The USGS study aimed to understand when and how nutrients move through landscapes and river systems. Researchers looked at two sources of pollution: what scientists call “point” (sewage treatment facilities and factories) and “non-point” sources (agricultural runoff, for example). In Iowa, roughly 93% of the total nitrogen in the state’s waterways come from non-point sources. Some of that nitrogen pollution stems from the natural breakdown of carbon-rich portions of the soil, nitrogen-fixing plants, and atmospheric deposition. But researchers say much of the excess in Iowa’s waterways comes from fertilizer and manure applied to corn and soybean fields, paired with a lack of year-round ground cover on a landscape once dominated by tallgrass prairie. Subsurface tile drainage, which moves water from farm fields into ditches or streams, further complicates nutrient management across the Corn Belt.
• USGS researchers estimate between one-third and half of the nutrients in streams came from “lagged, non-point sources.” This means it took longer than one season for nitrogen or phosphorus to move from soil or groundwater into a waterway. The second largest source in streams was fertilizer applied in the same season.
• “We’ve done a really good job of controlling those point sources through essentially a regulatory and permitting process,” said David Cwiertny, director of the Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination at the University of Iowa. “The diffuse sources, what we call non-point source, where things run off land, that is a much more challenging source to manage.”

For more on the movement of ag fertilizers in the environment, check out LSP’s Myth Buster No. 68: When Nitrogen is Gone, it Can be Forgotten.

♦ ♦ ♦

Cyclospora Outbreak Followed Years of Declining FDA Foreign Inspections

(9/8/26) The Associated Press reports that a nationwide outbreak of cyclospora tied to contaminated lettuce has heightened safety concerns about imported food, while underscoring a longer-term trend: U.S. regulators are conducting fewer international inspections to catch contaminated produce before it lands on American plates. Highlights:

• U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspections of foreign food sites — including the Mexican farm linked to the ongoing outbreak — are down nearly 35% since 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to agency records reviewed by the Associated Press.
• Even before COVID-19, the agency had long failed to hit its congressionally mandated targets for international inspections. And recent staffing cuts, reorganizations, and other upheavals under President Donald Trump could mean even fewer inspections in the years ahead, according to former senior FDA officials.
• According to FDA figures, companies have announced more than 480 food recalls in the current fiscal year, already surpassing four out of the five previous years.
• A string of deadly outbreaks involving spinach, cantaloupe, and other produce led Congress to pass the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011, which required additional testing, training and monitoring of hygiene conditions at farms. The legislation also set aggressive goals for FDA foreign inspections — targets the agency has never met. Under the law, the FDA is supposed to inspect more than 19,000 international food sites annually. The agency hit an all-time high of 1,700 in 2019 — less than one-tenth of the target, according to the Government Accountability Office.

LSP is working to develop local, community based food systems that shorten the distance between farmers and eaters. For more information on this work, check out our Community-Based Food Systems web page.

♦ ♦ ♦

Op-ed: Five Policy Changes to Save Agriculture from Itself

(9/9/26) In a commentary for Civil Eats, soil scientist David Montgomery lists five policy proposals that could support a type of regenerative farming system that solves “the age-old problem of soil degradation while also feeding the world and harvesting a host of environmental and economic benefits.” Highlights:

• He proposes: 1) reforming agricultural subsidies to support soil health; 2) revising crop insurance to reward soil-building; 3) reframing policies and programs to support small, diversified farms; 4) expanding research on regenerative practices; 5) treating agricultural policy as public health policy.
•  “Soil degradation has undermined society after society around the world, but we have a practical opportunity, right now, to turn things around,” writes Montgomery, who is the author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations. “To make that happen, we need to recognize that what’s good for the land is good for us, too, and incentivize a greener agricultural revolution focused on regenerating healthy soil.”

In Minnesota, the public currently has a key opportunity to support state policy that bolsters healthy soil, clean water, family farmers, and thriving rural communities. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture has officially opened its 2027 Legislative Ideas Portal. Between now and Sept. 18, the MDA is gathering policy, program, and funding proposals from the public to help shape the state’s next biennial budget and legislative goals. For details on the key issues LSP would like to see prioritized during the 2027 state legislative session, click here. For more on how farmers can build soil health profitably, check out our “Ear Dirt” soil health podcast series.

♦ ♦ ♦

Wendell Berry, Writer Who Extolled America’s Agrarian Past, Dies at 92

(8/31/26) Wendell Berry, whose writings helped spawn the sustainable agriculture movement, has died, reports The New York Times. Highlights:

• Berry’s 1977 book, The Unsettling of America, was a manifesto to save small farms from big business and a government bent on agricultural efficiencies that, he said, were destroying the land and a way of life. The book launched the modern movement for sustainable farming and became a conservationist classic.
• “The concentration of farmland into larger and larger holdings and fewer and fewer hands — with the consequent increase in overhead, debt, and dependence on machines — is a matter of complex significance, and its agricultural significance cannot be disentangled from its cultural significance,” Berry wrote.
• Besides writing essays, poems, and novels, Berry farmed in his home state of Kentucky, and often spoke publicly about the need to reconnect people to land through food production and good stewardship.

Wendell Berry played a key role in the launching of LSP back in 1982. Through the years, he supported the organization in many ways, including helping us celebrate key milestones. In 2007, he came to Minnesota for the Land Stewardship Project’s 25th Anniversary. For a summary of that event, check out this archived issue of the Land Stewardship Letter.

♦ ♦ ♦

Dedicated to Agriculture: Jostocks Named Farm Family of the Year

(9/5/26) Country Acres describes how a focus on regenerative farming practices has benefited the Jostock family, which recently received the 2026 Farm Family of the Year award for Wabasha County, Minn. Highlights:

• Rolling J Farm, established in 1942, is nestled in the hills near Hammond, overlooking the Zumbro River in southeastern Minnesota. The Jostock family farm originated as a dairy farm and a farrow-to-finish hog business
• Currently, the Jostocks have 25 farrow-to-finish hogs, 150 head of beef cattle, and 250 acres of cropland. The family transitioned out of dairy in 2015 and now raises cow-calf pairs and replacement heifers.
• The hogs are raised for Niman Ranch, a company focused on meat produced using humane methods and antibiotic and hormone-free production practices. The Jostocks raise corn, soybeans, hay, and small grains utilizing soil-building practices such as no-till.

Alan Jostock serves on LSP’s Soil Health Steering Committee. In episode 393 of LSP’s Ear to the Ground podcast, he talks about how a diverse mix of crop and livestock enterprises provides his family’s farm with a kind of “risk reduction insurance” when it comes to dealing with market and weather related challenges.

♦ ♦ ♦