As I write this, the regular session of the 2025 Minnesota Legislature heads into its final hours with some unfinished business, which means a special session will be required by June 30. However, the Agriculture Bill is on its way to the Governor’s desk. That’s good news for several Land Stewardship Project priorities that are addressed in this massive piece of legislation. A big thanks goes out to Agriculture Chairs Rep. Rick Hansen, Rep. Paul Anderson, and Sen. Aric Putnam, as well as all the conferees, for putting together a strong Agriculture Bill. I’d like to take this moment to send a special thanks to all of LSP’s members, allies, and coalition partners who testified, signed petitions, and reached out to lawmakers to push through important pieces of policy during a particularly chaotic legislation session.  

And it’s been chaotic right up to the end. For example, conference committees are the venues where lawmakers meet to hammer out differences between House and Senate versions of specific pieces of legislation. In the case of the Agriculture Bill, that conference committee met on May 9 and there was not another conference committee scheduled prior to the bill being sent back to the House/Senate floor on Sunday, May 18. That means that since there were no public meetings or time to take additional testimony, in recent days I had to make sure I was meeting with the House and Senate Ag Chairs and conferees, as well as staying in close communication with folks at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and partner organizations to stay in the loop and be able to influence the final legislation. It pays to stay on top of the bill-making process to the bitter end, especially when the overall process lacks public transparency. We couldn’t do this kind of work without the support of our members! 

Here’s a quick wrap-up of where we landed:  

Getting Food from Farms to Kids

In recent years, the AGRI Farm to School and Early Care Programs have been critical for expanding market access opportunities across the state, especially for beginning farmers and smaller operators, as well as for getting healthy, local food to our kids in both schools and childcare settings. Year-after-year there is greater demand for these resources than funding available; in 2023, for example, there were $5.3 million in requests for the program, and currently the state funds it at just $1.29 million.

Thanks to the work of LSP and allies such as the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the Agriculture Bill that was passed now provides $1.59 million in funding for Farm to School and Early Care the first year and $1.54 million the second year, which represents a  $304,000 and $250,000 increase, respectively, over current funding. The new baseline funding for this program starting in 2028 will be $1.63 million going forward, which is also a win from the previous base or “set” amount of $1.29 million.   

Public support for local food marketing is more critical than ever, now that the USDA has cancelled future funding for such initiatives. For example, the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program (LFPA) has proven to be a highly effective way to get farmers paid a fair price for food that is then given to food shelves in their community. 

So it’s great news that the Agriculture Bill establishes a Minnesota version of the LFPA with an investment of $700,000 the first year and $700,000 the second year. This new program is required to source at least 70% of its food from “limited land access farmers” and “limited market access farmers.” These are farmers that do not own land and or have a lease that is three years or less in duration and have less than $100,000 in annual gross sales. The food that is purchased from local farmers must then be provided free of charge to food banks and food shelves.  

Land Access 

An initiative developed to assist beginning farmers with purchasing farmland — the Minnesota Down Payment Assistance Program — has been overwhelmed with applications since it was established in 2022. During the 2025 legislative session, LSP and our allies worked to improve the program by allowing farmers up to a year (the stipulation is currently six months) to purchase land with awarded funds. And as a result of skyrocketing land prices, LSP and its allies pushed for legislation that would increase the grant award from $15,000 to $25,000 per successful applicant.  

In the end, the timeline was not extended. However, overall the program will be funded at $1.25 million the first year and $1.25 million the second year, which represents a $250,000 per year increase over the current budget. In addition, each grantee is now eligible for up to $20,000 in funding. We will continue to work with legislators to expand opportunities for greater land access.  

Soil Health & Water Quality

During this session, LSP backed legislation that would provide continued funding for the popular Soil Health Financial Assistance Program, which provides farmers resources for purchasing the kind of equipment they need to build healthy soil in an economically viable manner. Given that the program recently received requests worth $5 million, it’s clear there’s huge demand for this initiative’s resources.  

The final Agriculture Bill provides this initiative $639,000 in the first year and $639,000 in the second year. That’s still well below meeting the needs of farmers seeking to adopt soil-healthy practices, but it at least shows continued public support for regenerative farming methods, something that has been growing in recent legislative sessions due to the work of LSP and our allies. Rep. Anderson, the House Agriculture Committee co-chair, shared that the modest legislative funding was due to money Minnesota received from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Smart Food Systems grant program; that EPA money brings $200 million to Minnesota for various initiatives, including the Soil Health Financial Assistance Program. 

For the past few years, southeastern Minnesota’s Olmsted County has been implementing a program that pays farmers to grow cover crops, small grains, and forages, as well as utilize rotational grazing. Notably, this program doesn’t just reward farmers for putting in practices — it pays for results. The Olmsted County Groundwater Protection and Soil Health Program is seen as a model for taking a proactive, holistic approach to keeping nitrates and other pollutants out of groundwater.  

There were proposals during the session to expand this program to southeastern Minnesota in general. However, in the end, the Agriculture Bill instead provides $75,000 to do a cost-benefit analysis of this program in terms of environmental outcomes. The results of this analysis are due June 1, 2027, and could possibly serve as the basis for eventually expanding the program beyond Olmsted County. 

The MDA’s AGRI Livestock Investment Grant Program has long provided funding for farmers looking to add or update their livestock infrastructure and equipment. Climate Land Leaders, an LSP ally, pushed for legislation to help especially beginning farmers purchase equipment that could support practices such as managed rotational grazing. In an attempt to make more resources available to small and medium-sized farmers, the Agriculture Bill now  provides a cost-share level of 50% for the first $20,000 of qualifying expenses and 25% for the next $220,000. Thanks to Sen. Rob Kupec for making sure this preferred language was in the final deal.

Some Things to Watch

Here are a few provisions in the Agriculture Bill that LSP was not working on, but which bear watching as they are implemented: 

•  A new “biofertilizer” program that Rep. Anderson championed instructs the Department of Agriculture — in consultation with the University of Minnesota, the fertilizer industry, and farmers — to create a new biofertilizer innovation and efficiency pilot program that would pay farmers to switch to alternative sources of fertility. Such alternatives might include soil amendments, fertilizers with nitrogen-fixing properties, or biological sources of nitrogen that can reduce commercial nitrogen fertilizer usage by 15% per acre. This program, which is based on a similar effort in Iowa, holds some promise for addressing the rampant nitrate pollution problems we’re seeing in places like southeastern Minnesota.
• A study was funded to the tune of $50,000 to develop recommendations for an incentive-based program targeted at agriculture retailers, such as co-ops, which are the main suppliers of fertilizer and fertilizer application services to farmers. The goal is to promote so-called “4R” nutrient management practices. The 4Rs include: the right source of nutrients, at the right rate, and right time, in the right place. The study would also examine the feasibility of pairing such an incentive program with the popular Minnesota Agricultural Water Quality Certification Program. 

Watch your e-mail inbox and LSP’s web calendar for information on a virtual meeting (tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, May 27) where we will discuss the results of the 2025 legislative session in more detail. 

LSP government relations director Laura Schreiber can be reached via e-mail.