On an afternoon in late June, west-central Minnesota farmers Anne and Peter Schwagerl walk out of the bright sun into the deep shade of an old granary that has six separate storage areas for various kinds of harvested crops—a throwback to an era when most Midwestern farms produced more than corn and soybeans. On many… Read More →
Nov. 29: An LSP Round-up of News Covering Land, People & Communities Why Non-operating Landowners Need to be Part of the Conservation Dialogue (11/22/20) Non-operating landowners, otherwise known as NOLOs, are generally in favor of conservation programs and practices, as are the farmers who operate on their land. But there is often a disconnect between… Read More →
Meet Sasa Organic Farms, a collective of Kenyan farmers. Sasa is five family farms: Dawn2Dusk Organic Farms, Lisaviole Farms, Lisaviole Organic Farms, Green Joy Farm, Gedef Organic Farm, and Laurens Organic Farm. They provide Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares, produce, and seedlings to customers in and around Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Like many beginning farmers, their goal… Read More →
How the Tallgrass Prairie Center in Iowa is introducing a little wildness into a domesticated landscape.
Cover crops can pay for themselves when combined with managed rotational grazing of cattle, finds a study of eight Midwestern farms. Released today by the Pasture Project, Practical Farmers of Iowa, the Land Stewardship Project and the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota, the findings show how the practice can save money by producing valuable forage,… Read More →
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a good infographic can be the equivalent of thousands of pounds of soil. That thought occurred to me recently while viewing the cool illustration below. Produced by scientists who are studying the effects of adding some targeted diversity to row-cropped fields in central Iowa, it tells… Read More →
It’s been clear for some time that the biofuels industry needs to wean itself off of the corn ethanol spigot. Numerous studies show that utilizing the kernels of corn to distill fuel are playing havoc with food and feed prices, while contributing to a devastating plow-up of grassland, hayland, wetlands and just about any perennial… Read More →
Sept. 28: An LSP Round-up of News Covering Land, People & Communities MNDOT abruptly ends 25-year program with organic farmers (9/25/20) Noah Fish reports in the Grand Forks Herald on how organic farmers and the Land Stewardship Project are upset with the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s decision to abruptly end a 25-year agreement that kept… Read More →
Innovative Farming Requires an Innovative Approach to Soil Health It’s a bright June day in southeastern Minnesota, and the hilly landscape is in full summer bloom. But as Chuck Henry watches his dairy herd graze a mix of winter wheat and Sudan grass, he has numbers on his mind: 33,000 bites per day, per cow;… 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 →
