The USDA announced last week the availability of $19.2 million in funds for groups that assist beginning farmers through training and other support initiatives. This is the first grant cycle of the newly reauthorized Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP), which is part of the 2014 Farm Bill signed into law in February. In…  Read More →

Over 80 people came out to the Starbuck Community Center in western Minnesota on a balmy March evening to hear presentations from University of Minnesota meteorologist and climatologist Mark Seeley as well as staff and farmer-members of Land Stewardship Project’s Community Based Food Systems and Farm Beginnings programs. The focus of the event was climate…  Read More →

Thanks to the recently passed 2014 Farm Bill, federally subsidized crop insurance is an even bigger player in determining what the landscape looks like. That’s troubling, considering that in recent years that impact has been mostly negative, since the program removes most of the risk associated with plowing up acres formerly considered too erosive, wet…  Read More →

My wife Bonnie and I have a 160-acre farm near Kellogg. This is the farm I grew up on and we milked cows there until eight years ago. Since then we’ve been raising grass-fed beef. We are at that point in life where we are thinking about the next steps for ourselves and the farm.…  Read More →

Cover crops proved themselves foul weather friends during the Great Drought of 2012. A groundbreaking farmer survey conducted in the Upper Mississippi River watershed showed that during that year’s brutal growing season keeping the soil covered with small grains and other plants helped fields preserve enough precious moisture to provide a yield bump of, in…  Read More →