As a retired dairy farmer, I remember the hard fought battles between family farmers and utility companies over high voltage power lines cutting across Minnesota in the 1970s. One of the outcomes of this was the “Buy the Farm” law. Essentially, this law says that farmers and landowners have the right to require that companies… Read More →
A few years ago LSP organizer Doug Nopar was told of a southeast Minnesota farm operation that was withholding wages from a worker after he had accidentally damaged a door with a skid steer loader. Nopar called the farm owner and let him know this action was quite illegal. The farmer’s response? “You know, I… Read More →
Land Stewardship is about what is good for the land, good for community and good for people. Affordable health insurance like MinnesotaCare is good for people. I have lived, worked and attended school in the City of Winona for nearly 40 years. My parents moved here in 1989 to spend the end of their lives… Read More →
Now is the time for all of us concerned about the future of health care in Minnesota to keep the fox out of the hen house by calling our Minnesota state senators and representatives and urging them to vote for the health insurance exchange bill put forward by Sen. Tony Lourey, DFL-Kerrick, and Rep. Joe… Read More →
A recent press release from the Stanford School of Medicine read, “Little evidence of health benefits from organic foods.” The headline could just have easily read, “Despite billions spent on research and subsidies, conventional foods found more dangerous than organic.” The Stanford study was striking in several regards: 1) no new research was conducted —… Read More →
On Aug. 28, Land Stewardship Project board member Tex Hawkins spoke to a busload of LSP members and friends who visited a farm near Dodge, Wis., to witness firsthand the effects of frac, or silica, sand mining on a neighboring piece of property. I live in Winona. I’m on the LSP Board now, and have… Read More →
One can almost detect the longing in Denise Crews’ voice when she describes what foods she misses the most since she was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. “The hardest thing to give up was the fried chicken—Popeyes, Kentucky Fried Chicken. Their biscuits. The grease,” Crews told me during a recent LSP podcast interview at a… Read More →
When it comes to the crop insurance sweepstakes, southwest Minnesota farmer Darwyn Bach is a winner. But he concedes that his good fortune presents a quandary, since the way the program is implemented these days creates significant losers: the soil, beginning farmers and Main Street businesses that suffer when the number of families in a… Read More →
One winter evening in 1999 I was sitting in on a Farm Beginnings class being held in the southeast Minnesota community of Plainview when a local banker stood up and made a statement that about knocked me out of my chair. “We need to eat our own cooking,” said the banker, Dean Harrington. The statement… Read More →
When a business closes in a rural community, the following 24 months or so are key. Whether it be a farm, small town grocery or repair shop, if the real estate it occupied is still lacking a day-to-day human presence a year or two down the road, it sends a troubling message about the future… Read More →
