Events surrounding the Erickson silica sand mine in Houston County are moving very fast, and citizen action is making a difference at every turn. The Houston County Board of Commissioners was scheduled to vote at their Tuesday, June 3, meeting on approving the conditional use permit for the Erickson silica sand mine near Rushford, Minn.…  Read More →

In western Minnesota we live in what used to be a grassland habitat, where warm season perennials were king and the whole system depended on herds of buffalo and the occasional wildfire to break down the abundance of plant material. These days, it’s becoming clear leaving our remaining prairies untouched does not create a healthy…  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 →

A drive through Farm Country this winter is a revelatory experience. Revelatory in that the impacts of planting the landscape to monocultures of corn and soybeans and plowing the ground black as soon after harvest as possible are there for all to see. The revealer? All that “snirt” one sees in road ditches across the…  Read More →

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) announced yesterday that it will award up to $250,000 in 2014 for on-farm sustainable agriculture research or demonstration projects. That funding amount is good news: it marks a $150,000 increase from previous years. The Sustainable Agriculture Demonstration Grant Program has supported farming innovations in the state for almost a…  Read More →

Saturday, Oct. 5, has been billed the National Day of Dignity and Respect as thousands around the country will join together in calling on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. In Minnesota, members of our state’s faith, business, labor, law enforcement and immigrant communities share the goal of comprehensive immigration reform. As a result, a…  Read More →

In late May, I traveled to western Wisconsin’s Chippewa and Barron counties to see frac sand mining and processing sites firsthand. I particularly wanted to see the EOG processing plant in Chippewa Falls — one of the largest of its kind in existence — because last year, a company called Minnesota Proppant proposed an even…  Read More →

The U.S. Senate passed its version of a Farm Bill yesterday by a vote of 66-27. Both Minnesota Senators Al Franken (D-MN) and Amy Klobuchar( D-MN) voted for passage of the bill. The upshot is that for the first time ever the Senate bill limits the degree of crop insurance subsidies wealthy farm investors and…  Read More →

Gardeners at Hope Community in the Phillips Community of South Minneapolis have been working hard this week to prepare soil and create a design for the urban agriculture space that has come to be known as the “2012 Garden,” in honor of its address at 2012 Oakland Avenue. The 2012 Garden has gone through many…  Read More →

You’ve probably never heard of the “Buy the Farm” law, but if you think corporations have too much power and that it’s time to put people before corporate profits, this is a law worth knowing about. The “Buy the Farm” law is a result of the hard fought negotiations between family farmers and utility companies…  Read More →