The Minnesota Environmental Quality Board (EQB) voted this week to remove the Erickson silica sand mine in Houston County from the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) required on the multi-site Minnesota Sands, LLC, frac sand mining project. At the same meeting, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Commissioner made it clear that the mine requires a…  Read More →

For longer than I can remember, my family has taken the same route from our farm in southeast Minnesota to visit my grandparents in north-central Wisconsin. The first leg of the four-hour trip takes us across the Mississippi River and through the farmland, pastures and rolling, wooded hills of Trempealeau and Jackson Counties. The landmarks…  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 House Farm Bill (HR 1947) failed today, 195 to 234, after three days of debate on amendments and proceedings. In what can only be interpreted as a slap in the face of U.S. House leadership, this failure typifies how dysfunctional this body of Congress has become, with the majority unable to pass legislation they…  Read More →

On April 13, Hope Community intern Taya Shultz lead a cooking class at Hope’s community kitchen. “The topic was breakfast. We made almond milk, vegetable breakfast smoothies and buckwheat muesli pancakes,” Taya told me. Hope Community is a place-based community development organization that is entrenched in the Phillips Neighborhood, one of the most economically challenged…  Read More →

What will be your farm’s legacy? We often think of our legacy as related to our farm’s financial success. Our legacy will show how we were able to weather hard times — floods, droughts, hot weather, cool weather, low prices, pests, weeds, the farming crisis of the ’80s, changes in production methods and other enormous…  Read More →

Talk of how agriculture can improve soil quality seems to be popping up more frequently these days. Perhaps the most exciting recent mention was in an issue of Successful Farming magazine, which has produced an impressive package of stories called The Good Earth. Most of what’s in this package won’t be news to anyone who’s…  Read More →