Global Players Forced Small Meatpacking Plants Out, Farmers & Workers Pay the Price The announced closing of Smithfield’s Sioux Falls, S. Dak., meatpacking plant due to a COVID-19 outbreak affecting over 600 workers is a vivid example of the vulnerability of a highly concentrated meat production system that exploits farmers, workers and rural communities, said… Read More →
As of today— April 10 — due to the outbreak of COVID-19, nearly 350,000 Minnesotans have applied for unemployment benefits. That is already more than the total number of applicants in all of 2019. Nationally, 16.6 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits in the past three weeks. In the wake of a global pandemic,… Read More →
LSP Farmer-Members Demand State Policy Reforms, Investigations MANKATO, Minn. — Public officials need to take immediate action to address the farm crisis that is decimating Minnesota’s rural families and communities. That was the message farmer-members of the Land Stewardship Project (LSP) conveyed to state Commissioner of Agriculture Thom Petersen and Attorney General Keith Ellison at… Read More →
LSP staffer Elizabeth Makarewicz talks to participants in the 2019 Queer Farmer Convergence at Humble Hands Harvest in Iowa about connecting queerness, farming, and community.
Policy Changes & Market Support Could Help State Become Leader in Carbon Farming MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Farming systems that build healthy soil by keeping the land covered in vegetation year-round have the potential to lower the net greenhouse gas emissions produced by Minnesota’s crops and livestock by as much as 30% while cutting nitrogen pollution… Read More →
RIDGEWAY, Iowa — The Land Stewardship Project (LSP), along with the Winneshiek Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD), will host a workshop called, “Cover Crops, No-Till & Grazing: Evaluating the Economics and First Steps to Improving Soil Health” on Thursday, Jan. 30, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the Ridgeway Community Center. It will… Read More →
Pulling Together. Moving Forward. Stand with LSP on the Farm Crisis. The pain of this crisis is not being felt by agribusiness and corporate interests that continue to make profits at the expense of farmers and rural communities. The fact is that there is money in agriculture, but farmers are not getting a fair share… Read More →
At the Land Stewardship Project, among member-leaders and staff, we’ve been thinking more about our work in the context of economic, racial, and gender equity in this country, and how that relates to core values of LSP, like stewardship, justice, community, democracy, and health. Land Stewardship Project’s board is meeting this week to give a… Read More →
A farmer and a researcher discuss the potential agronomic, economic, and ecological benefits of a commercially-viable perennial grain.
Climate change is happening. Farmers who work with higher elevations may be able to deny it. Those of us on more variable and wetter soils cannot. I have been aware of it in our farming for 20 years. The water cycle is impaired. This is the most obvious. Excessive rainfall spreads into a huge number… Read More →
