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Searched for: MFU Support of Fair Repair February 2023

Bite-by-Bite: Building Community Food Assets

Mapping a rural region’s “community food assets” reveals isolated islands of opportunity in a sea of corn and soybeans. LSP’s Scott DeMuth says now is the time to connect the dots and create a new relationship between farmers, eaters, and the places they live in. “You know, when I talk about rural economic development, from…  Read More

2021 Legislative Session Wrap-Up: Good News for Soil Health, Local Foods, Emerging Farmers — Bad News for Healthcare

Thousands of Land Stewardship Project members and supporters from across Minnesota came together during the 2021 session of the state Legislature and organized around our shared values. Together, we mobilized around a collective vision that includes a just food and farm system, a healthy landscape, thriving small and mid-sized farms, just and prosperous communities, and…  Read More

Land Line: Senate Budget Bill, Who Owns Land?, Nitrates, Conservation Cuts, Immigration, Drought When Wet, Judging Soil, Sea of Grass

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Clears Senate, Sending it Back to House (7/1/25) Vice President JD Vance broke a 50-50 tie in the U.S. Senate today to pass President Donald Trump’s centerpiece legislation on tax cuts and spending, the 940-page “One Big Beautiful Bill,” reports Oklahoma Farm Report. In order to pay for spending on…  Read More

How Farmworker Wage Theft Bankrupts Our Rural Communities

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

LSP’s 2021 MN Legislative Priorities

For months, Land Stewardship Project members have been preparing to hit the ground running during the 2021 Minnesota legislative session to advance rural economic justice across the countryside. The 2021 session begins Tuesday, Jan. 5, and we need you with us. When we come together across zip codes, class, gender, and race, united in our…  Read More

LSP’s 2021 MN Legislative Priorities

For months, Land Stewardship Project members have been preparing to hit the ground running during the 2021 Minnesota legislative session to advance rural economic justice across the countryside. The 2021 session begins Tuesday, Jan. 5, and we need you with us. When we come together across zip codes, class, gender, and race, united in our…  Read More

Anatomy of a Grassroots Campaign

How citizens in one Minnesota county put values into action to attain a win for the land and their community. On November 22, 2016, history was made in southeastern Minnesota’s Winona County when the Board of Commissioners there passed a ban on any new frac sand operations. It is the first known countywide ban on…  Read More

Land Line: Invisible Hand, Price-Fixing, Oat Mafia, Bird Flu, Profitable Conservation, SNAP, Compost, Farm Subsidizers

The Invisible Hand, Elasticity, and the Vanishing Farmer (5/7/25) Writing on the AGDAILY website, farmer and international consultant Ben Henson describes how the traditional building blocks of the American agricultural economy are being undermined by unprecedented consolidation in farming. Highlights: One basis of economic theory is “inelastic” versus “elastic” demand for products. Food is considered…  Read More

Nitrate’s Season of Reckoning

Ag Pollution in Karst Country Offers a Critical Opportunity for Soil-Friendly Farming

For residents of southeastern Minnesota, the past few months must seem like “The Season of the Nitrate.” It turns out nitrogen, that critical source of crop fertility, is quite adept at escaping our farm fields, and, in the form of nitrate, polluting groundwater. So much so that scientists, government officials, and physicians now recognize it…  Read More

Beginning Farmer Program for MN, WI & IA Accepting Applications for 2023-2024 Course

Early Bird Discount Deadline for Farm Beginnings Class Aug. 1

LEWISTON, Minn. — One of the most successful beginning farmer training programs in the country is now accepting applications for its 2023-2024 course session serving the Minnesota, western Wisconsin and northern Iowa region. The Land Stewardship Project’s (LSP) Farm Beginnings initiative is a training program that focuses on the goal-setting, marketing and financial skills aneeded to establish…  Read More