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 →
While sitting in a western Wisconsin high school auditorium listening to farmers and other rural residents discussing urban sprawl the other evening, I was struck by an epiphany of sorts: the argument for saving farmland near our cities and suburbs has evolved beyond the “let’s save our pretty viewscapes” phase. Protecting prime farmland from the… Read More →
2025-2026 Farm Beginnings Class LSP is now accepting applications for its 2025-2026 Farm Beginnings class session. For details, click here. ♦ ♦ ♦ By the time Elyssa Eull moved back to Minnesota a few years ago, she already had several years of experience working on vegetable farms. But she felt that in order to successfully… Read More →
Recently, staff at the Land Stewardship Project helped plan a webinar given by our partners at the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment (CFFE) which updated us on tariffs and what they mean for food and farm policy and the factory farm system. The webinar covered the basics of how trade policy impacts agriculture,… Read More →
Jan. 7: An LSP Round-up of News Covering Land, People & Communities As the Livestock Industry Touts Manure-to-Energy Projects, Environmentalists Cry ‘Greenwashing’ (12/7/21) Inside Climate News reports that as utilities, oil companies, and livestock companies pitch biogas (turning manure into energy) as an emissions-reducing solution, critics say it simply locks in systems that allow two… Read More →
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 →
Lou Anne Kling’s Legacy of Saved Farms & Saved Lives One day several years ago, western Minnesota farmer Lou Anne Kling was helping a financially-distressed chicken producer who was at risk of losing his operation. This was sometime in the 1980s or 1990s, and Kling had already spent countless hours on the telephone, in the… Read More →
With a single phrase, we can put conservation to work on rented land. And that would have a major impact from a landscape point of view: more than half the crops in Minnesota and Iowa alone are produced on rented acres, and every one of them could be saving soil, water, habitat and money with… Read More →
On Friday, June 12, the nationwide populist movement to stop fast-track authority for secretive, pro-corporate trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) scored a major victory: a necessary component of fast-track was overwhelmingly defeated in the U.S. House of Representatives. Although derailing fast-track is a victory, it is not the final nail in the coffin… Read More →
As Land Stewardship Project members and supporters know, LSP has been active in working to defeat Congressional approval of pro-corporate trade policy, such as fast track authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This week, we sent letters to members of the Minnesota and Wisconsin congressional delegations, laying out LSP’s reasons for its firm opposition, and urging… Read More →
