Stand With LSP in Lakeville, Minn., on Monday, December 18 Monday, December 18, is going to be a big day. Will you join us in Lakeville, Minn., to say NO to factory farms? For more than a year, Land Stewardship Project members in Minnesota’s Goodhue County have been fighting to protect their community from the… Read More →
This summer and fall, Land Stewardship Project members have been hard at work preparing for the 2023 Minnesota state legislative session, which begins on Tuesday, January 3. Hundreds of LSP members, supporters, and allies across the state have engaged in workshops, surveys, and one-to-one visits to lay out what they’re excited for our organization to… Read More →
One winter evening in 1999 I was sitting in on a Farm Beginnings class being held in the southeast Minnesota community of Plainview when a local banker stood up and made a statement that about knocked me out of my chair. “We need to eat our own cooking,” said the banker, Dean Harrington. The statement… Read More →
OWATONNA, Minn. — Farmers, landowners, and anglers can learn how to buck the damage caused by extreme weather to soil and water during a program on Saturday, Jan. 25, being hosted by the Izaak Walton League’s (Ikes) Owatonna chapter and the Upper Mississippi River Initiative (UMRI). The workshop begins with registration at 9 a.m. at… Read More →
When I started working with the Land Stewardship Project on the Chippewa 10% Project, the work felt far away. Based out of Minneapolis, I was working on the Cropping Systems Calculator to help farmers in the Chippewa River watershed region in west-central Minnesota determine what financial differences they would see by switching a marginal corn/soybean… Read More →
With knowledge comes power—as well as responsibility. On an overcast Saturday in July 2014 several dozen people were gaining more of the former with each step they took through rolling grassland in west-central Minnesota. And as they referred to field guides and smart phone nature apps while tallying a growing list of plant and animal… Read More →
Note: This is the 9th installment in the 12-part “A Sense of Where You Are” series. When someone calls Matthew Fitzgerald for advice about getting into organic crop production, the central Minnesota farmer’s first response is a question of his own: “Do you own a fishing boat?” If they say yes, Fitzgerald then recommends they sell… Read More →
On April 27, meat giant Tyson Foods took out a full-page advertisement in major newspapers that carried an alarming message. “The food supply is breaking,” it said. The ad went on: “We have a responsibility to feed our country…Our plants must remain operational so that we can supply food to our families in America.” Tyson… Read More →
The State of Iowa is on the verge of eliminating one of the nation’s leading centers of sustainable agriculture research and innovation. The Iowa Legislature’s vote to defund and close the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture comes at a time when the work of the 30-year-old institution is, in many ways, just beginning. It was… Read More →
Improving Soil Health Not Just Feel-Good Endeavor (4/1/25) Indiana Prairie Farmer describes how Rodney Rulon’s 30-year soil health journey utilizing no-till and cover cropping is paying dividends not just environmentally, but economically as well. Highlights: The National Association of Conservation Districts and the Soil Health Institute performed a budget analysis on 29 farms across the… Read More →
