2026-2027 Farm Beginnings Class LSP is now accepting applications for its 2026-2027 Farm Beginnings class session. The application deadline is Sept. 1. For details, click here. ♦ ♦ ♦ It was the winter of 2024-2025, and Frances Kelliher wasn’t exactly in the mood to sit in a room with a lot of idealistic agrarians. She… Read More →
2026-2027 Farm Beginnings Class LSP is now accepting applications for its 2026-2027 Farm Beginnings class session. The application deadline is Sept. 1. For details, click here. ♦ ♦ ♦ Sometimes a shot of reality can inject a sense of urgency into an educational experience. Roughly half-way through their participation in the 2024-2025 winter session of… Read More →
Flooding the Market How Dairy Consolidation is Drowning Minnesota’s Farmers & Rural Communities April 2026 Minnesota is facing a generational crisis in agriculture as dairy farmers are pushed out of the industry at an alarming rate even as production continues to rise. Extreme consolidation, driven in part by the rapid expansion of mega-dairies like Riverview… Read More →
CUMBERLAND, Iowa — Here in southwestern Iowa, it’s the season of the white torpedo. Once it seemed spring wasn’t fake news, pickup trucks began towing to winter-dormant fields tubular tanks of gaseous anhydrous ammonia fertilizer here and in the rest of the Corn Belt. These white cylinders are the harbingers of a new planting season… Read More →
Last year was a tough one for most of us, and, based on recent events, it seems as if there’s little chance of reprieve for folks in agriculture. Farmers and ranchers experienced rising input costs and significant domestic and international market disruptions in 2025. To help address these problems, USDA is issuing $12 billion in… Read More →
This report, created in partnership with the University of Minnesota, describes the findings of an assessment of the Land Stewardship Project’s Soil Health Program. This information was collected in 2024 and 2025 using an online and mail survey of program participants, as well as two focus groups with LSP Soil Hubs in Plainview and Austin,…
Sonja Trom Eayrs was a featured author in LSP’s November 4, 2025 event Big Ag, Big Problems: A Panel on Rural Consolidation. From Trom Eayrs’ website: Dodge County, Incorporated is an engrossing legal drama that recounts the Eayrs family’s three rounds of litigation against public officials in Dodge County, Minnesota, in efforts to prevent a factory… Read More →
Austin Frerick was a featured author in LSP’s November 4, 2025 event Big Ag, Big Problems: A Panel on Rural Consolidation. From Goodreads.com: Barons is the story of seven corporate titans, their rise to power, and the consequences for everyone else. Take Mike McCloskey, Chairman of Fair Oaks Farms. In a few short decades, he… Read More →
Couldn’t make it in-person on Nov. 4, 2025? Watch the Recording HERE. The concentration of money and power in our food and farming system is a threat to our rural way of life, the land, and Main Street economies. According to research compiled by Farm Action, agricultural industries ranging from poultry processing to seed distribution…
Note: This commentary originally ran in the Minnesota Star Tribune on Oct. 17. When Minnesota’s growing season draws to a close, so does another kind of season: that period between spring and fall when farmers invite other farmers onto their land for “field days,” so they can share ideas about what’s working and what isn’t.… Read More →
