It’s been said that soil without biology is just geology—an accumulation of lifeless minerals unable to spawn healthy plant growth. And as intense monocropping production practices increasingly remove more life from the ground than they return, it sends that soil closer to fossilization via what conservationist Barry Fisher calls, “the spiral of degradation”: eroded, compacted… Read More →
One of the most anti-environmental pieces of legislation to come out of the Minnesota Capitol in several years became law on Saturday, June 13. The Agriculture and Environment Omnibus Budget Bill was supposed to provide funding for numerous initiatives of importance to rural Minnesotans. However, as the session wound down, several policy provisions were plugged… Read More →
The USDA announced last week the availability of $19.2 million in funds for groups that assist beginning farmers through training and other support initiatives. This is the first grant cycle of the newly reauthorized Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP), which is part of the 2014 Farm Bill signed into law in February. In… Read More →
A few years ago, a travel writer penned an opinion piece in the Minneapolis Star Tribune lambasting the “local foods movement.” One thing that really galled him was seeing all those Volvos, Saabs and Hondas that consumers parked at the farmers’ market while they shopped for vegetables that had been transported into town by numerous,… Read More →
Five years into her farming career, Janna Goerdt has learned a lot about how to use sweat equity to coax the most production out of the soils of Fat Chicken Farm near Embarrass. But the 40-year-old former journalist has also gotten savvy about how to set some sustainable limits on both her farm and herself.… Read More →
I have never doubted my Honda Civic before. It has served me well in my work with the Land Stewardship Project and otherwise as I traverse west-central Minnesota. Last week it was tested as I drove Ann Bartuska, USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics, to a family farm in the region. Also… Read More →
Good things go bad when out of their rightful places. Take farm fertilizer and soil, essential ingredients in the field but all wrong in the 27 percent of Minnesota lakes now too contaminated to drink. Last month’s report from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) blasted corn-and-soybean agriculture as the major source of nitrogen contamination… Read More →
I sat in a farmhouse one afternoon last month as a hot wind lifted rich topsoil from surrounding fields. On the drive in, I’d noticed a surprising amount of rill erosion on newly tilled cropland—surprising because recent rains had not been all that intense and the fields were not unusually steep. Out of the blue… Read More →
I talked to a Todd County farmer yesterday who uses 100 percent no-till and other conservation measures to raise his crops. Conserving soil is important to him, and so he’s quite upset at how mobile humus has been on neighboring farms this fall/early winter. “You know that little skiff of snow we got the other… Read More →
Sarah Wescott was raised on a commercial apple orchard outside of Elgin and Plainview, in southeastern Minnesota. From a young age, she gained an appreciation for rural community and agriculture. This guided her studies at Macalester College where she earned a degree in environmental studies, a food systems emphasis, a minor in Latin American studies,… Read More →
