“Upon this handful of soil our survival depends. Husband it and it will grow our food, our fuel, our shelter, and surround us with beauty. Abuse it and the soil will collapse and die, taking humanity with it.” This quote was taken from the Vedas Sanskrit Scriptures, which date back to 1500 BC. For a…  Read More →

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 →

I am a proponent of “Medicare for All: Single Payer Universal Access to Care.” As a grandparent and a retiree who spent 44 years working in the Minnesota public social service system, I’m convinced more than ever that we need a healthcare system that works for all people. Our country has the most expensive healthcare…  Read More →

Sometimes it takes a bit of an evangelist to remind us that praying at the altar of facts and figures can blind one to how they all connect in the bigger picture. In the case of production systems that build soil health, that preacher is Ray Archuleta. “The soil is naked, hungry, thirsty and running…  Read More →

If ever there was a shining example of a smart public investment in our food and farming future, Minnesota’s Sustainable Agriculture Demonstration Grant Program is it. This program has been an important driver of sustainable (and conventional) farming innovations in the state for almost a quarter-century. Farmers who qualify for these competitive grants are able…  Read More →

I recently phoned members of my geographically far-flung family to give them Thanksgiving greetings and was struck by a common element of our ensuing conversations. From Iowa and Nebraska to Kentucky and Texas, the report was the same: drought, drought and more drought. I thought about that recently while watching the  new documentary, The Dust…  Read More →

Thanks to the recently passed 2014 Farm Bill, federally subsidized crop insurance is an even bigger player in determining what the landscape looks like. That’s troubling, considering that in recent years that impact has been mostly negative, since the program removes most of the risk associated with plowing up acres formerly considered too erosive, wet…  Read More →

Cover crops proved themselves foul weather friends during the Great Drought of 2012. A groundbreaking farmer survey conducted in the Upper Mississippi River watershed showed that during that year’s brutal growing season keeping the soil covered with small grains and other plants helped fields preserve enough precious moisture to provide a yield bump of, in…  Read More →

The Land Stewardship Project has been spending part of this fall gathering input from members and staff on how we should proceed with our work during the next five years. This development of what we call our “long range plan” has taken the form of member-leader input sessions, staff meetings and a survey sent out…  Read More →

The Land Stewardship Project, sustainable agriculture and family farming lost a true friend this week when Dan Specht was killed in a tragic farm accident. He was 63. (See obituary here.) Dan, who farmed above the banks of the Mississippi River near McGregor, in northeast Iowa, had been a pioneer in innovative, sustainable farming methods…  Read More →