Local Control & Environmental Review Stay Strong Despite Attacks; Some Gains for Sustainable Ag Research & Beginning Farmer Land Access The 2017 session of the Minnesota Legislature was highlighted by a tough fight over corporate agriculture’s push to make it easier for factory farms to force their way into communities. Corporate ag and its supporters…  Read More →

For the past year the Land Stewardship Project and our allies have been organizing to make sure Minnesota moves forward, not backward, under the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). It’s clear that our current health care system is failing working people across the state—including urban people, rural people and farmers. In fact, lack of access to…  Read More →

The promoters of “meat” that does not come from living, breathing animals go to great lengths to differentiate their products from the “veggie burgers” that started popping up in the grocery aisle decades ago. The fake meat industry’s target customer is not the vegetarian or vegan. These products — also called “alt-meat,” “cultured meat,” or…  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 →