A three-hour drive separates the rolling hills of Minnesota’s Douglas County from the front steps of the Bell Museum of Natural History. But a year after the controversy over Troubled Waters—the Bell’s Emmy award-winning film on farmland pollution in the Mississippi River basin—brought words like “dead zone,” hypoxia” and “nitrogen fertilizer” to the attention of… Read More →
Draft of White House Report Suggests Kennedy Won’t Push Strict Pesticide Regulations (8/14/25) A White House report on the health of American children would stop short of proposing direct restrictions on ultraprocessed foods and pesticides that the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has called major threats, according to a leaked draft of the document… Read More →
Minnesota Farmers Seek State Aid as Foreclosure Crisis Looms (8/8/25) Financially strapped Minnesota farmers are asking the state to intervene with their lenders at a midsummer rate not seen in almost a decade, reports the Star Tribune. Highlights: In June, 197 farmers filed notice for help from the University of Minnesota Extension’s Farmer-Lender Mediation program.… Read More →
Meet Sasa Organic Farms, a collective of Kenyan farmers. Sasa is five family farms: Dawn2Dusk Organic Farms, Lisaviole Farms, Lisaviole Organic Farms, Green Joy Farm, Gedef Organic Farm, and Laurens Organic Farm. They provide Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares, produce, and seedlings to customers in and around Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Like many beginning farmers, their goal… Read More →
LEWISTON, Minn. — Winona County residents are hailing the passage of a comprehensive bill that makes significant changes to the investigation of fish kills in Minnesota. The legislation, which was passed during the recently concluded session of the state Legislature, was pushed by a group of local residents after a series of fish kills in their… Read More →
It’s that age-old struggle: accepting a little short-term disturbance in the name of long-term stability. Dave Trauba regularly faces the challenge of explaining that tradeoff to hunters who visit the Lac Qui Parle Wildlife Refuge in western Minnesota only to find their favorite spot for shooting pheasants has recently been grazed by cattle from a… Read More →
I recently witnessed the return of life to Jordan and Rachelle Meyers’ fields, which are transitioning from giant ragweed and thistles into soil-building plants such as chicory, red clover, and wild bergamot. During the past few years, the family, which farms in southeastern Minnesota’s Houston County, has used hard work and attention to the soil… Read More →
Feb. 12: An LSP Round-up of News Covering Land, People & Communities The Efficiency Curse — We built a ‘better’ food system. The cost: It couldn’t handle a pandemic. (2/5/21) When COVID-19 arrived in the U.S., we discovered that the food system was fragile, rigid, and therefore vulnerable. But, as Michael Pollan points out in… Read More →
Note: The Land Stewardship Project’s current long-range plan outlines why we cannot have a sustainable society while we rely on a system focused on extractive fossil fuels. In the plan, LSP promises to “advance solutions to the climate crisis by innovating and promoting resilient, soil-building farming systems and moving our society away from a reliance on fossil fuels.” It… Read More →
Farmers Face One of the Highest Rates of Suicide. This Social Worker Believes the Solution is Buried in Their Land (4/10/25) The Guardian newspaper describes how a social worker in Kansas has developed the LandLogic Model, a new way to train healthcare providers that uses farmers’ relationship to their land to identify and treat depression,… Read More →
