Governor Mark Dayton announced in January his proposal to require an additional 125,000 acres of perennial vegetation along lakes, rivers and streams. There is a long history of utilizing such living borders to filter out fertilizers and herbicides, while fortifying streambanks and reducing the amount of eroded soil that ends up in the water. While… Read More →
Minnesota Sands Announces Intentions to Target Fillmore & Winona Counties for More Mining The Minnesota Environmental Quality Board (EQB) made the right decision May 21 by tabling the issue of taking a Houston County mine out of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) ordered on the multi-site Minnesota Sands, LLC, frac sand mining project. Thus, the… Read More →
Public Policy Solutions to be Discussed GREENWALD, Minn. — How can we work together to create a solution to the current crisis that is engulfing dairy farming in central Minnesota and beyond? That will be the focus of a special Land Stewardship Project (LSP) meeting Thursday, Jan. 30, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., at… Read More →
Sometimes the rules of simple cause and effect don’t directly apply. Take, for instance, the fact that cattle are ruminants, and like all ruminants they utilize a wonderfully complex digestive system to turn forages and grain into meat and milk. A major side effect of all that fermentation on four legs is the production of… Read More →
During yesterday’s otherwise excellent field day at the USDA’s soil conservation lab in Morris, the “S” word reared its ugly head. “S” as in our best farmland needs to be “sacrificed” in the name of food and fuel production, leaving room for only an odd corner here and there to provide a smattering of natural… Read More →
Sept. 25: An LSP Round-up of News Covering Land, People & Communities Very large farms collect one-fifth of USDA’s coronavirus payments (9/23/20) Chuck Abbott reports on Agriculture.com that the government’s COVID-19 payments to agriculture have been a gravy train for mega-operations. According to an analysis done by the Environmental Working Group, the largest 1% of… Read More →
Nov. 29: An LSP Round-up of News Covering Land, People & Communities Why Non-operating Landowners Need to be Part of the Conservation Dialogue (11/22/20) Non-operating landowners, otherwise known as NOLOs, are generally in favor of conservation programs and practices, as are the farmers who operate on their land. But there is often a disconnect between… Read More →
Amy Haben and Tom Moore ride a golf cart over a rickety wooden bridge spanning Otter Creek and follow a path to a lush pasture where a couple dozen head of Scottish Highland cattle graze, their shaggy coats luminescent in the late afternoon sun of a June day. “Before they grazed the edge of the… Read More →
A Pioneering Organic Operation, a Trial Run, & the Next Generation Black, ominous clouds were approaching fast, and Luke Peterson was in a bit of a panic as he stood next to his tractor parked in an 80-acre soybean field, scanning the sky. Hooked up to that tractor was a rotary hoe, and before this… Read More →
Claim: Grazed Grasslands Trump Cover Crops on Long-term Carbon Sequestration (6/5/22) The Food and Environment Reporting Network reports on research showing that rotationally grazed pastures sequester more carbon than annual cropping systems. An ongoing 29-year-old field experiment in Wisconsin shows that perennial pastures managed with rotational grazing accumulated 18% to 29% more soil organic carbon… Read More →
