When it comes to making the ag landscape healthier, how much is enough? One day in 2007, a farmer walked into Paul Wymar’s office in Montevideo, Minn., not far from where the Chippewa River drains into the Minnesota River. He had a question for Wymar, who at the time was a scientist for the Chippewa… Read More →
An Indiana initiative has made the state a national leader in getting continuous living cover established on crop acres. Can it change the way farmers view soil? Michael Werling is, literally, a card-carrying connoisseur of soil health. “I call it, ‘My ticket to a farm tour,’ ” says the northeastern Indiana crop producer, showing off… Read More →
Over Thanksgiving, I was perusing the Dairy Star at my brother-in-law’s house in Stillwater, Minn. Having grown up on a dairy farm, I still like to see how the industry is doing. A column by Sadie Frerichs called, “The Negative Impacts of Health Insurance,” caught my eye. Because of the recent health insurance rate increases… Read More →
It’s field day time on this western Minnesota farm, and it’s made clear from the outset that there will no main presenter, no expert from on-high telling it like it is or isn’t, no PowerPoints produced by consultants. This is a field day where farmers learn from other farmers. “You are all consultants,” Richard Ness… Read More →
When Lauren Barry pulls a weed or harvests a tomato this summer, she’s doing so on a one-acre plot of land steeped in history. Not the ancient, dusty kind that may or may not have relevance to the current situation, but history rooted in recent growing seasons, when other beginning farmers faced the same meteorological,… Read More →
Judy Rose of Miltona, Minn., owns two quarter sections in North Dakota’s Nelson County— 320 acres of prairie pothole habitat in which she has maintained several areas of wetland. She is a participant in Land Stewardship Project’s Women Caring for the Land group of non-operating women landowners in the Pope County region of western Minnesota.… Read More →
When you’re wallowing in the pit of despair, it helps to know that others have preceded you and survived. And for John and Heidi Wise, they have another pit-beater: they didn’t exactly jump in without giving it some careful forethought. After more than a decade of classes, working with mentors, business planning and searching, the… Read More →
On a blustery late summer day, Jan Libbey and Tim Landgraf hike through a waist-high prairie to the top of a dramatic knob on their farm in north-central Iowa. As they stand amongst big bluestem, Indian grass and switchgrass, corn and soybean fields flow in every direction, the monocultural landscape broken up only by a… Read More →
On Friday July 20th I traveled with a group from St. Charles to the Chippewa Falls area to view first hand the frac-sand industry. I was so impacted by what I saw I felt I had to share my thoughts. The size and scope of the processing facilities was far greater than I had anticipated.
The U.S. Senate passed its version of the 2012 Farm Bill this week. While it’s far from perfect, specific amendments related to conservation and accountability that were passed during the floor vote give one hope that the voices of average citizens can be heard inside the Beltway. Let’s hope this is a sign of things… Read More →
