My wife Bonnie and I have a 160-acre farm near Kellogg. This is the farm I grew up on and we milked cows there until eight years ago. Since then we’ve been raising grass-fed beef. We are at that point in life where we are thinking about the next steps for ourselves and the farm.… 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 →
While walking a piece of North Dakota landscape under a withering summer sun, one’s thoughts turn to moisture—or rather, the lack of it. So when I and other participants in a soil health tour kicked up signs of cool, shady places while traipsing across a hay field, it seemed like a mirage. Green-and-black leopard frogs… Read More →
Sometimes laboratory science and the reality of what’s happening on the ground intersect in a graphic way. That’s what struck me this morning as I was watching a video shot by Minnesota beekeeper Steve Ellis on May 7. Ellis has documented the die-off of bees on the very day that neighboring fields were planted with… Read More →
What with farmland changing hands at price levels that would make a Beverly Hills realtor blanch, one could be forgiven for jumping to an obvious conclusion: Farm Country is flush with cash these days. Indeed, based on pure numbers, the statistics are impressive. Midwestern farmland values increased 16 percent in 2012, the third largest gain… Read More →
I am a Planning Commissioner in Florence Township, which is in southeast Minnesota’s Goodhue County. I am also chair of the Save-The-Bluffs Citizen’s group and a new member of the Land Stewardship Project. I have been heavily involved in the silica frac sand issue here in Goodhue County since May 2011. I was retired once,… Read More →
The Land Stewardship Project and our members have worked for 43 years to push back against the expansion of a factory farming model that forces out farmers, harms the land and water, and puts our communities at risk. This work is built upon that experience, and the stories of our farmer and rural members who… Read More →
When I first moved to Minnesota eight years ago, my knowledge of soils and agricultural systems was purely textbook. I live and work in an amazing community that has taught me more than I ever expected to learn, and has pulled back the curtain on our current farming systems and the ways in which they… Read More →
Land Stewardship Project members Aimee Haag and Laura Cullip testify Wednesday, Feb. 12, during an informational state Senate hearing on Free School Meals in Minnesota and how Farm to School is bolstered through this critical program. For more on LSP’s Farm to School and community-based food systems work, click here. You can listen to an… Read More →
ALBERT LEA, Minn. — Corn and soybeans may dominate the agricultural landscape in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa, but reintroducing small grains such as oats into the rotation could help make farming more economically, agronomically and environmentally sustainable, while serving a growing consumer demand for healthy food, said a panel of national and local experts during… Read More →
