Local control provides local governments the ability to make decisions that benefit their communities. It can happen at the township, county, city, or regional level. The decisions that are made can impact everything from local policy to how public funds are spent. Right now, the federal government is considering changing the rules for local decision-making… Read More →
Kathryn Rowe joined LSP’s staff in January 2025. Kathryn has several years of experience working on farms in New England and the Midwest. Most recently, she worked as an evaluation manager and greenhouse coordinator at Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa. Kathryn is based out of LSP’s office in Lewiston, Minn.
Diversified, small, and mid-sized farmers deserve to have a strong safety net. Yet, most don’t. Why? Crop insurance isn’t accessible or worthwhile for most small, mid-sized, and diversified farms. Take it from Andy Petran, a Land Stewardship Project member and Farmington, Minn.-area farmer, who wrote the following in a recent Star Tribune op-ed: “Farming has always… Read More →
This nice big canvas tote bag features original Land Stewardship Project artwork by LSP staff member Josh Journey-Heinz.
Meetings Set with MPCA Assistant Commissioner & Governor Dayton; Press Conference to be held at 12:30 p.m. in front of MPCA Office in St. Paul NEWBURG TOWNSHIP, Minn. — Dozens of family farmers, business owners, members of the Amish community and rural residents who live near a proposed factory hog farm in southeastern Minnesota’s Fillmore… Read More →
Farmers possess a kind of ground-level common sense that seems increasingly rare in today’s fast-paced, technologically-driven world. Farmers develop this common sense from a real, experiential understanding of their land. Mike Krause is one farmer who not only understands the generations’ worth of knowledge behind his family farm, what the land has been through, and… Read More →
Bill Proposes Common Sense Reforms that Would Support Conservation Efforts & Help Beginning Farmers MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — The Land Stewardship Project (LSP) applauded today’s introduction of the “Crop Insurance Modernization Act of 2018” by Minnesota U.S. Representative Rick Nolan. Rep. Nolan is the Ranking Member of the House Agriculture Committee’s General Farm Commodities and Risk… Read More →
As rural Land Stewardship Project organizing committee members and staff, we feel compelled to respond to recent incidents of racial tension in the broader community of Minnesota’s Winona County, where we live and work. Following this summer’s racist killings in the church in Charleston, South Carolina, and the subsequent removal of the Confederate flag from… Read More →
Below is a picture from the close of a thought-provoking, challenging and energizing two-day meeting the Land Stewardship Project hosted this week at our Minneapolis office. Leaders and staff from state-based rural membership organizations representing 10 Midwest and Western states came together in Minnesota and shared our experiences and our analyses related to organizing for… Read More →
On a misty June morning in northeastern Iowa, Nikki Meyer led half-a-dozen farmers down a field road through a thick stand of oaks and other hardwoods. The going was tough — the road dropped 400 vertical feet in less than half-a-mile, and a half-inch rain earlier had made the footing greasy with mud. Sensing that… Read More →
