The Land Stewardship Project, sustainable agriculture and family farming lost a true friend this week when Dan Specht was killed in a tragic farm accident. He was 63. (See obituary here.) Dan, who farmed above the banks of the Mississippi River near McGregor, in northeast Iowa, had been a pioneer in innovative, sustainable farming methods… 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 →
A few years ago LSP organizer Doug Nopar was told of a southeast Minnesota farm operation that was withholding wages from a worker after he had accidentally damaged a door with a skid steer loader. Nopar called the farm owner and let him know this action was quite illegal. The farmer’s response? “You know, I… Read More →
I’m not sure I would recommend this, but I recently read two books back-to-back that represent the “how” extremes of today’s food system. I started out with The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food, and, literally within minutes of finishing it, picked up Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food… 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 →
Public comments submitted as part of the environmental review process for two proposed frac sand mines in Winona County overwhelmingly call for officials there to follow the law and order an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Land Stewardship Project members, other local citizens, state agencies and scientific experts submitted a total of about 75 comments on… Read More →
As last week’s Congressional Research Service report on bee health makes clear, the crisis plaguing pollinators is not a single, big bad bogey man. It’s likely a combination of factors such as habitat loss, pesticide poisoning, introduced diseases and the stress of making domesticated honey bees the insect equivalent of migrant workers. That’s the bad… Read More →
Bob Quinn says regenerative farming and rural economic revitalization go hand-in-hand. For him, it all started with a handful of “King Tut’s wheat.” (First in a three-part series on small grains and community-based foods.) More Information • Episode 3 in Ear to the Ground Small Grains Workshop Series: “Landon Plagge — Small Grain-Big Opportunity” • Episode 2 in Ear… Read More →
When Jay Fuhrer first started talking to his conservation colleagues about a different approach to protecting and building soil, he ended up eating lunch alone. But eventually the Burleigh County Soil Health Team helped launch a movement that’s showing how farming, the environment, and local economies benefit when people stop accepting soil as a degraded resource. More… Read More →
LSP’s political action partner, the Land Stewardship Action Fund, is working to show that vibrant rural communities require local people participating in decision-making — one vote at a time. More Information • Land Stewardship Action Fund • Land Stewardship Letter Article: “Land Stewardship Action Fund’s Local Impact” • LSP’s Policy Campaigns You can find LSP Ear… Read More →
