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Searched for: regional food system

Morris Forum Focuses on Potential & Challenges Related to a More Regionally Focused Food System

'We’re feeling some real momentum right now.'

February 25, 2026

MORRIS, Minn. — Building a community-based infrastructure that is centered around local farmers producing food for local markets is a significant challenge in a region dominated by an export-driven corn and soybean system, but there are signs of progress being made in the Upper Minnesota River Valley, said participants in a Land Stewardship Project (LSP)…  Read More →

Main Street Vs. Eat Street

By Brian DeVore
April 12, 2013

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 →

Why ‘Middleman’ Doesn’t Have to be a Dirty Word for Farmers

By Brian DeVore
December 5, 2011

At a time when we’re all scanning the dark horizon of recession land for any economic spark, local food systems look to be a flare-up that’s got some staying power. The past several weeks have been full of signs that both in Minnesota and nationally producing and consuming food in our own collective backyard isn’t…  Read More →

Spencer Award Winners: A Farm as Change Agent

By Brian DeVore
December 7, 2012

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 →

2024 Minnesota Legislative Session Update: Less Than One Month Left! 

By Amanda Koehler & Laura Schreiber 
April 25, 2024

There is less than one month left in the 2024 Minnesota legislative session. This week, the House and Senate are finalizing and passing their separate omnibus policy and supplemental budget bills, which will then be sent to conference committees where differences between the proposals will be hammered out.   This session, the Land Stewardship Project has…  Read More →

Land Line: Bridge Payments, Food Pyramid, Farmland Prices, Riverview Dairy, CAFO Funding, Restoring Habitat, ICEing Ag, Nitrates in Winter

By Brian DeVore (editor)
January 22, 2026

Bridge Payment Rates Are Here — But Are They Enough to Help Your Bottom Line? (1/7/26) Writing for Farm Progress, Joshua Baethge describes concerns that the aid package being issued to farmers in February to help them deal with damage caused by the trade war will not make up for years of mounting losses in…  Read More →

Healthy Soil, Healthy Farms, Healthy Communities (1st of 2 parts)

By Brian DeVore
January 1, 2013

On a crisp morning in September, North Dakota farmer Gabe Brown held two handfuls of soil and searched for signs of life—theoretically not a difficult task considering one teaspoon of humus contains more organisms than there are humans in the world. But many of the bacteria and invertebrates that lurk in the dark basement of…  Read More →