As you may have heard, the stormy weather of this past weekend inflicted heavy damage on numerous Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms in the Minnesota-western Wisconsin region. The timing of the hail and heavy winds couldn’t have been worse—in many cases entire plantings were wiped out in a matter of minutes, decimating months of preparation… Read More →
President Trump’s Budget Includes Needed Reforms to Crop Insurance, but Lacks Investment in Rural Communities & the Land President Donald Trump’s proposed agriculture budget contains good and bad news for rural America. The good news is it moves forward positive reform on crop insurance. The bad news is it cuts many critical supports for rural… Read More →
How birds, biology and food production blend on one Minnesota dairy farm.
A number of years ago, long before billionaire provocateur Donald Trump demonized undocumented Mexican workers and called for the erection of a new wall along the southern U.S. border, the Land Stewardship Project began work as an ally for immigrant farmworker rights and immigration reform. Our latest endeavor along these lines is a trip south… Read More →
On Oct. 6, at lunchtime, I stood on the sidewalk outside a McDonald’s restaurant in St. Paul, Minn., facing the busy traffic on University Avenue with a colorful sign that said “Stop the Drift.” I was with a group of other supporters of the Toxic Taters Coalition: students, parents and community members who made time… Read More →
Not long ago, Rich and Carol Radtke were on a bit of a roll. They had graduated from the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings course and felt the program had provided them a solid basis for developing a profitable farming operation on land they and their three children moved to in 2008. Before taking the… Read More →
A community food co-op in a farm town rises from the rubble and begins its next chapter.
As Midwestern farm fields take a long winter’s nap, evidence is piling up that even when the temperature’s above freezing, all that soil is basically in a bit of a stupor—so devoid of microbial life that it can’t even produce a decent crop without getting a hit of chemical inputs. The latest proof of this… Read More →
A beginning farmer incubator near Duluth is helping revitalize food and farming in the Lake Superior region.
Having just come from working several seasons as an outdoor educator, I have had ample time to appreciate our wild places. In my previous position as an instructor leading canoe and dogsled trips in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, I was able to explore the interactions between humans and nature and marvel in the… Read More →
