The USDA announced last week the availability of $19.2 million in funds for groups that assist beginning farmers through training and other support initiatives. This is the first grant cycle of the newly reauthorized Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP), which is part of the 2014 Farm Bill signed into law in February. In… Read More →
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 →
A few years ago, a travel writer penned an opinion piece in the Minneapolis Star Tribune lambasting the “local foods movement.” One thing that really galled him was seeing all those Volvos, Saabs and Hondas that consumers parked at the farmers’ market while they shopped for vegetables that had been transported into town by numerous,… Read More →
Five years into her farming career, Janna Goerdt has learned a lot about how to use sweat equity to coax the most production out of the soils of Fat Chicken Farm near Embarrass. But the 40-year-old former journalist has also gotten savvy about how to set some sustainable limits on both her farm and herself.… Read More →
I have never doubted my Honda Civic before. It has served me well in my work with the Land Stewardship Project and otherwise as I traverse west-central Minnesota. Last week it was tested as I drove Ann Bartuska, USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics, to a family farm in the region. Also… Read More →
Good things go bad when out of their rightful places. Take farm fertilizer and soil, essential ingredients in the field but all wrong in the 27 percent of Minnesota lakes now too contaminated to drink. Last month’s report from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) blasted corn-and-soybean agriculture as the major source of nitrogen contamination… Read More →
A key relationship developed through LSP’s Farmer Network helps a beginning farmer launch his operation with the help of mentors.
I sat in a farmhouse one afternoon last month as a hot wind lifted rich topsoil from surrounding fields. On the drive in, I’d noticed a surprising amount of rill erosion on newly tilled cropland—surprising because recent rains had not been all that intense and the fields were not unusually steep. Out of the blue… Read More →
I talked to a Todd County farmer yesterday who uses 100 percent no-till and other conservation measures to raise his crops. Conserving soil is important to him, and so he’s quite upset at how mobile humus has been on neighboring farms this fall/early winter. “You know that little skiff of snow we got the other… Read More →
Jeremy is looking for a farmer to rent 40 organic acres (18 tillable acres, 8 forested acres and 5 pastured acres) in Clayton, WI (Polk County.) Housing is available in addition to a shed and high tunnel (white plastic). There is also well water access, mushroom compost, and lakeside access. Rent: $1600/ mo available 7/1/25.
