On Aug. 30, frac sand corporation Minnesota Sands filed a petition with the Minnesota Supreme Court in a continued attempt to subvert local democracy and undo the frac sand ban in southeastern Minnesota’s Winona County. The ordinance was passed by Winona County Commissioners after they listened to the will of the people, and has already… Read More →
Meeting Focuses on Need for Policies that Support Family Farmers, Affordable Healthcare & Strong Local Government STAPLES, Minn.— If the 2018 session of the Minnesota Legislature is to advance policies that support rural communities, then lawmakers need to support family farmers, affordable healthcare and strong local government, according to a group of farmers and other… Read More →
Over Thanksgiving, I was perusing the Dairy Star at my brother-in-law’s house in Stillwater, Minn. Having grown up on a dairy farm, I still like to see how the industry is doing. A column by Sadie Frerichs called, “The Negative Impacts of Health Insurance,” caught my eye. Because of the recent health insurance rate increases… 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 →
When I and four other college students from Winona participated in the Southern civil rights movement of the 1960s, we were proud of Minnesota. Like the dozens from all over Minnesota who spent months or years helping people to register and vote in the face of poll taxes, literacy tests, threats and murder, we knew… Read More →
In Boone County, Iowa, fertile farmland stretches as far as the eye can see. But as our van of Land Stewardship Project members rounded the corner on a rural road, we saw a disturbing sight: miles of black, vacant land where the landscape has been shaved to make way for the Dakota Access Pipeline. On… Read More →
An Indiana initiative has made the state a national leader in getting continuous living cover established on crop acres. Can it change the way farmers view soil? Michael Werling is, literally, a card-carrying connoisseur of soil health. “I call it, ‘My ticket to a farm tour,’ ” says the northeastern Indiana crop producer, showing off… Read More →
Nov. 6 : An LSP Round-up of News Covering Land, People & Communities Relay Cropping Helps Northeast Iowa Farmer Reach a Lofty Goal (October 2020) Northeastern Iowa farmer Loran Steinlage is using “relay cropping” to keep living roots in the soil 365-days-a-year, according to 4R Plus. Steinlage was getting good yields growing continuous corn-on-corn. But… Read More →
On April 17, Land Stewardship Project members gathered in Menomonie, Wis., to discuss the challenges they face as beginning farmers seeking land to farm. They also discussed how to shape the initial stages of LSP’s organizing for more affordable, secure land tenure. These farmers shared stories about how skyrocketing land prices are creating a crisis… Read More →
There is a widely-circulated public story, or narrative, that growing enough food for the world’s future population will require doubling production by relying on technologies such as nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides tied to traits in genetically modified crops. The narrative is that family farmers, consumers and governments must rely on corporate-controlled technology from multi-national agricultural… Read More →
