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 →
A three-hour drive separates the rolling hills of Minnesota’s Douglas County from the front steps of the Bell Museum of Natural History. But a year after the controversy over Troubled Waters—the Bell’s Emmy award-winning film on farmland pollution in the Mississippi River basin—brought words like “dead zone,” hypoxia” and “nitrogen fertilizer” to the attention of… Read More →
Growing Small Grains Market in Albert Lea Attracting Attention from Farmers (1/28/25) KAAL-TV reports on a Land Stewardship Project workshop where over 150 people gathered to talk about ways of bringing small grains back to Minnesota. Highlights: After being mostly replaced by corn and soybeans during the past several decades, small grains such as oats… Read More →
Back in 1998, I was working on an article for the Land Stewardship Letter about how the lack of biodiversity in agriculture was threatening the agronomic, ecological, and economic future of Midwestern farming communities. One of the people I interviewed was Don Wyse, a respected University of Minnesota plant scientist who had recently helped coordinate… Read More →
Note: Earlier this summer, Land Stewardship Project soil health organizer Alex Romano reached out to one of our soil health steering committee members, Mike Seifert, who farms near Jordan, Minn., with his wife, Dana, and father, Big Mike, to ask for his thoughts on “return on investment” from cover crops. She wanted to know his… Read More →
In 2005, Sara Morrison was driving home to Minnesota after spending a few long days at a Saint Louis horse show. Traveling, often with a horse trailer in tow, was nothing new to her. Since getting a degree in equine science eight years before, Morrison had spent much of her life on the road, preparing… Read More →
If ever there was a shining example of a smart public investment in our food and farming future, Minnesota’s Sustainable Agriculture Demonstration Grant Program is it. This program has been an important driver of sustainable (and conventional) farming innovations in the state for almost a quarter-century. Farmers who qualify for these competitive grants are able… Read More →
When a new food and farming model is introduced to a region, it can be slow to catch on—if at all. On the other hand, sometimes a new concept takes off like a galloping horse, challenging its practitioners to hang on for the ride. One Saturday last October, Kristianna Gehant and Nick Siddens were on… Read More →
MADISON, Minn. — “Welcome to my midlife crisis,” joked Peter Haugen on a Saturday morning in early August as a couple dozen farmers stood in a semi-circle around him and his wife, Brittany, at the edge of a 12-acre field south of Madison. The “crisis” Peter was referring to was what was growing in that… Read More →
LEWISTON, Minn. — One of the most successful beginning farmer training programs in the country is now accepting applications for its 2025-2026 course session serving the Minnesota, western Wisconsin and northern Iowa region. The Land Stewardship Project’s (LSP) Farm Beginnings initiative is a training program that focuses on the goal-setting, marketing and financial skills needed to… Read More →
