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 →
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 →
The sustainable agriculture community lost a true friend this week when Bud Markhart passed away after a courageous battle with cancer. I had the opportunity to interview Markhart last fall for an LSP podcast. He was a professor of horticultural science at the U of M, and so it’s no surprise that he made his… Read More →
When it comes to the crop insurance sweepstakes, southwest Minnesota farmer Darwyn Bach is a winner. But he concedes that his good fortune presents a quandary, since the way the program is implemented these days creates significant losers: the soil, beginning farmers and Main Street businesses that suffer when the number of families in a… Read More →
When it comes to farming, oftentimes things don’t work out as planned—and sometimes that’s a good thing. Take for example Greg and Nancy Rasmussen, who on a recent fall afternoon are checking on some newly arrived chicks gathered under heat lamps in their barn. When the Rasmussens enrolled in the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings course… 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 →
When you grow up on a farm in the shadow of the Jolly Green Giant, you can’t help but think that size matters when it comes to success in agriculture. Josh Reinitz’s family’s land sits between Minneapolis and Mankato, just a few miles from where a wooden likeness of the Green One and his apprentice… Read More →
While leading a group of natural resource professionals through one of his dairy pastures one early fall day, Martin Jaus made it crystal clear he farms the land for more than a milk check. “Every day we see something that just amazes us,” he said with a smile. “One day I was making hay and… Read More →
Sign Up for E-mail Delivery of The Land Line Report Calls for Stricter Fertilizer Rules as US Nitrate Pollution Crisis Grows (6/1/26) The New Lede writes about a report that finds lax regulations and mismanaged applications are contributing to making nitrogen runoff a major water pollution problem in the U.S. Highlights: U.S. farmers annually apply… Read More →
Nitrate levels in southeastern Minnesota’s groundwater are a major problem — and thousands of families depend on that water for drinking. The good news: we have a proven solution. The Olmsted County Groundwater Protection and Soil Health Program has helped farmers reduce nitrate leaching across thousands of acres since 2023. Now, the Minnesota Legislature has an… Read More →
