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A Hub of Soil Health Activity

How Indiana is using cover cropping and early adopters as ‘gateways’ into a deeper understanding of sustainable soil management. It’s an overcast August morning in northeastern Indiana, and in a massive machine shed well stocked with the tools of a modern row crop operation, some 60 farmers are being reminded that growing corn and soybeans…  Read More

Legislators: Put Water Before Corporations

Dear Senators, I am writing to urge that the Natural Resources, Economic Development and Agricultural Budget Committee NOT approve a Pineland Sands Land and Water Study. Let me be clear: this proposal is NOT an appropriate allocation of “conservation” funds or, for that matter, any tax-supported funds. The so-called “need” for this study would NOT…  Read More

Pacing Ourselves in the World Hunger Race

In the late 1790s and early 1800s, British economist Thomas Robert Malthus used mathematics, the agronomic reality of the day and basic biology to lay out a grim assessment about the future of the planet: we were doomed to an endless cycle of boom and bust. It was inevitable human populations would periodically grow to…  Read More

Report Finds a Winona County Frac Sand Ban has Strong Legal Justification

Regulating Through Permits Fails to Protect County & Poses Bigger Legal Risks, Analysis Finds LEWISTON, Minn. — Minnesota law does not prevent imposing a total ban on frac sand mining, processing and transportation operations in Winona County, according to a new legal analysis released today by the Land Stewardship Project (LSP). The analysis, “Legal and…  Read More

Stages of Learning in Farming: Stage 2 — Becoming Self Sufficient

Stage two typically lasts an additional three to five seasons. You are on your way to a successful farming enterprise. You have a firm direction, you are focused and you have, by trial and error, refined your course (see previous blogs here, and here). You are still doing much fine tuning and investing. If you…  Read More

Public Shouldn’t Pay the Price for Big Ag’s Pollution

Last month in a special report, the Star Tribune newspaper revealed how much water pollution from agriculture is costing taxpayers. At $125 million in 2014 alone, the price of industrialized, monocrop agriculture is significant and only likely to grow. In north-central Minnesota, we have an opportunity during the next few weeks to prevent some of…  Read More

Frac Sand Mining: Everything About it is Wrong

There is no way to make something that is so wrong right. From the start (altering irreplaceable bluffs and habitat that have existed for thousands of years) to the final product produced (oil), frac sand mining is wrong. The problems of dust, noise, transportation, destruction of natural resources, public health and safety are only the…  Read More

Crop Insurance: Good Enough for Monsanto-Good Enough for Conservation Farming

From the fact-is-stranger-than-fiction department: In 2007, Monsanto talked the USDA’s Risk Management Agency into giving farmers a discount on crop insurance premiums if they planted the company’s triple-stacked GMO corn. Reportedly, some reviewers of the proposal raised concerns that the premium subsidy would unfairly benefit a single private company. But in the end, the USDA…  Read More

Prospective Farmers Ask the Key Questions at Farm Dreams

A group of prospective farmers gathered recently for a Land Stewardship Project Farm Dreams workshop at Gale Woods Farm in Minnetrista, Minn., to network and identify next steps in their journey into farming. Farm Dreams is a four-hour workshop designed to help people clarify what motivates them to farm, get their vision on paper, inventory…  Read More

Extinction: Predicting the Future by Creating it

I originally downloaded the audio version of Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, to simply keep me awake during a long wintry drive across the southern part of Minnesota and through the heart of Iowa. But by the time I arrived at my destination—a national conference on cover crops and soil…  Read More