managed rotational grazing

Nitrate’s Season of Reckoning

Ag Pollution in Karst Country Offers a Critical Opportunity for Soil-Friendly Farming

For residents of southeastern Minnesota, the past few months must seem like “The Season of the Nitrate.” It turns out nitrogen, that critical source of crop fertility, is quite adept at escaping our farm fields, and, in the form of nitrate, polluting groundwater. So much so that scientists, government officials, and physicians now recognize it…  Read More

Ear to the Ground 325: Return of the Fence

Matt and Seth Tentis of White Barn Acres are creating a soil-smart farm using a mix of livestock, continuous living cover, and experimentation — with a healthy dose of community support tossed in for good measure. More Information • White Barn Acres • LSP’s Soil Health Web Page • LSP’s 2023 Field Day Special Report:…  Read More

Ear to the Ground 280: Maximum vs. Optimal

Adhering to the tenets of Ag Econ 101, a pair of beginning farmers are avoiding commodity row crops and embracing grazing, silvopasturing, and “bale grazed veggies.” More Information: • LSP’s Soil Health & Grazing web page • Ear to the Ground Episode 246: Letting Livestock do the Work You can find LSP Ear to the…  Read More

Billboard Campaign Highlights the Power of Healthy Soil in Southern MN

Warning: ‘Farming Naked’ isn’t a Good Idea When it Comes to Building Resilient Fields

LEWISTON, Minn. — When isn’t farming naked a good idea? A new Land Stewardship Project (LSP) billboard campaign promoting the power of building healthy soil on southern Minnesota farms answers that question and more. The billboards, which made their debut this month near the Minnesota communities of Austin, Spring Valley, Fountain, Preston, Dexter, Grand Meadow and…  Read More

Demonstrate the Demand for the Soil Healthy Cost-Share Program

Add Your Name to the List Today

During the 2021 Minnesota legislative session, Land Stewardship Project farmer-members wrote and championed a comprehensive soil health bill that led to the establishment of a Soil Health Cost-Share Program. Through this program, $1.3 million will be available through the Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR). The program will provide payments to farmers for implementing soil-healthy…  Read More

Ear to the Ground No. 255: Embracing the Weed

What happened when beginning farmers Rachelle and Jordan Meyer started listening to the land and turned livestock loose on a “bacterial farm.” • Check out this LSP video on how Rachelle and Jordan Meyer are using “cell grazing” to build soil and produce livestock. • More information on Wholesome Family Farms is here. • For…  Read More

Farm Beginnings Profile: Amy Haben & Tom Moore

Making a Farm a Working Asset

Amy Haben and Tom Moore ride a golf cart over a rickety wooden bridge spanning Otter Creek and follow a path to a lush pasture where a couple dozen head of Scottish Highland cattle graze, their shaggy coats luminescent in the late afternoon sun of a June day. “Before they grazed the edge of the…  Read More

Farm Beginnings Profile: John & Heidi Wise

Dairy Farming's Pit Bulls

When you’re wallowing in the pit of despair, it helps to know that others have preceded you and survived. And for John and Heidi Wise, they have another pit-beater: they didn’t exactly jump in without giving it some careful forethought. After more than a decade of classes, working with mentors, business planning and searching, the…  Read More

Farm Beginnings Profile: Tyler Carlson

A Voice at the Other End of the Line

The call came in the night. On the end of the line was the panicked voice of Tyler Carlson, a 26-year-old beginning farmer who was starting a grazing operation in west-central Minnesota. It seems that while making a long-distance move of the cowherd he had just purchased a few days before, a baby calf had…  Read More