How much attention will lawmakers give family farming, rural communities, local food systems and the rural environment during the upcoming session of the Minnesota Legislature? The Land Stewardship Project’s State Policy Committee—a group of farmers, conservationists, educators and Main Street business owners—is betting such issues will be front and center. The committee recently drafted a platform that makes it clear just how much the Legislature could do to foster sustainability throughout rural Minnesota. Renewing Family Farms and Rural Minnesota: State Policies that Make a Commitment to Minnesota’s Family Farms, Rural Communities and Environmental Stewardship provides detailed proposals on how we can create a bright future for the land and its people. We’ve broken it down into five categories:

1. Supporting the Next Generation of Farmers
2. Stewardship of the Land
3. Local Democracy & Accountability
4. Community Based Local Food Systems
5. Community Based Renewable Energy

To read the entire platform, click here. After you read the platform, if you like what you see, come on over to the Third Annual Family Farm Breakfast at the Capitol on Tuesday, Feb. 19. This will be a great opportunity to eat delicious, locally produced food. Even more importantly, it will provide citizens a chance to get together with lawmakers over coffee and eggs and chew the fat over how to create a more viable rural Minnesota. What better way to put some proactive purpose behind the paper Renewing Family Farms and Rural Minnesota is written on?

This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 6:07 pm by Brian DeVore, Land Stewardship Project and is filed under Food and Sustainable Agriculture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.