By Megan Smith
How many times have you wandered through a community garden and noticed its beautiful smells, creative architecture, stunning colors and abundant produce? Each garden is a wonderful and productive part of our metro area. This summer, one thing that became clear to me is the central importance in the Twin Cities of the land itself, the land on which community gardens are planted and more and more of our food is raised. Without the land, community gardens and urban farms would not be there for us to enjoy. (more…)

For me, this has turned out to be the Summer of the Humble Expert. While conducting interviews for various articles and podcasts the past few months, I’ve run into a couple of examples of people who are tops in their perspective scientific fields—one environmental, one agricultural—but who found they had a lot to learn from farmers. Their willingness to make “I don’t know” part of their vocabulary has opened up the kinds of two-way conversations that are critical to creating truly sustainable land use. (more…)

In June the USDA released a proposed rule to bolster  the ability of the federal government  to protect farmers against abuses by corporate meatpackers—in other words, inject a little free-market mentality into an industry that’s been just the opposite for far too long. The public has until Nov. 22 to comment on the proposal. But August is turning out to be the month when people in Minnesota and across the nation have a genuine chance to make their voice heard on this critical issue. (more…)

When defending the safety of one of the most widely used weed killers in North America, Syngenta often cites the fact that some 6,000 studies provide “overwhelming” evidence that atrazine is nothing to worry about. But a recent report by the Huffington Post Investigative Fund shows that at least half of the 6,611 studies the EPA is using in its current review of the herbicide were conducted by scientists and organizations with financial ties to the chemical. Many of those connections come via Syngenta, the inventor and  primary manufacturer of atrazine. That fact makes the evidence in favor of atrazine a little less “overwhelming” and a little more “questionable.” (more…)

What can be more iconic than an image of a farmer holding soil? But when I took the photo featured below, it was more than a symbol—it was visual proof that a good farmer can be as passionate about all that hidden life beneath our feet as some people are about art, science, sports or politics. (more…)

I find springs—those places where groundwater exposes itself to the sunlight of its own accord—fascinating. There’s something special about seeing firsthand an entity that’s recently been lurking underground in dark mysterious places, flowing from who knows where and through who knows what. Northeast Iowa farmer Jeff Klinge shares that fascination. As he told me in a recent LSP podcast (episode 80), his interest was piqued when as a child his parents took him to a nearby trout hatchery where Big Spring, the biggest cold water spring in that state, emerges from the ground like some sort of upside-down waterfall. Over the past four decades, that interest has evolved from mere curiosity to a major motivation for the way Klinge farms. (more…)

Sholom Rubashkin was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison on Monday, marking yet another chapter in Postville, Iowa’s, tragic relationship with Agriprocessors Inc. I thought about this relationship the other day while sitting in a Mexican restaurant on Postville’s main drag, enjoying a burrito the size of my forearm. (more…)

The federal government’s latest assessment of how much soil is being washed and blown off our farmland contains some good news: between 1982 and 2007, erosion dropped 43 percent nationally. (more…)

An endangered river is dangerous—the Cedar River proved that exactly two years ago this week. (more…)

My kids reminded me this morning that the final hours of another Minnesota school year are fast approaching. It’s amazing how scholars who can barely master adding or subtracting from September to April suddenly learn how to calculate the passing of time down to the microsecond once May and June roll around. This is also the time of year when certain schools across the state are doing some calculations of their own: were efforts during the past several months to get more locally produced food into cafeterias worth the time, expense and general hassle? (more…)