It hasn’t been a good year for genetically modified crops. Or rather, it hasn’t been a good year for those who promote these crops as the best thing to happen to food production since Johann Gregor Mendel started messing with pea plants. (more…)

When the 2009 summary for the Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll popped up in my e-mail box yesterday, the first thing that struck me was this: a whole lot of farmers in the Hawkeye State think creating a local food production, processing and distribution system is a good idea. This is a significant indicator that the local foods movement is more than a hip, urban, food co-op-and-fancy restaurant thing. It’s gaining traction in the place where all that local food needs to be actually produced: Corn Country. (more…)

The latest U.S. Census of Agriculture shows that pastured land took a horrific hit between 2002 and 2007 in terms of the amount of landscape it covers. That means a significant privately-owned  tool for protecting and improving soil and water quality and  sequestering greenhouse gases is slipping away at an alarming rate. Also disappearing is a low-cost, healthy source of forage for livestock. Here are the cold, hard facts: (more…)

While reading the late Paul Gruchow’s contribution to Our Neck of the Woods, I was reminded that becoming “native” to a place goes beyond simply being born there. It’s how you live, work, play—even eat. (more…)

Not to get too personal, but if you’re thinking of making a baby anytime soon, you might not want to wait until spring. That’s the conclusion one could draw from a recent analysis that correlates atrazine contamination spikes, time of year a baby is conceived and increased rates of birth defects. This is just the latest in a long line of studies indicating that the popular corn herbicide’s negatives outweigh its positives. The EPA announced last month that it is going to reconsider whether atrazine is safe enough to be used on this country’s crop fields. Let’s hope research like the birth defects study is on top of the agency’s review pile. (more…)

“I love to come up with great ideas and I sometimes think pixy dust is all you need to accomplish them,” Erin Yanish told me recently during a recent LSP podcast interview (episode 68). “Unfortunately, they don’t take that for the mortgage payment.” (more…)

John Tuma’s Capitol Update – the Fall Version

In the final installment in a series about Minnesota’s role in the local food movement, John continues his journey through the history and meaning of a state constitutional provision and its impact on locally grown foods.

“…the majority opinion, by upholding the custom meat processing regulations in the context of the present dispute, guts the constitutional protections granted to farmers to sell their own products…”

G. Barry Anderson
Dissenting Opinion
State v. Hartmann
700 N.W.2d 449, 460
(more…)

When Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan announced the awarding of the first round of Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program grants on Tuesday, it was no accident she chose the home of Eric and Lisa Klein in southeast Minnesota as the location. Their Hidden Stream Farm has deep roots in the Land Stewardship Project, and it was LSP’s Policy Program organizing that made BFRDP a reality. It is also LSP’s Farm Beginnings program that Merrigan is holding up as a national community-based model for training the next generation of farmers. Last but not least, Hidden Stream is where Lisa’s father, Everett Koenig, first began to “give a damn” about the future of family farming. (more…)

Capitol Update from MEP’s lobbyist at the Capitol – John Tuma

 ”That’s different is indispensable in Minnesota… That’s different means you have an opinion, but you’re holding back the details.”

Howard Mohr

How to Talk Minnesotan*

Having five generations of roots here in Minnesota, I enjoy Howard Mohr’s little book on how to speak Minnesotan.  It is absolutely hilarious and so true – ya know.  We definitely have some unusual ways of putting things.  So when those of us from Minnesota say that “they’re different”, we pretty much know what we’re saying without having to say it.  It would be so un-Minnesotan to delve into the details, but we all know what we mean.  There is no need to expound on the term “different”; it is always in relation to something that is in the negative.  Mohr didn’t clearly explain that negative thing in his paragraph on the subject, but maybe that’s because it’s so understood.  It’s on pages 3 and 4 of his book if you care to read it. (more…)

When the Star Tribune’s “Dollars & Sense” columnist is writing about how to buy locally-produced meat, you know that the local food movement is more than a passing yuppie trend. As another sign that this movement has some legs under it,  this year LSP’s listing of farmers who direct-market food in the region celebrated a decade of existence (it started out as a listing of family hog farmers taped next to a fax machine). The 2009-2010 LSP Stewardship Farm Directory is hot off the press—just in time for Thanksgiving.