May corn futures on the Chicago Board of Trade closed at $5.35 per bushel today. There’s nothing wrong with rural America that high corn prices won’t fix, right? I read that price quote soon after finishing an LSP Ear to the Ground podcast on a rural economic development model that has little to do with betting the farm (and the land) on one or two raw commodities. Give it a listen (episode 47) before you call up your broker and buy corn futures on the CBOT. (more…)

One of the nation’s largest producers of factory hogs has been getting some nice publicity recently. It seems Christensen Farms provided funding for a new animal and plant science curriculum being used by Minnesota’s high school agriculture teachers. I wonder if the curriculum contains a unit on how to externalize the environmental costs of factory farming? It should, since Christensen Farms has a doctorate in that field. (more…)

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?

As we reported last September, Lowell Franzen, the feedlot officer in southern Minnesota’s Mower County, obtained a feedlot permit in his name for a 4,800-sow hog confinement facility. He then sold the permit and 14 acres of land to representatives of Holden Farms, Inc., for $292,000. That alone raised suspicions that Holden Farms used Lowell Franzen as a taxpayer-funded decoy so it could sneak thousands of pigs and millions of gallons of liquid manure into the community. Now the plot thickens. Land Stewardship Project members in Mower County have recently uncovered a purchase agreement between Nick Holden and Lowell Franzen signed on July 9, 2006 — two months before any permits were applied for. In the purchase agreement, Holden agreed to reimburse Franzen for the costs of getting the permit and pay him $264,000 for the land with the permit. (LSP has all the relevant documents and an updated timeline on this evolving issue at our website.) As of July 9, 2006, this was a Holden controlled-operation, but that fact was kept from neighbors and government permitting agencies.

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency feedlot rules are clear in the definition of a feedlot owner, stating: “Owner means all persons having possession, control [emphasis added], or title to an animal feedlot or manure storage area.” (7020.0300 Definitons. Subp. 17.) Through this purchase agreement, as of July 9, 2006, Holden had control of the feedlot and was therefore an owner. By law, Holden should have been listed on the feedlot permit application along with Franzen, but was not. Despite this evidence, the only official action taken to date is that Franzen has been placed on paid administrative leave. What with purchase agreements, permit applications and various other documents laying out a consistently crooked paper trail, it’s getting increasingly difficult for MPCA and Mower County officials to deny that this situation reeks of corruption.

I spent last Friday evening watching the documentary King Corn in a packed conference room at the St. Cloud Civic Center. King Corn is an engaging film that efficiently and entertainingly (Who knew Fisher-Price farm sets could tell us so much about policy and economics?) tells the story of how corn is raised, where it goes when it leaves the land, and what its ubiquitousness means to human, environmental and economic health. Anyone familiar with Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma or Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation will not be surprised by the conclusions of the film: corn is way, way too much of a good thing, and government policy is only making things worse. That message was not new to most of the other people present in the room. They were all attendees of the 2008 Minnesota Organic Conference—farmers, marketers, government personnel, researchers, activists and various other players in the sustainable ag world who have dedicated their lives to fight the monocropping malaise brought on by corn, corn and more corn. But what struck me about the film was the helplessness exhibited by the various subjects of the Maize Monarchy. Everyone interviewed—from farmers to university scientists to a former USDA head—seemed a little perplexed as to how to extract themselves out of a system where we don’t so much as raise corn, as serve at its beck and call. They were being carried along by the powerful corn current and didn’t seem willing or able to swim to shore and strike out in a different direction. When the lights went up at the end of the film, a bit of a cloud hung over the room. For me, that dark feeling didn’t lift until 8:30 the following morning, when farmer Tom Frantzen opened his mouth and let loose one of the most inspiring keynotes I’ve heard in a long time. Take a listen to what he had to say in episode 45 of the Ear to the Ground podcast. He makes one believe that palace coups are possible. (more…)

By Cael Warren

The concept of “food miles” has spurred heated debate across the developed world, causing people to question the origins of the food that ends up on their tables. Despite how common the phrase is, many people never know more about food miles than what the phrase implies: miles traveled by food. What is behind this catch phrase, and what does it mean for our food system and the environment? (more…)

The day after Christmas my wife Kathleen and I took a frigid walk along 7-Mile Creek in southwest Iowa and got a firsthand look at a conservation sin that not even December snow could keep under wraps. As the photo below shows, dry corn stalks were marching literally right into a ditch adjacent to the creek. Summer erosion had sent some of the corn stalks, and a whole lot of soil, tumbling into the ditch.

Not all of that soil caving in beneath those stalks will make its way to the Gulf of Mexico; in fact, a lot of it may not even run into the 7-Mile. Technically, that soil is still part of that farm field. But as far as productivity goes, as far as that soil’s ability to grow food and support riparian plant systems, to filter out contaminates that are running off the landscape, it is a lost resource. That’s an important point to keep in mind as a certain prominent scientist tries to promote the idea that eroded soil is simply moved soil and is not really lost. Unfortunately, this fallacy is gaining ground, threatening to stymie solid efforts to promote sustainable use of soil. (more…)

In November, the USDA released its proposal for label claims related to “naturally raised” livestock and meat. Perhaps no word in the English language has been more used and abused than “natural.” It’s been applied to everything from pain medication to certain products sold by Internet spammers that “enhance” the human condition. Well, during the next 30 days, we have a good chance to put some real meaning behind this word when it comes to meat products. It’s time to pull “natural” out of the clutches of truth-stretching advertising copy writers. (more…)

On Friday, the U.S. Senate finished floor consideration of the Food and Energy Security Act of 2007, more commonly known as the 2007 Farm Bill. The Land Stewardship Project sees the Senate’s version of the Farm Bill as a mixed bag: it contains many windfalls for corporate agriculture interests, but also offers glimmers of hope towards developing a more environmentally sound and economically just food and agriculture system. (more…)

How are we going to create a new environmentally-aware generation? The answer is complex and multi-faceted. But one extremely effective avenue is to stop assuming our kids will only eat high-fat, highly-processed foods with refrigerator-sized carbon footprints. Consuming local, sustainably-produced food is one way kids can learn the basics of personal stewardship at least three times a day. Granted, as Andrew Martin writes in today’s New York Times, eating local is not automatically more sustainable. But given the right circumstances, children who appreciate local food can be a powerful force for good. But how do we help our kids make good food choices? I recently talked to Uli Koester, executive director of the Midwest Food Connection, about how his organization goes into Twin Cities schools and helps kids (and adults) appreciate the culinary, environmental and even cultural roots of good food. At the basis of the Food Connection’s educational program is the idea that we do not need to “dumb-down” our kids’ food choices in order to fill their bellies. You can listen to what Koester has to say on episode 44 of LSP’s Ear to the Ground podcast. Smart food for smart kids. Sounds like a good recipe for sustainable consumerism.