Here’s what happened: At the end of the session the House and Senate Conference Committee for Agriculture inserted a provision into the Livestock Investment Grants Program that gives the state Commissioner of Agriculture authority to develop “competitive eligibility criteria” for the applications received. Using this authority, the MDA has developed an “evaluation profile” that uses a points system for rating grant applications.

When looking at the evaluation profile chart, what’s striking is that the first criteria addressed is livestock numbers. And the MDA wastes no time making it clear what it values: a lot more animals concentrated on each farm. For example, if an operation’s livestock numbers are to be increased by 20 percent, they are given five points or an “outstanding” rating. A grant application that shows no change in livestock numbers is given one point and considered “unsatisfactory,” according to the MDA’s evaluation profile.

I got a few “unsatisfactory” marks during my less than stellar academic career, and I know what it means: you’re not doing what needs to be done to be considered a viable participant. In a sense, the MDA’s size-based criteria is trying to drive the type of livestock agriculture that succeeds in Minnesota. It also sends a negative message to farmers who aren’t undertaking significant expansions: you don’t count in the state’s ag economy.

Frankly, a grants criteria that sees livestock production in such black and white terms—more animals are “outstanding,” fewer are “unsatisfactory”—is steeped in some pretty archaic ideas about profitability and efficiency. Rural economic development studies (and real-world experience) are increasingly showing that more livestock farmers are the key. Simply raising more hogs and cattle on a few concentrated operations may make for some nice gross-number statistics when we compare ourselves to factory farm hotbeds like North Carolina, California and Texas, but they do little to help Main Street economies. More farm families on the land mean more shoppers, as well as more thriving schools and churches.

Such a bias towards increasing livestock numbers puts at a disadvantage any farmer using strategies other than expansion to improve an operation. Many farmers who graze livestock, for example, work to increase profitability by lowering inputs and increasing efficiency, not by expanding. Instead of playing the gross numbers game, they focus on profitability per animal.

Farmers throughout the Midwest are showing that concentrating on profitability, rather than massive production at all costs, is a viable way to make a good living while protecting the environment. University economic studies of, for example, dairy grazing operations, are starting to back up what these farmers have already proven.

The MDA’s evaluation profile is biased in other ways. For instance, the more employees an operation adds, the more points it scores on the MDA’s evaluation profile. Again, an operation that intends to add six or more employees receives five points and an “outstanding” rating. This also puts small- and medium-sized farmers at a disadvantage. There are other ways of increasing efficiencies and profitability without hiring more employees, but the MDA’s evaluation profile does not seem to recognize that.

Five points (again, an “outstanding” rating) are awarded by the MDA for proposed projects that will produce “substantial positive environmental impact.” That’s sounds great. But what about producers who are already farming in ways that enhance and protect the environment? Shouldn’t they receive an outstanding rating for improvements necessary to maintain that excellence?

At best, this aspect of the evaluation criteria suffers from muddled wording. Read one way, it would seem that a large-scale dairy operation with a chronically leaky manure lagoon would rate quite high if it uses the money to fix that leak. There’s no doubt an immediate “substantial positive environmental impact” would be seen in that case.

But if a farmer who is using managed rotational grazing to produce milk—a system that does not require an inherently dangerous large-scale manure lagoon, by the way—applies for money to maintain its fencing system, there may not be a significant environmental impact seen.

Yet that grass farmer would be using the grant to maintain a level of environmental sustainability that was there all along. How will the MDA’s criteria as they are written now treat that farmer? I’m guessing not very well. In this case, doing the right thing is not considered “outstanding.”

The bottom line is, according to the MDA’s evaluation profile, operations which expand dramatically are more likely to receive help through the Livestock Investment Grants program. These proposals will likely be the largest grant requests, thus quickly draining the program’s budget. This makes second class citizens of family farmers using innovative, low cost, low-input systems.

LSP and other groups have worked hard to make sure any livestock improvement grant program launched in this state would not discriminate against small- and moderate-sized family farms, including those that are using sustainable and organic systems. That is why LSP pushed for language in the bill that includes the low minimum investment amount of $4,000. It was a tough battle: one proposal before the Legislature would have required farmers to spend $40,000 before they could qualify for the program. Such a high qualification level would have quickly drained the program’s $1 million budget, and would have made it truly biased towards large operations using expensive technologies right out of the gate.

As farmer and dairy scientist testimony made clear to legislators during the session, a family-sized livestock operation can do a lot with $4,000—renovate several acres of pasture or upgrade some fencing, for example. Such projects may not bring the Governor and Commissioner of Ag out to your farm for a ribbon-cutting ceremony, but they can have impacts where it counts: in the bank account, and eventually, on Main Street in the form of more farm families shopping.

The potential for this grants program to serve farmers of all types makes what the MDA has done with the criteria rankings all the more frustrating. So what’s to be done?

Contact the lawmakers who represent you in Saint Paul and let them know that what the MDA has done to the Livestock Investment Grants program is not a good use of tax money. If you are a livestock farmer who is interested in improving your operation, apply for a grant through the program. And then report your experience with the application process to LSP. It is important to track how this grants program is being implemented in the field and whether it is truly benefiting all types of livestock operations.

The grants deadline is Sept. 15, 2008. Any Minnesota livestock producer can apply for money to offset the costs of improving a livestock operation. Producers will be reimbursed 10 percent of the cost of a project, with a minimum expense of $4,000 and a maximum expense of $500,000.

Qualifying projects include:

• The acquisition, construction or improvement of buildings
or facilities for the production of livestock or livestock products.
• The acquisition of equipment for livestock housing, confinement, feeding and waste management.
• The development of pasture for use by livestock including, but not limited to, the acquisition, development or improvement of:
- Lanes used by livestock that connect pasture to a central location.
- Watering systems for livestock on pasture, including water l lines and booster pump well installations.
- Livestock stream crossing stabilization.
- Fences.

Further Details regarding the Livestock Investment Grants Program can be found at the MDA’s website.

After you apply for the grant, you can report your experience with the process by e-mailing LSP’s Bobby King at bking@landstewardshipproject.org, or calling 612-722-6377. You can also contact LSP’s Paul Sobocinski at 507-342-2323 or sobopaul@redred.com.

Perhaps the toughest lesson for the average concerned citizen to learn is the importance of keeping tabs on the dirty details of legislation long after the final gavel has fallen at the Capitol. It’s easy to forget that these laws are not implemented by magic. Ultimately the success of any tax-funded initiative relies on an agency dotting the i’s and cross the t’s on a daily basis. Monitoring the “routine” implementation of the Livestock Investment Grants Program could play a key role in making this initiative a good use of tax money.

On June 13th I traveled in a minivan for four and a half hours through the rolling hills of northern Minnesota. The destination? The White Earth Pow Wow in White Earth, MN. The goal of the MEP field team? Register 40 voters for the upcoming election.

Having never been to a pow wow, or even to a reservation, I felt a little bit like a fish out of water. The pow wow was a mix of family reunion and county fair. People walked from vendor to vendor munching on frybread and occasionally greeting one another with hugs or shouts. Many of the passersby wore traditional regalia in preparation for the Grand Entry, from full-on headdresses adorned with eagle feathers to bright dresses covered in tinkling, engraved silver cow-bells. Throughout the pow wow, an announcer’s authoritative voice was an overlay to the throbbing pulse produced by the drummers.

Amidst this atmosphere, MEP set to work registering voters.

We confronted some challenges that are unique to the Native community. In addition to the usual registration reticence, many Native Americans abstain from voting because they don’t want to participate in what they see as an illegitimate U.S. government. Particularly for some of the elders, the memories of past crimes against their culture remain too fresh, too painful. It took me a while to accept that it was their right not to vote just as it was their right to vote. All I could do was offer them a card–I couldn’t presume I knew what was best for them.

Despite the occasional negative response, the many positive encounters I had left me feeling that the Native American community is willing to engage in this election to bring about much-needed change. There was the eighteen year old who persuaded three of her hesitant friends to register, the aunt who took cards to give to her nephews (saying, “I’ll drag them to the polls if I have to”), the 77 year old man who filled out a registration form for the first time in his life.

We reached our goal of registered voters for the event, but a number can’t sum up the experience of being at the White Earth Pow Wow. I can still smell the wood smoke, hear the haunting tunes of the drummers, and taste the cinnamon frybread. I was lucky to have been there. If you ever have the chance, I encourage you to engage with the Native American community by experiencing a pow wow.

Metro area residents who use transit on a regular basis can see increased ridership with their own eyes. More people frequent the bus stops, bodies pack the buses during rush hour, and the crowds sometimes force people to stand. When I was one of a dozen people standing on the bus ride home last week, I asked my co-worker and fellow transit rider what happened. She put it well, saying, “Four dollar gas happened.”

This, of course, is a trend throughout the nation. The American Public Transportation Association shows that national transit ridership is up 3 percent, and light-rail use is up 10 percent according to USA Today. The Twin Cities’ Metropolitan Council says that ridership is the highest it has been in 25 years.

Great for air quality. Great for traffic flow. Not so great for transit fares.

With increased ridership, the Met Council is proposing increased fares. If approved, that would mean 25 cents more per ride and extended rush hour fares. This would go into effect October 1, but fares would be susceptible to further increases in 2009 according to Minnesota Public Radio.

Transit for Livable Communities has been particularly vocal about the fare increases and suggests the Met Council tap into the reserve funds to hold off on the increases. The public hearings are over but public comments are welcome until July 25. To weigh in on the situation, e-mail the council’s Regional Data Center at data.center@metc.state.mn.us or call in at 651-602-1464.

However, even with fare increases, transit is still a cheaper and cleaner option than driving a car. To check out the number crunching, view the WCCO story “Doing the Math on Rate Hike for Metro Transit.”

In its seemingly endless search for new sources of energy, the world is now seriously considering the potential of utilizing plants and plant products. So far, that interest has manifested itself almost exclusively in the form of ethanol—mostly from distilling corn kernels into a fuel additive for gasoline. But as concerns over the environmental and food supply impacts of raising so much corn for fuel have emerged, energy experts, environmentalists and rural communities have increasingly looked at actual plant parts as sources of energy. In the Upper Midwest, some of that interest has centered on the plants found in prairie lands.

The viability of tapping into prairies as an energy source received a significant boost in 2006 from a University of Minnesota study published in the journal Science. The 10-year study found that mixes of 16 native prairie plant species yielded on average 238 percent more biomass than land planted to a single species. An added bonus was that the greater diversity increased carbon sequestration, provided more stable annual yields and significantly reduced the need for pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers such as nitrogen, which can be supplied to the prairie via legume species. The study stopped at 16 species and research is being done to see if even more diversity can be as productive.

Studies like this are good news for fans of a system that prior to European settlement formed the largest ecosystem in North America—it stretched from Canada to Mexico and from the Rockies to Indiana. At one time a third of Minnesota and 80 percent of Iowa was covered by prairie.

Today, well less than 1 percent of those native prairies have escaped the plow and bulldozer. We’ve also lost the ecological services that came with the deep-rooted grasses, forbs and legumes found in prairies, and the results have been predictable: increased erosion, less wildlife, more released carbon and more polluted water.

Prairie power
Prairie hay can be used to generate energy in many ways: burned to generate electricity, burned or gasified for heat or gasified and chemically combined to make ethanol. There is also a lot of buzz over the possibility of breaking down the cellulose in plants and fermenting the resulting sugars into ethanol. Cellulose is the most abundant naturally occurring organic molecule on the planet; harnessing it as a source of commercially viable energy would be nothing short of revolutionary.

Getting energy from legumes, forbs and grasses on a regular basis could provide an economic incentive to restore millions of acres of prairie to the landscape. But major questions remain as to how viable it will be to restore, raise and harvest millions of acres of prairie plants for energy. And how can it be done without making prairies just another industrialized source of commodities? After all, energy generation, like any industrial process, has mostly relied on a narrowly focused drive to maximize production from a single resource. Healthy prairie systems, on the other hand, rely on diversity.

So the question remains: can a complex polyculture serve the needs of a system based on a simplified monoculture? Can we meld the two, or will yet again single-minded monoculture overwhelm multifunctional diversity?

First, the seed
Firms like Prairie Restorations have proven that thriving perennial grassland systems can be returned to the landscape. But Bowen and other prairie experts caution that to ratchet up prairie production to meet the needs of even one major power plant won’t happen overnight, and could take as long as a decade.

“To get to the point were we are producing electricity for the grid just in Minnesota, it is probably going to take a couple of million acres, some projections go up to five million acres,” says Bowen. “Right now, I would guess the industry produces enough seed to plant 50,000 acres in Minnesota.”

Daryl Smith, Director of the Tallgrass Prairie Center in Iowa, estimates it would take 100,000 acres of prairie just to generate electricity for Cedar Falls, Iowa, a city of around 37,000. Less than 28,000 acres of prairie grow in the entire state of Iowa today.

“There’s been a lot of questions about if biomass kicks in will there be enough seed available? In particular, local seed,” Bowen says.

Seed corn, which has been domesticated to within an inch of its life, can be produced in South America during winters in the Northern Hemisphere. But if native prairies are to remain native prairies, it’s important that prairie plant seed match the local ecology. For instance, taking big bluestem grass that originated in Missouri and planting it in Minnesota may result in a prairie plot that’s not as cold hardy.

There are also concerns that non-local prairie seed will produce a different ecosystem, and simply not be the prairie nature intended. Bowen and Smith say it’s important to match seed to the local ecotype, but that the definition of what constitutes “local” may have to be loosened a bit if we are to increase prairie plantings significantly. One definition of what is “local seed” is something that originated within a 50-mile radius.

“This creates a huge challenge,” says Bowen. “The smaller that circle gets, the more I say wait a minute, that’s not practical. I’ve expanded that circle to a couple hundred miles when I obtain seed for plantings.”

“I don’t think you want to mix Utah seed with Iowa seed or Minnesota seed,” Smith adds. “But purists are sometimes too narrowly focused. I think it’s more important to match habitat type than geographic type.”

Some compromises on how diverse restored prairies for biomass production are may be needed as well. The original native prairies that have never been plowed count the different species of grasses, legumes and forbs in the hundreds. Today, a more affordable restoration project consists of between a dozen and 20 species.

“We may need to accept a less than perfect prairie if we’re going to get the growth we need for biomass,” says Jim Falk, a farmer and seed dealer in western Minnesota. “Why wouldn’t 15 species work as a start? If they get into a big argument about this, we will get nowhere.”

One concern is that if some sort of compromise is not reached over issues such as local seed and diversity of prairies, the biomass industry will bypass diverse prairies and source their material from monocultures of say, switchgrass. A study out of Nebraska created a stir within the agriculture community earlier this year when it reported that switchgrass monocultures managed for high yield (fertilizer applications, for example) produced 93 percent more biomass than diverse prairies receiving low inputs. A monoculture of high-yielding switchgrass may provide year-round cover to soil formerly left bare by row crops, but it will lack many of the other ecological services native prairies produce.

A waiting game
Even if the definition of “local seed” is expanded and less than perfect prairies are acceptable, a lot of seed must be produced and many acres planted and nurtured before these ecosystems can begin feeding the biomass industry.

Prairie seed propagation can be a painstaking process. First, it must be collected from remnant native prairies—some no larger than a suburban backyard. Then each species must be raised as a monoculture in carefully managed plots. Once the cultivated plants produce seed, they can be made part of prairie mixes and planted. Establishing a prairie doesn’t simply consist of tossing seed on bare ground. Whatever is growing on the land must be killed, generally with herbicides. If the land was planted to row crops such as corn, it’s actually easier because of the absence of perennial weeds. If it’s former pastureland or another perennial system, it can be tougher. Once the prairie seed is planted, usually with a no-till drill, weeds must be mowed. By the third year, a viable prairie can be established.

By the time prairies are established from the seedstock, it could be another three to seven years before there’s enough prairie biomass available to supply several processing plants.

“You’re talking about a 10-year window before you get anything,” says Bowen.

That’s a huge investment in time and resources for an endeavor that may or may not have a processing/market system in place by the time the product is ready. Falk, who has 100 acres of native prairie that’s never been plowed on his own farm, says seed dealers like himself would “jump on board” to supply a prairie plant biomass industry. But before taking such steps, the seed industry needs an assurance that some sort of viable market will be there. “If that commitment isn’t there, it’s going to be awful tough to take that gamble,” says Falk.

It will also be a fair roll of the dice on the part of the farmers who would establish prairies on former crop acres. For one thing, it can cost anywhere from $300 to $400 per acre to get prairie established on old crop ground, depending on how diverse the seed mix is. The price can be as high as $600 if it’s in old pasture. Per-acre prices can range past the $1,000 mark for very diverse mixes.

Getting little or no economic return from land for three years while prairie plants get established is next to impossible for most farmers to pull off. And when one considers that same land could be growing corn or soybeans, which are pulling down record prices these days, the draw of prairie hay gets even weaker.

But Bowen points out that once that prairie is established, it doesn’t have to be re-planted each spring, and if managed properly, next to no inputs such as fertilizer are required.

“Getting a prairie established is expensive, but then you’re done. Once it’s planted, it’s planted,” he says.

Also, some shortcuts have been learned over the years in terms of getting prairies established. “It’s not quite as much of an art as it once was,” says Smith. “One thing we’ve learned is to mow the weeds that first year down to four or five inches so the sun-hungry prairie plants can get a good start. It used to be the recommendation was to mow at 10 inches, and weeds would shade out the prairie plants.”

Bowen says one way to get some economic value off of land while transitioning it to prairie is to sow prairie seed and plant corn over it as a cover crop. The corn can be harvested in the fall and by next spring the prairie has gotten off to a good start.

Hauling hay
Another issue farmers have to deal with is harvesting and getting that product to the processing plant. As anyone who has made hay can attest to, the bulky nature of forage makes it a very inefficient product to handle. One estimate is that in Minnesota, it doesn’t make economic sense to haul biomass more than 50 miles from field to processing plant.

Several biomass processing plants have been proposed in the Midwest, and some are even creating energy from plant material on an experimental basis. But the bottom line is corn can be sold at the local elevator on any given day; prairie hay cannot. And if and when biomass processing plants get established, it will take some time before they are as ubiquitous and handy as the elevator in town.

“With bioenergy you need large volumes of hay and so we have all the problems associated with transporting hay,” says Jason Hill, a research associate in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Applied Economics. Hill has studied the economics of using diverse prairie ecosystems as sources of biofuels.

Eric Woodford, who operates a custom baling business in Minnesota’s Redwood and Renville counties, has worked on biomass feasibility projects in recent years. He says utilizing plant material for energy could be a huge market for custom balers such as himself. But it has to be a localized market in order for it to work, especially with today’s rising fuel costs.

“The collection costs can be quite steep,” he says. “Usually the limiting factor is how much feedstock can be collected in a certain radius. With fuel prices going up, it could become not feasible.”

Researchers have studied more efficient ways of transporting forage to processing plants. It turns out large rectangular bales, as opposed to round bales, increase transportation efficiencies significantly. Even better, says Hill, is increasing the density of the material through cubing or pelleting. Portable pellet mills are on the market today and Hill says they could be transported from farm-to-farm to process the prairie hay, much like threshing machines did a century ago. There is even talk of using a process called pyrolysis to heat the biomass in a portable microwave-type apparatus, creating a liquid substance that would be easier to handle. Farmers in a community could pool resources and buy or lease such equipment.

“There is almost inherently a need for cooperative work in this area,” says Hill.

How much cutting can it take?
One other key issue to address is how often prairie lands can be harvested for biomass without being depleted. Sure, bison harvested prairie plants for centuries. But they also returned nutrients to the soil via their manure, and in some cases didn’t come back to the same spot to graze for a couple of years.

If an entire prairie plot is cut every year, there’s the possibility that nutrients will be so depleted that fertilizer will need to be added to the land. That adds to the expense the farmer has already taken on establishing the prairie, and negates one of the environmental pluses of such a system: fewer chemicals.

“In our particular instance, I do not think it would work,” says Brad Hodgson, who, along with his wife Leslea, raises beef cattle on grass in southeast Minnesota. The Hodgsons attended two focus groups last year on prairie plant-based biofuels. “If you take all that matter off and burn it, you’re losing all that nutrient content and you become reliant on inputs again. You’re right back in the situation of mining off minerals again.”

Prairie experts concede they’re not sure what will happen if prairies are harvested every year. Another concern is harvest timing: is it better to harvest in the fall, or wait until the following April when wildlife no longer need the prairie plants for winter shelter and feed?

The Tallgrass Prairie Center’s Smith says harvest frequency and timing are two of the areas his researchers are examining in a project launched this spring. The Center planted 100 acres of prairie on former corn ground and is hoping to replicate as closely as possible what a real farm would face when undertaking such an enterprise, all the way to transporting it to a stoker furnace in Cedar Falls, 20 miles away.

One area Smith and his colleagues are investigating is how to get multiple uses out of prairie plots, something farmers have shown a lot of interest in. He says one strategy could be to harvest a prairie plot for biomass one year, and graze it the next, or harvest/graze part of the plot each year in a rotational pattern (wildlife experts recommend cutting/grazing in alternating blocks, rather than strips to provide more safe habitat for animals). Established prairies could also produce other sources of income through fee hunting or carbon credits.

Egging it on
In the end, prairie-based biofuel production faces the ultimate “chicken or the egg” quandary. Economists have another term for it: “the coordination problem.”

Getting a new industry started from scratch won’t be solved by simply building a bunch of processing plants, or, for that matter, establishing millions of acres of prairie. A bioenergy company doesn’t want to take the risk of building a biomass plant without the assurance of a consistent supply. And in turn, seed producers, farmers and even custom balers and haulers can’t afford to invest in this new venture without a consistent market. Corn ethanol didn’t have a coordination problem to this extent—corn was already being raised for livestock and other uses when ethanol came along. The ethanol industry simply soaked up the excess corn at first, and then later, when farmers saw there was money to be made raising extra product, provided the incentive for more to be raised.

“We have all these systems that need to shift and they need to shift together,” says Nick Jordan, a University of Minnesota crop/weed ecologist who is researching perennial plants and biofuels.

That’s why if society decides an energy system based on perennial polycultures is worth getting off the ground, it needs to prime the pump in a coordinated fashion.

In Minnesota such an opportunity was missed during the last Legislative session, when lawmakers failed to pass funding for an initiative called Reinvest in Minnesota (RIM)-Clean Energy. This program would help farmers establish diverse native prairies for biomass production. RIM-Clean Energy would pay farmers a percentage of the market rate for biomass during the contract period. Just as importantly, it would make payments to farmers in areas where biomass energy facilities are already being proposed. Payments would also be targeted at watersheds where getting more perennial plants on the land would provide the most environmental bang for the buck. This is about as close to “coordination” as you’re going to get.

On the bright side, RIM-Clean Energy still exists as a program, and could get off the ground in the future if the Legislature and Governor decide to fund it.

But for now, the people in power are continuing to place their bets on row crop-based bioenergy. While snubbing RIM-Clean Energy in 2008, the folks at the Capitol mandated that biofuels included in diesel fuel increase from 2 percent to 20 percent by 2015. Soybeans, which by the way are an annual row crop that can be highly erosive and dependent upon chemicals, are the primary source of biodiesel.

“The Legislature really missed a key opportunity to send a signal to the market and the public in general that energy production based on perennial systems is important,” says Falk, the seed dealer. “Given how long it takes just to propagate prairie seed, we can’t afford to miss many more opportunities like this.”

As a native and lifelong resident of New England, my summer with Fresh Energy marks my first foray into the Midwest. Thus, you can imagine the novelty of my experience, and to some extent, culture shock, as I write today in Bismarck, North Dakota.

I’m here for the Prairie Climate Stewardship Conference, and in only a few hours this morning, have already been impressed by the earnestness of those who are gathered to discuss some very important issues.

One observation that I think is relevant is that here in North Dakota, even in one of the largest cities in the state, they do not appear to have conquered nature in the same way that I have seen in other parts of the country. True, there are certainly big box stores and asphalt expanses, but developments seem to be interspersed with nature, as opposed to the other way around.

The second thing was noted by one North Dakota state senator, Rich Wardner. He described one legislative district that spanned a rather large area, and acknowledged that while those from other areas of the country may think there’s nothing there (I stare at the floor), every rancher in that district knows one another.

“They know there’s something there,” he added. “There’s a community.”

My intention is not to paint too rosy a picture or to indulge my own idealism too much. These first few hours of the conference have also exposed some areas of contention—what role coal will have in a clean energy future and how to manage the environmental impacts of renewable energy, to name a few.

Nevertheless, after time I have spent reading various blogs, where it seems people give voice to all manners of extreme and occasionally counter-productive opinions, it is encouraging to be in a group where there is a clear consensus that something must be done. And not only is there agreement that we must take action, but multiple speakers have identified behavioral limitations as being more of an impediment right now than technological or economic ones.

Thus, the community emphasized by the North Dakota legislator is, in my view, the single most productive way to approach energy policy specifically, but all public policy more broadly.

We’re all in this together.

First negotiated by the region’s governors and premiers, the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact (the Compact) requires ratification by all participating states and provinces before it can be put into effect. Minnesota led states by ratifying the compact in February of 2007. The agreement will protect our water resources by combining measures that restrict exportation of water from the basin and improve water conservation.

The Compact first arose in protest to Asia’s attempt to export Great Lakes water more than a decade ago. Attention has shifted as drought-stricken portions of the United States are increasingly looking toward the water-rich Great Lakes. The importance of the Compact is further underscored as Global Warming experts predict worsening summer droughts.

“Even though work on the Compact started before Global Warming was on people’s radar, the passage is really timely. Protecting the water in the Great Lakes was already an important part of preserving and restoring the Great Lakes. With Global Warming entering the picture the threat increases significantly,” says Rosie Loeffler-Kemp, one of Clean Water Action’s lead staff on Great Lakes issues.

By the Compact’s guidelines, any major water diversion would have to receive approval by all the states, preventing states from competing with one another to sell the most water in a “race to the bottom”— literally. Once Michigan and Pennsylvania are on-board we look to Congress to place the final stamp on this important regional agreement to protect our Great Lakes.

Emily Rosenberg

Program Intern, Clean Water Action

But before we all turn our full attention to congressional ratification of the Great Lakes Compact, we should check in on the oil drilling debate.

“Come on, Erin - oil drilling? That fight is about offshore ocean drilling and ANWR, not our beloved Lake Superior,” you remind me.

Or is it? Check out Tom Elko’s interesting post to The Minnesota Independent on June 30 to read what some of our elected officials are saying about the idea.

What Ken Meter couldn’t figure out was why most rural communities were so full of contradictions. Why are farm towns drying up even as agriculture becomes increasingly productive and “efficient?” And why is the quality of food available in communities surrounded by some of the richest soil (and best farmers) in the world so poor? Was there a connection?

Several years ago he began digging into arcane government data on agricultural productivity, employment trends, energy costs, poverty rates and levels of malnutrition. What Meter found was that rural communities that were the most heavily invested in the corn-bean-feedlot machine system of importing inputs and exporting raw farm commodities were the worst off economically, socially and environmentally.

It turns out that when virtually all of those commodities are exported out of the area, they take wealth with them. That wealth consists of the economic, dollars-and-sense kind. But it also consists of the wealth that comes with schools, churches and other institutions, as well as rich soil and clean water. The result is shuttered Main Streets, eroded farm fields and a brain drain of young rural residents.

Meter’s “Finding Food in Farm Country” analyses, as he calls them, also show in stark terms the ultimate irony: some of the most fertile farm regions have very poor access to good food. Just walk into a small-town convenience store during harvest season to get a taste of how the food system is working. As raw commodities like corn and soybeans boom out of town via truck or train, highly-processed products are brought in to feed the locals, often from thousands of miles away.

Meter has done these analyses for communities all across the country, and he’s just put his fourth Minnesota region through the number-cruncher. In all, two-thirds of the state’s farm economy has been studied by the Crossroads Resource Center. The detailed results vary from region-to-region, of course, but the overall trends are the same: we’re mining our rural communities in an unsustainable way.

Here are a few tidbits:

• Farmers earned less producing crops in 2002 than they did in 1969, despite doubling their productivity.
• In west central Minnesota, which raises 23 percent of the state’s corn and 22 percent of its soybeans, $1 billion is being sucked out of the region annually because farmers are exporting raw commodities raised with imported inputs and consumers are eating food brought in from outside the area. As in many rural areas, farmers and local consumers are like ships passing in the night.
• In Woodbury County, Iowa, 1,148 farm families produced $154 million worth of food annually between 1998 and 2003. But they spent $178 million to raise it, losing an average of $24 million in production costs per year. Meanwhile, the region’s consumers—around 104,000—spent $203 million annually buying food during that same period. Around $150 million of that was spent on food from outside the region.

The good news is that in recent years Meter’s research has been a wake-up call for many local communities. Towns, cities and counties from throughout the U.S. have invited him to conduct economic research and then present the findings to local business leaders, government officials and the general citizenry. After getting over the initial shock of how much wealth is taking a one-way trip out of town, communities are sometimes galvanized into trying to reverse the trends Meter reports on.

When giving presentations, Meter often talks about how sustainable and organic farming systems can help keep wealth in a community, particularly if the food produced under such systems is processed, marketed and consumed locally. This is an important point: the people who live in these rural areas—farmers and non-farmers alike—eat food. Why not spend that food dollar locally? In other words, part of the solution for what’s ailing agriculture lies right in agriculture’s backyard: homegrown food for homegrown customers. And we can expand that backyard on a regional basis—why should Twin Cities residents get their milk from Texas and their August tomatoes from California? Do all those food miles somehow add flavor to the vittles?

A few years ago Meter was asked to do an analysis in northwest Iowa’s Woodbury County. After presenting his findings, officials there put in place numerous policies that utilize local, sustainably-produced food as a key economic development tool in the region. These policies have become a national model for other communities that are trying to keep wealth from racing down the road. Meter is quick to point out that his research is not the only reason communities like Woodbury County have taken action, but there’s no doubt his PowerPoints can serve as a useful bit of shock therapy.

Meter says increasingly rural economic development officials, frustrated by their lack of effectiveness through traditional smokestack-chasing initiatives, are showing up at his presentations, often with county supervisors, business leaders and farmers in tow.

Not that his numbers are always accepted without question: some mainstream farm commodity groups refuse to believe that all that sound and fury in the fields is producing so little long-term financial stability in the community. It’s understandable: we’ve been raised to believe that greater gross productivity automatically results in greater net gain. But skeptics have checked out Meter’s numbers and his analysis of those numbers, and found to their chagrin that indeed his conclusions are correct.

Remember, it’s not the gross, it’s the net. If it costs you more to produce something than you can sell it for, it doesn’t matter how much of that something you produce—it’s still not a profit. In fact, greater productivity may just speed the way to the poor house.

Of course, a lot more money has been moving through farming communities in recent months as commodity prices reach record levels. But again, Meter asks, how much of the wealth generated by this boom is sticking around in the long term? There are indications that skyrocketing input prices—tractor fuel and petroleum-based fertilizer, for example—are making it quite expensive to raise that $7 corn.

We’ve seen boom and bust cycles before in farm country (remember the fencerow-to-fencerow grain binge of the 1970s?), and the short-term speculation they generate is pretty exciting. The New York Times reported last month that big Wall Street firms are looking to buy farmland and consolidate farms into even fewer, larger operations. We all know what happens when the Big Boys decide to “invest” in real estate on a large scale in response to short-term spikes in the commodity markets.

Again, a lot of fast and furious financial transactions will be generated by all this speculatory action. But is it sustainable in the long term? Will it keep Main Street businesses open decades down the road? Will it increase this nation’s food security? Will it ensure the protection of our soil and make our rural communities places where young people want to make their futures?

It will be interesting to see how today’s $7 corn and the volatile ethanol market look once they pass through the Ken Meter data grinder. Stay tuned…

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes…and environmental groups too, it seems! My best, non-scientific estimation is that Minnesota has over 200 groups that are in some way doing their part to fight for the environment. Whether it is clean water issues, faith responsibility, energy, gardening, wildlife, or any of the other myriad groups involved in environmental protection, we in Minnesota have perfected the art of organizing for the environment.

So if I suggested adding one more group to the list some might say enough is enough. But what if I told you that this organization wasn’t really an organization at all—that the goal of this group isn’t to replicate efforts everyone else is already working on, but to draw them all together, organize, and speak with one unified, influential voice for policies that protect Minnesota’s climate and environment. Sound good? Well, let me introduce you to 1Sky Minnesota.

1Sky is building a national movement at the scale of the climate challenge by communicating a pro-active vision, and advocating a clear, simple set of goals and policy initiatives: create green jobs, institute science-based reductions in global warming pollution levels, and establish a moratorium on new coal plants.

Fresh Energy is partnering with 1Sky in Minnesota to bring together a diverse range of individuals and organizations in a collaborative effort to get our leaders to take action on these global warming solutions. With the help of many leaders and groups, 1Sky has already gained the support of elected officials, student and business groups, faith-based institutions, as well as organizations focused on health, civil society, and the environment–not to mention a coalition of tens of thousands of individual citizens.

We would love to have your organization add its voice to our coalition. Together, we can convince our leaders to chart a new direction—away from the worst consequences of global warming and toward a new era of economic prosperity! If you or your organization would like to get involved or volunteer drop Kate Ellis at Fresh Energy a line: 651-294-7143 or ellis@fresh-energy.org. Here’s to fighting together to protect our environment!

Is your favorite lake polluted?
KARE 11 Sunrise, June 26, 2008