While driving in southern Minnesota this week, I gazed upon acre-after-acre of black fields—a sign that despite a wet fall, a lot of intense tillage took place before the snow… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Food and Sustainable Agriculture
A Peek Behind the Curtain
It’s refreshing when people in power pull the curtain aside, drop the feel-good rhetoric momentarily and offer a glimpse at what they are really thinking. It’s also a little frightening…. Read more »
Environmental Review’s Latest Threat
It’s as predictable as the spring thaw. The Minnesota Legislature is yet again trying to weaken environmental review of large developments such as factory farms. This time around, the excuse… Read more »
What Lies Beneath Doesn’t Lie
Spring flood predictions are in the air, and you can bet that within the next several weeks a whole lot of that wayward water will be taking Grade A Midwestern… Read more »
Farm-to-School: The Next Big Thing?
At the state meeting of the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota last Saturday, farmer Greg Reynolds opened his presentation on selling food to the Hopkins School District with a simple… Read more »
Let the CSA Season Begin
Longer days, shrinking snow drifts, missing motorists emerging from potholes—signs that spring is indeed nigh. Another hint that the growing season will actually make an appearance this year is that… Read more »
The Economics of the Edible
This week’s Star Tribune article about how the USDA’s school lunch program is no bargain here in Minnesota despite its reliance on highly-subsidized commodities reminded me of a conversation I… Read more »
Ruling the Table with Pollan (& a little Wilde)
What has the world come to when one of our leading food and farming writers is moved to pen a book with the subtitle, “An eater’s manual”? That was my… Read more »
Thief River’s Yuck Mountain
Now that the MPCA has finally gotten around to taking steps to shut down that horrific health hazard that its owner, Excel, chooses to call a dairy farm, neighbors are… Read more »
A Long, Cool Summer
The end of January may not be the best time to whine about the unusually cool summers we’ve been experiencing in these parts (“Seventy degrees in August? I’m freezing!”). But… Read more »