Food and Sustainable Agriculture

With a winter like this, one begins to wonder if anything green will emerge come April and May. Of course, on farms and in gardens, we force the issue by planting seeds…

Minnesota Agri News has a new reporter cranking out copy. He loves writing about how great it is to spend public funds helping CAFOs put in pits full of liquid poop. He’s…

Organic and sustainable farming systems are a luxury only well-fed countries like the U.S. can afford, right? Actually, recent United Nations research shows that such natural systems may be the only hope…

Monday’s Star Tribune business feature on LSP’s Farm Beginnings program quoted Chris Blanchard, a southeast Minnesota farmer who regularly speaks to FB classes. Blanchard’s presentations on long-term business planning exemplify Farm Beginnings’…

All the speculating in farm country is over: President-elect Barack Obama has made official his nomination of Tom Vilsack as the next Secretary of Agriculture. LSP’s Policy Program Friday released an official…

How has atrazine, a weed killer so controversial that it can’t be used in the European Union and is verboten on 1.2 million acres of Wisconsin farmland, escaped stringent regulation in most…

With government cost-cutting all the rage, here’s four important letters D.C. decision- makers should keep in mind: EQIP. It stands for “Environmental Quality Incentives Program.” A benign sounding name, but as a…

As this blog has made clear in the past, the 2008 Farm Bill is far from perfect. But buried in the status-quo quagmire are a few gems like the newly revamped Conservation…

Farmer Mike Gilles has a succinct way of describing what a mess the 2008 Minnesota Legislature made of the popular Green Acres program: “Pretty much it’s a slap in the face to…