Food and Sustainable Agriculture
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Biofuels & the Factory Field Mentality
The sports section of the Sunday Star Tribune included a short article with some big ramifications when it comes to creating a sustainable landscape while developing real energy security. It turns out…
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Mark Trail’s Beaver Tales
As any avid consumer of the Star Tribune‘s comics page knows, a certain pesky, but lovable, woodland creature called “Lucky the Beaver” is driving Mark Trail to distraction these days. Since early…
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Hormone Replacement Therapy
“Hormones Are For Teenagers” states a rustic-looking billboard for Minnesota-based Gold’n Plump. Clever, huh? It’s a humorous way of getting across the message that no added hormones are used to raise Gold’n…
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I Eat & I Vote
On Dec. 12, more than 100 Twin Citians gathered in the basement of the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in South Minneapolis to discuss federal farm policy reform at a meeting organized by…
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A Steady Diet of De-Skilled Food
Now that Eric Schlosser’s classic mealtime muckraking book, Fast Food Nation, has been Hollywoodized, Americans are again talking about where those McNuggets and fries come from and how they arrive in our…
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Greenhouse Gases & Gully-Washers
It’s been a dry fall in Minnesota, and that means farmers have had plenty of opportunities to till up the soil after harvest. While driving around in farm country the day before…
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Factory Farming’s Secret Subsidy
Promoters of large-scale factory livestock farming like to argue that their model of agriculture is a natural progression—an example of free market efficiency succeeding. What they don’t want the public to know…
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Counting Calories in Agriculture
A common argument in favor of large-scale industrialized agriculture is that it is just plain more efficient, and thus deserves to succeed. But measured by the amount of energy it takes to…
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Selling Conservation in Farm Country
It’s November, and that means Minnesota’s various hunting seasons are in full cry. As hunters take to the fields, forests and sloughs, they can’t help but notice how much we rely on…
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How CSP can Reward Conservation Farming
The Conservation Security Program is one of the most innovative agricultural conservation programs to ever emerge out of our nation’s capital. Called CSP for short, this initiative rewards farmers for utilizing production…