Farm Beginnings
-
Grazing, Cover Crops, Climate Change & Resilience
The best farming system in the world means little if it isn’t resilient enough to bounce back from all the nastiness nature can toss its way. That’s become painfully clear in recent…
-
Making Diversity on the Farm Pay its Own Way
Long term sustainability of our soil requires farming systems that can not only keep soil in place, but also help it build its own resiliency. Such systems can’t just work on paper—they…
-
Interested in farming? Consider Morris Farm Beginnings
By the time he was 20, Nolan Lenzen had already completed a dairy management course at a local college and launched a farming career in partnership with his father and grandfather. They…
-
Loving the Land Enough to Let it Go
While recording a recent LSP podcast interview with southwest Minnesota farmer Carmen Fernholz, I was reminded of how important it is that farmers identify closely with the land they’re producing a livelihood…
-
Eating Our Own Farm Financial Cooking
One winter evening in 1999 I was sitting in on a Farm Beginnings class being held in the southeast Minnesota community of Plainview when a local banker stood up and made a…
-
Riding the Storm Out in Dairyland
A few years ago, Brad and Shelley Schrandt faced a dilemma: should they keep their dairy herd at around 20 cows for a few more years while working off the farm, or…
-
Taking the Beginning Farmer Message to D.C.
By Anna Cioffi, LSP Policy Organizer As you read this, central Minnesota farmer and LSP member Nolan Lenzen is in Washington, D.C., carrying a simple, but critical, message: agriculture is a growing…
-
Links in the Beginning Farmer Chain
If sweat equity is a key ingredient in launching a farming enterprise, then Jim and Alan Ideker have enough venture capital to fire-up half-a-dozen enterprises.
-
Sustainable Farming’s Most Critical Conversation
What is the most critical discussion that needs to take place to ensure a sustainable food and farming system long into the future? Is it one on policy, farming techniques, green technology,…
-
Breaking the Barnyard Silence
During the past 14 years or so, graduates of LSP’s Farm Beginnings program have shown there are countless ways of making a successful go of it on the land. That’s one reason…