The official newsletter of the Land Stewardship Project
JULY/AUGUST 1996 VOL. 14, NO. 3
Some say precision farming is agriculture's next revolution. But is there any sustainable substance behind all the high-tech hype?
I t may have taken the equivalent of, well, a rocket scientist to develop the technology behind "precision farming." But it doesn't take one to figure out why agronomists, engineers, electronics firms, implement manufacturers and fertilizer companies think it's the hottest agricultural innovation since the tractor. After all, precision farming combines the latest in computer, soil and mechanical science with space-based satellites, making implementation of this technology a bells-and-whistles bonanza. And those bells and whistles are making a lot of noise these days.
Some 650 cell phone-packing, laptop computer-using people attended the International Conference on Precision Agriculture in Minneapolis this summer, almost double the number of 1994 registrants. Artists' conceptions showing a satellite floating above a perfectly uniform farm field are already becoming clichÚ. One prediction is half of America's crop acres will be tilled with the help of precision agriculture techniques by the year 2005.
Precision farming has even captured the collective imagination of a non-ag public that's been fed a steady diet of Star Wars technology and computer gee-whizardry for the past decade. Newsweek magazine discussed precision farming in a special section on what the next millennium holds in store for we earth-bound humans. The periodical called this melding of outer space and soil management a win-win situation for the environment and farm profits: ". . . precision farming could become as indispensable as sunshine." In short, the article says, this is a "revolution" in the making.
Uttering "precision agriculture" in the same breath as "revolution" creates nice sound bytes, but makes it difficult to separate the hype from the reality. Is precision agriculture really the environmental and economic savior of crop farming? Or does it simply give a high-tech flavor to an already unsustainable system?
Precision farming is called many things, including site-specific management, prescription farming and farming by the foot. Basically, it strives to give farmers an idea of what's going on under the surface. Soil is not a uniform mass from one end of a field to the other, or even from one foot to the next. Fertility rates, compaction levels and weed seed populations can vary dramatically.
In a sense, precision farming is a recognition that there's a limit to how many acres can be farmed well. As post-World War II farms have become more mechanized and larger in size, it's become increasingly difficult to keep track of and react to variations in the soil. The result has been "whole field management," where one field is treated with a uniform amount of fertilizer or pesticide, no matter what the variability within that field. The result is often too many inputs in one part of the field, and not enough elsewhere. This wastes money, and threatens the environment in the form of excess chemical and nutrient runoff.
At its most basic, precision farming technology provides a farmer with a map of the field that shows variations in the soil. That map is developed by testing soil in measured "grids" that usually run a few acres in size. Maps are also developed with the help of yield monitors, combine-mounted computerized devices that measure what each acre of the field is producing on a per-bushel basis during harvest. Portions of the field that are producing lower yields may indicate the need for more fertilizer or greater weed control during the next growing season.
What's been described above is a pretty common-sense, down-and-dirty approach to soil management. So what are technophiles so thrilled about? To make such a technique truly effective, a farmer has to know exactly where he or she is in a field. For example, what good is a map showing soil and yield variation if, while spreading fertilizer, farmers have no idea whether they are in grid five or grid 25?
Then along came a technology called the global positioning system (GPS). This was developed by the U.S. during the Cold War to provide exact locations of troops and weapons using signals from 24 satellites zipping around the globe.
During the last few years, GPS technology has become a common tool in naval navigation, forestry and anywhere else the exact (sometimes within a few feet) location of something or someone is important. Now this electronic sword is being pounded into a precision farming plowshare.
There are a handful of farmers -- mostly Midwestern corn and sugar beet producers -- who are using some form of precision agriculture to tell them where they are in their fields so they can vary fertilizer rates accordingly. Most have been using it for less than five years, often with equipment that's still in the developmental stage. But the amount of data pouring out of these systems is already quite astonishing. An 80-acre field can produce 77 pages of data; one system exists that produces up to 260 "layers" of information -- including elevation, moisture levels, weed pressure and seeding density -- which can be placed over various soil maps.
Despite all the information becoming available through precision farming, most applications have centered around variable use of phosphorus, potassium, and more recently, nitrogen fertilizers.
But farmers who have used the technology say it is also useful for such applications as variable seeding rates. And new on-the-go sensors being developed may make it possible to detect bug populations and spray for them as a machine passes through the field; or do on-the-spot measures of characteristics that would make the crop more valuable on the market.
Rocket ships and row crops? It's not that far-fetched to farmers who have witnessed other major shifts in agriculture over the past few decades.
"I've seen a heck of a lot of changes in farming in the last 35 years," says Jack Thomas, who raises corn, soybeans, wheat and barley on 2,000 acres near Chestertown, Md. He started investing in precision farming technology this year after seeing it demonstrated at a research farm. "What we thought was science fiction 30 years ago is reality today."
But there are concerns that the promises of precision farming are more fiction than science, that it cannot deliver economically and environmentally. And there are also signs that precision farming will finish the job mechanization and chemicals started earlier this century: industrialize crop farming and finally remove the independent producer from the picture completely.
In theory, precision application of such inputs as nitrogen fertilizer should mean less of it going into places where it shouldn't. The fertilizer and chemical industries, looking to polish their image after bad publicity concerning contaminated water, see precision farming as a public relations boon.
". . . (M)ost agriculturalists insist that `environmental pressures' to assure the public that agriculture has `cleaned up its act' will remain high," editorialized Dealers Progress, a trade magazine for fertilizer and chemical dealers, a few years ago. "Enter precision agriculture as a concept, as a method of approaching an important solution to the `environmental pressures of the 1990s.' "
The trouble is, all the theory surrounding precision farming's environmental sustainability is just that, theory.
"The environmental benefits thus far are mostly rhetorical," says Pete Nowak, a University of Wisconsin extension sociologist who works on soil conservation issues.
Phosphorus and potassium fertilizer applications make up a relatively small portion of the total cost of inputs, and many farmers are finding it is simply not worth the extra trouble to vary rates. Some firms originally billed precision farming as a way for farmers to reduce their total use of fertilizer, thus cutting input costs.
However, fertilizer dealers raised concerns their sales would drop because of precision agriculture. These days trade magazines are full of assurances that precision agriculture will cause input sales to increase when farmers see how much yield is being lost as a result of low fertilizer levels.
And pesticide use? If precision farming can prove that a patch of wild oats is more than just an eyesore -- that it's reducing corn yields by five bushels per acre -- it may provide the incentive to invest in that last tank of spray.
The technology's boosters argue that even if input use increases, precision farming will ensure the chemicals go where they are most likely to be used by the plants, reducing the chance of contaminants leaching into the water. It may also provide farmers with solid evidence that some highly erodible acres are better off in grass or trees than row crops.
But studies on the economic success of precision farming practices show that it's best bet for paying off with crops like corn, wheat and soybeans is if it can maximize yields. Given the relatively low cost of fertilizer, farmers are more likely to treat a field as a uniform patch of soil, applying the maximum amount needed to boost production in the low yielding areas and ignoring the fact that some grids are already saturated with more than enough nutrients.
But if farmers do use precision ag to place inputs only where they belong, it should save money, right? Indeed, sugar beet farmers in the Red River Valley report precision application of nitrogen fertilizer producing as much as $40 per acre in extra profit. Farmers have already reported using the information gleaned from yield maps to negotiate rent reductions with their landlords or to justify putting in a tile line to drain a yield-robbing wet area.
Jim Kinsella, who farms 640 acres of no-till corn and soybeans near Lexington, Ill., says the $8,500 he spent on his monitor and global positioning receiver is "immaterial" compared to the $100,000 combine they are bolted to. More importantly, he says, spending such money on technology is a small price to pay for the amount of information it's providing, even if it can't all be put to use immediately.
"It's not the cost of the equipment, it's the cost of being uninformed. We're getting 30, 40, 50 percent variability in yields across a quarter mile of field that we didn't know we had," says Kinsella, a veteran no-till farmer and an agronomist with BASF Corp., an agri-chemical company. "By the year 2000, I'll have six years of yield maps and should know the real potential and problems on every square yard of my farm. This potential is what makes my initial $8,500 investment insignificant. Think of someone just starting out; I'll be so far ahead of them. A guy pays $1 million for land and doesn't have a clue about it just driving by. I will have yield information and fertility levels. I don't think you can afford not to have it."
Some of the hope Kinsella and other precision farming enthusiasts are putting into the technology is based on the belief that information that may seem mere coffee-shop trivia now will become invaluable in the future. Farmers who have started to use global positioning and yield monitors to create maps of their farms often say they are not sure what all the information means, but they feel better having it because somehow it "makes them better managers," says Scott Swinton, a Michigan State University agricultural economist who has conducted precision ag focus groups involving farmers and dealers.
But economists warn against putting too much stock into the "potential" of precision farming's payoff. For one thing, precision farming economic studies often don't take into account all the expenses associated with adopting the technology. Spending $8,500 on the monitors and receivers is just the beginning. Subscribing to a GPS signal, buying the right computer hardware/software and having soil tests done can cost thousands more. And farmers are unearthing a lot of hidden costs associated with precision farming, according to Swinton. Often, even farmers who were already using computers had to upgrade their equipment to handle the sophisticated maps that go with GPS. In addition, there is a "cost" in the time and resources needed to learn the technology.
Swinton and Purdue University economist Jess Lowenberg-DeBoer recently summarized the results of 11 precision farming profitability studies conducted throughout the grain belt. Overall, five of the studies found precision farming not profitable, four had mixed or inconclusive results, and two showed potential profitability. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
The video shows a John Deere 7800 tractor rolling along a test plot at California's Stanford University. The man sitting in the tractor's seat throws up his hands to show he's not driving. Instead, four global positioning receivers mounted on top of the cab are using signals from space to guide the machine's journey back and forth across the field.
"We think this is the first step toward totally automatic farm implements," says Stanford researcher Michael O'Connor, who is showing the video to some of the participants in the recent International Precision Agriculture Conference.
For anyone concerned about keeping people on the land, a driverless tractor conjures up frightening, futuristic images of farms without farmers.
Optimists say there will always be a need for farmers who are familiar enough with the land to interpret the piles of maps all that software can produce. Indeed, it's doubtful the rural landscape will be crawling with robotic John Deeres operated from a Chicago office tower anytime soon. But in other ways, precision farming could finally clear the way for making crop farming more like a manufacturing enterprise, say observers of trends in agricultural technology.
Previous efforts to industrialize crop farming have run into the problems of how to deal with variabilities in the land and the climate, while finding trusted employees willing to work seasonally under anything but 9 to 5 conditions. Depending on the crop involved, there is a theoretical acreage size beyond which farmers cannot go without compromising efficiency. But economists say precision farming would make it easier to manage more acres and more employees.
Swinton says that's a question that must be asked as the direction of precision farming becomes clear.
"It begins to allow you to manage variability on a smaller area while farming more acres," he says, adding that one extreme result of that would be "you have highly mechanized agriculture where you don't need skilled and trusted family members to operate the equipment. You just phone in the problem."
Precision farming's boosters say that not just 1,000-acre plus cropping operations can use the technology; even grain farms of a few hundred acres will find the detailed information it provides useful. They concede, however, that the cost of some of the equipment may keep the technology in the hands of bigger farmers "at first." But smaller operators can have the soil testing, global positioning, yield monitoring and variable rate application done for them, avoiding the cost of actually owning the equipment. Indeed, crop consultants, fertilizer dealers and specialty precision farming companies are already providing various forms of these services.
However, is making the "service industry" such a large presence on the land in the best interest of a people-based sustainable agriculture?
"All you've got then is someone who owns the land, but it's being farmed by all these services," says Nowak, the Wisconsin sociologist. "I don't think that's the way we want farming to be."
However, Nowak and others who are considering the merits of precision farming are quick to point out that it's not an inherently bad technology. It just needs to be less driven by industry and more farmer-centered. Nowak says an emphasis on commercial fertilizer application rates is not a priority for all crop farmers, and more research needs to be done on variable application of such inputs as manure. John Doran, a USDA soil scientist, says if precision farming could be used to map out soil quality characteristics, then it would be useful for farmers pursuing practices that attempt to build the land's inherent ability to create fertility.
"Yield is only one indicator of soil quality," says Doran. "If we continue to focus on applications of specific inputs on specific parts of a field, we lose the big picture view of the overall soil environment."
But precision farming practices that do not emphasize the maximum use of inputs for maximum yields are not likely to be promoted by private industry, says Nowak. For precision farming to head in a sustainable direction, more research needs to be done at land grant universities, free of the bottom-line, product-producing mentality of industry, he says. But these days, even when precision agriculture research is being done at public institutions, it's often with funding from the fertilizer or GPS industry. And judging by the nature of the research presented at the Minneapolis conference (it was a joint effort of the University of Minnesota and the Potash and Phosphate Institute), that trend will continue.
"We must continue to build private and public partnerships, especially as federal funding dries up," H H Cheng, head of the University of Minnesota soil science department, told conference participants at the meeting's close.
Ours is a free market economy, and any farmer can simply choose to let this particular technology jet by. But if information available only through GPS becomes a valuable commodity used to bid on land purchases and rental rates, non-precision ag farmers could find themselves at a competitive disadvantage (even if the real value of the information is only in terms of how the landowner views it). And noises are already being made about making precision farming a mandated "best management practice" for protecting the environment in sensitive areas. Politicians and policy wonks have caught the precision farming fever, and see it as a perfect way to spend the peace dividend, even if it means diverting research dollars away from cheaper, more size-neutral technologies.
But even if precision agriculture technology can be made more size- neutral, many farmers pursuing a diverse, sustainable tillage system that relies on natural fertility and pest control say it's a technology that's based on a false premise: that nature's uncertainty and diversity can be tamed with precise applications of time, machinery and chemicals. In a sense, it's providing "answers" faster than we can ask questions, says North Dakota farmer David Podoll. He has used sustainable methods such as green manuring, intense crop rotations and preservation of natural pest control areas on 480 acres near Fullerton for some 20 years. His experience has taught him that creating a uniform field from one end to another is neither efficient nor desirable. Podoll says that before computers spit out even more "answers" about agriculture, precision farming's practitioners need to take a step back and ask a basic question.
"Are we caring for the land better or are we just using precision farming techniques to grow what you want the land to produce?"
Like many farmers, Howard Kittleson is seeking some answers about precision agriculture. But before he becomes overwhelmed with piles of yield maps and gobs of electronic gadgets, the Blooming Prairie, Minn., corn and soybean producer has decided to figure out if the answers the technology provides are worth pursuing in the first place.
Using a grant from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, Kittleson has been experimenting with variable rate application of fertilizer on 60 of the 550 acres he and his wife Jane farm. Since 1983, Kittleson has been striving to cut erosion while reducing his work load and use of fuel with "ridge tillage," a form of conservation tillage that plants crops on pre-formed ridges.
Kittleson is an avid tinkerer and has used salvaged equipment to put together a fertilizer cart that can apply nutrients right in the ridge, where the plant needs it the most. Mounted on the cart are various electric motors that allow the farmer to vary the amount of fertilizer being applied.
Last fall, soil tests were taken every 330 feet on the field and a fertility map was created from those tests. Using flags, the ridges themselves and a radar that tracks speed and distance, Kittleson can determine his location in the field while pulling the fertilizer cart. While planting corn in the plot this spring, he used the fertility map to determine how much fertilizer to apply each 330 feet. With a flip of a switch, he controlled the flow as he drove across the field.
This is the first year of a two-year study and Kittleson has already noticed great variability in the soil's pH, a sign that varying lime applications could pay off. He also plans to experiment with variable application of hog manure.
Many farmers have dipped their toes into precision farming by spending a few thousand dollars on a yield monitor, but Kittleson says he first wants to figure out if variable application pays.
"What good is the yield monitor for changing fertility rates if you don't know if varying fertility changes things?"
EDITOR'S NOTE: Sixty-one years ago this spring, a newspaper reporter dubbed the Great Plains the "Dust Bowl" because of a series of soil-laden "blizzards" that were taking place there. Within three years, 10 billion tons of topsoil had been stripped away from the heart of the American breadbasket in one of the greatest ecological disasters of modern times. Survivors of the "Dirty Thirties" swore it would never happen again.
This growing season, parts of the Great Plains are experiencing one of the most severe droughts on record, prompting concerns that a new Dust Bowl may develop.
By Steve Schock
While driving through the farm fields of southeast South Dakota earlier this year, I stared with astonishment at thick drifts of topsoil layered upon large snow banks. Such a sight brought to mind a Woody Guthrie line quoted in Donald Worster's Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s : "Lord, I'm going down this road feeling bad."
I had just completed reading Dust Bowl and recalled its reminder that roughly every 20 years drought appears in the Great Plains -- yet each generation, ignorant of this historical fact, is perplexed by its occasion.
Dust Bowl is relevant to today's discussion of sustainable communities, with or without massive accumulations of soil in ditches. I suspect the Land Stewardship Project's members pledge allegiance to a broad spectrum of economic systems, from socialism to free enterprise and their respective variations. I have believed, and continue to believe, in private ownership of land and resources, but with the biblical understanding, and its implications for proper use that "the land shall not be sold forever: for the land is mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with me" (Leviticus 25:23).
At the core of Dust Bowl is its indictment of laissez-faire industrial capitalism and its attendant economic ethos. Neither the more socialistic engineering of the New Deal nor the private entrepreneurial approach have altered the disintegrative forces associated with commercial farming. Worster argues that neither approach helped the farmer confront a basic dilemma: whether a business-run farm was truly compatible with traditional small-scale communal values.
One doesn't have to be an expert on modern agriculture to conclude that today's government programs, much like their 1930s-era forerunners, have not only not encouraged small scale communal values, but have actively worked to destroy them. Nor has rugged individualism, which would have us cut off completely from government interference, offered an alternative to large-scale, monocultural factory farming.
My father came of age during the Dust Bowl years, and I've heard numerous stories of dust, drought, grasshoppers and inevitably, farm failures. But Dust Bowl combines photographs, newspaper accounts and artists' portraits, such as Alexander Hogue's "Drought Survivors," to add graphic grit and grime to the bleak portrait of 1930s America. Pictures of men and women wearing masks and goggles recall Defense Department film clips showing people preparing for nuclear attack. Worster helps us understand what it was like to live through the environmental holocaust George Borgstrom ranked as one of the three worst ecological blunders in human history (the deforestation of China around 3000 B.C. and the denuding of the Mediterranean region were the other two he named).
Grapes of Wrath author John Steinbeck had insights into the cultural malaise of these years as much as any writer of that period. He wrote with sympathy about the "Okies," refugees fleeing Oklahoma and environs for California. They had jumped with no transition "from old agrarian, self-containing farmers where nearly everything used was raised or manufactured, to a system of agriculture so industrialized that the man who plants a crop does not often see, let alone harvest, the fruit of this planting, where the migrant has no contact with the growing cycle."
But according to Worster, Steinbeck knew that nature did not break the Joads, the dispossessed farm family in Grapes. Rather "it was business farming, seeking a better return on land investments and buying tractors to pursue it, that had broken these people, smashing their identity as natural beings wedded to the land." In other words, the precise pattern of private ownership mattered less than the unquenchable thirst of commercial farming to maximize production and profit through the unlimited use of tractors and machinery.
The integration of land and culture offers the only long-term solution to the destructive forces of industrialized commercial agriculture.
The living examples presented by the Amish and Mennonites are perhaps the best expression of contemporary cultures in which both the people and the land have flourished. Neither government-subsidized nor private, commercial farming enterprises divorced from community values can avoid the destructive capabilities contained within the seeds of the American economic ethos; an ethos of maximizing production and profits over all else. In analyzing this economic culture, Steinbeck wrote: "When the monster stops growing, it dies, it can't stay one size."
Land Stewardship Project member Steve Schock raises produce and alfalfa hay near Sioux Falls, S. Dak.
Dear Editor:
It is unfortunate that Native Inheritance: The Story of Corn in America is out of print. This 1966 book, written by Howard T. Walden II and published by Harper & Row, holds some workable ideas for farmers trying to add value to their crops and communities wanting to use locally produced raw material to become more self-sufficient.
According to the book, for a time in the 1930s some Midwestern farm publications issued their editions on cornstalk paper. And the Commercial News -- a Danville, Ill., daily -- was printed on cornstalk paper made at a paper factory in that area.
I have taken a paper making class through Iowa Western Community College in Atlantic, Iowa. My teacher has made paper from cornstalks Ü it makes very good paper.
--Maryleona BergWiota, Iowa
Dear Editor:
In March I took the Holistic Resource Management course conducted in Ghent [Minn.] by Audrey Arner -- it was terrific! I have indicated to your Montevideo office that I am interested in additional courses as well as learning of volunteer opportunities with LSP.
--Dana LarsonApple Valley, Minn.
The children of people exposed to pesticides may have a significantly greater chance of experiencing birth defects, according to a study conducted by the University of Minnesota Laboratory of Environmental Medicine and Pathology.
Researchers examined the records of babies born to licensed private pesticide applicators in Minnesota between 1989 and 1992. Farmers and others who apply pesticides on their own land are required to undergo training every four years to receive certification.
The almost 35,000 licensed private pesticide users present in the state during that period produced 4,935 live births. The study compared the health of those babies to the health of all 210,723 babies born in the state during that same three-year period.
In western Minnesota, where intensive production of wheat, sugar beets and potatoes leads to heavy use of chemicals, on average 30 out of every 1,000 children born to pesticide applicators had some type of defect at birth. The birth defect rate for the general population in that part of the state was 26.9 per 1,000 births.
But even children of people who do not normally handle pesticides may be at risk, according to the study, which was published in the April issue of Environmental Health Perspectives. In areas of the state where agricultural chemicals are not used extensively, the general population's birth defect rate was 18 per 1,000 children -- significantly lower than the almost 27 defects per 1,000 births rate recorded in western Minnesota. In addition, in regions where pesticides are used heavily, infants conceived in the spring show a significant increase in birth defects (in the Upper Midwest, use of certain pesticides is often heaviest during the spring planting season).
For example, in areas of heavy pesticide use, 19.8 of 1,000 babies conceived during the spring of 1991 had defects. The birth defect ratio for autumn-conceived babies in those same areas was almost half that.
Birth defects recorded during the study period included circulation, respiration and urogenital problems, as well as malformed muscles, bones and skin. Birth defects can be caused by several factors, including diet, genetics and stress.
Within the past five years, studies conducted in Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado have shown relationships between pesticide exposure and health problems.
Fertilizer runoff from the nation's heartland may be creating a 7,000-square mile "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, say water quality experts.
The lifeless area extends from the mouth of the Mississippi River across the Louisiana coast almost to Texas. Scientists have suggested that nitrates are washing down the river into the Gulf, depleting oxygen and killing off or displacing marine life. Thirty-one states have watersheds that empty into the Mississippi. Farm commodity groups have raised concerns that agricultural is being unfairly targeted for blame in the "dead zone" issue.
Jim Baker, an engineer at Iowa State University who studies agricultural-based water pollution, says one way or another, this destruction of marine habitat will affect farming practices far upstream.
"Issues like [dead zones] in the Gulf will determine the quality of water we are allowed to export from the Midwest."
A comprehensive report on sustainable agriculture has been recognized for its "excellence in communication." A Better Row to Hoe: The Economic, Environmental, and Social Impact of Sustainable Agriculture received the Gold Award in the special report category of this year's Wilmer Shields Rich Awards for Excellence in Communications. The award is sponsored by the Council on Foundations and the Communications Network in Philanthropy.
A Better Row to Hoe reported on a six-year, seven-state summary of sustainable agriculture studies. Land Stewardship Project staff assisted in the Minnesota portion of the studies.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) advisory committee has made it official: Concentration has reached a point in the American livestock slaughtering industry where the free market is at risk. However, the committee's report, released in June, offers few concrete steps for addressing the problem.
For several months a citizen's committee, formed by USDA head Dan Glickman, has been studying a business long dominated by a few packing giants (for example, three firms account for 81 percent of the cattle slaughtered in this country).
As a sign of how contentious this issue is, the committee had to issue four summaries -- one majority and three minority reports -- in order to cover all viewpoints represented. The majority report acknowledges there is potential for a problem, stating that: "While the pursuit of efficiency can lead to concentrated industries, competition may be ultimately be sacrificed. Competition in the long run is more important than efficiency in the short run."
However, the report does not criticize vertical integration and concentration outright. Rather, it concludes that some concentration in the industry is needed for the U.S. to stay competitive in the world market.
The committee acknowledges that Glickman has broad powers to require the reporting of prices paid by packers and the reasons they pay certain prices for certain animals (there is concern that packers are discriminating against smaller farmers and ranchers by paying premiums for quantity, rather than quality). However, the report lacks any recommendations for regulating the way packers procure animals through "captive supply methods," i.e., specialized contracts and ownership of the livestock production facilities themselves.
The Land Stewardship Project has published a guide for monitoring the sustainability of a farm.
Monitoring Sustainable Agriculture with Conventional Financial Data, by Dick Levins, is the first in a series based on the work of The Biological, Social and Financial Monitoring Team. For the last three years, LSP and its partners on the Monitoring Team have been experimenting with various ways farmers can make their own observations and draw conclusions about their own progress toward sustainability.
Monitoring sustainability using conventional financial indicators can be difficult. Farmers normally think of using income and expense figures to measure progress toward the goal of earning profits, says Levins, a Monitoring Team member and a University of Minnesota agricultural economist. Like any producer, sustainable farmers are concerned about feeding their families and paying bills. But they also want to protect the land, improve their quality of life and enhance the communities they live in. To be sustainable, farm progress must be defined as movement toward a set of goals that include, but are not limited to, profitability, he says.
In this 30-page publication, Levins presents four indicators to evaluate the sustainability of farming operations. Using farm records or tax reports, farmers can transfer numbers to work sheets provided in the book, and thus evaluate their operations' sustainability.
To order a copy of Monitoring Sustainable Agriculture with Conventional Financial Data, send $7 (that price includes postage; Minnesota residents add 6.5 percent sales tax) to: LSP, 2200 4th St., White Bear Lake, MN 55110. There is a 10 percent discount for LSP members and bulk orders of 20 or more copies. For more information about bulk orders, call LSP at (612) 653-0618.
Renville County, Minn., officials agreed in June to conduct extensive hydrogen sulfide testing in the vicinity of large manure lagoons after samples taken by Land Stewardship Project members and staff showed high levels of the toxic gas in the area.
During a two-week period in May, rural Renville County residents used a Jerome Analyzer to test the air near 17 large-scale hog manure lagoons. A total of 32 tests were conducted. Each test consisted of taking 13 samples of air during a one-hour period. The readings of those samples were then averaged to provide a mean for that one-hour period. Paul Homme, a microbiologist and Land Stewardship Project board member, coordinated the testing.
Eight of the 32 tests showed mean reduced hydrogen sulfide levels of more than 50 parts per billion, says Homme, who farms near Granite Falls, Minn. These preliminary tests show that state air quality standards may have been violated during the sampling. Minnesota air quality standards call for levels of hydrogen sulfide not to exceed 50 parts per billion for a half-hour period more than two times a year.
All of the sites sampled showed some hydrogen sulfide in the air. Two of the tests showed mean reduced hydrogen sulfide levels of more than 100 parts per billion, with one site measuring 134 parts per billion. In all, five different lagoons, representing ownership by four different entities, recorded mean hourly reduced hydrogen sulfide levels of more than 50 parts per billion. Homme said high readings were taken within several yards of the lagoons as well as up to a mile and a half away.
The testing was conducted after area residents complained of nausea, headaches, blackout periods, vomiting and other symptoms often associated with hydrogen sulfide poisoning. Hydrogen sulfide is a poisonous gas that is usually associated with a "rotten egg" smell. Some of the larger lagoons in Renville County are as large as a city block and hold several million gallons of liquid manure.
Homme, past director of the microbiology branch of the U.S. Air Force's epidemiology division, has extensive experience setting up scientific investigations. He said these preliminary tests show that lagoons throughout the county are producing toxic gases, and that the Jerome Analyzer can be used in the field to take valid scientific measures. The Analyzer, which is on loan from the Arizona Instrument Corp., is calibrated to hydrogen sulfide, but Homme said further testing is needed to determine if other reduced sulfurs are included in the readings.
A book of essays written by Land Stewardship Project member Paul Gruchow has won the 1995 Minnesota Book Award for nonfiction. The book, Grass Roots: The Universe of Home, discusses the challenges facing rural America's land and people (see review, page 13).
Gruchow, a former newspaper editor, has written four other books and hundreds of articles about the struggle to sustain a healthy environment and the issues facing farming communities. He lives in Northfield, Minn.
Meridith Levy has left the Land Stewardship Project to pursue graduate studies.
Levy joined LSP's southeast Min-nesota office in 1994 through the Organizing Apprenticeship Project. She later became a full-time LSP organizer and played a key role in developing the Farmers Accessing Credit Together (FACT) committee. Levy also worked with the Southeast Minnesota Alternative Markets Group and helped organize beginning farmer workshops.
By Doug Noapr & Paul Sobocinski
It can be quite disheartening to learn that you're about to be a neighbor of a livestock confinement facility housing thousands of hogs or cattle. But as Land Stewardship Project members have shown in recent years, a well-organized grassroots effort can often stop a factory farm in its tracks. When organized people run up against organized money, place your bets on the former force.
Here's a list of basic steps to take at the local level when a factory farm is proposed for your neighborhood:
Doug Nopar and Paul Sobocinski are Land Stewardship Project organizers.
By Mark Schultz
Myth-making changes the perception that something is negative, but does little to change the actual reality of the situation.
Lately, the Land Stewardship Project has been working to debunk some of the myths surrounding the livestock concentration/factory farm issue. We started by generating a list of 27 "Factory Farm Myths" that, if we accept them as truth, have the effect of silencing us. LSP members and staff have been working to bust these myths one by one. Eventually, we hope to compile these myths -- and ways to answer them -- in a printed form for those of you on the front lines of the industrial agriculture debate.
For now, here's one of the most damaging and silence-inducing myths making the rounds, and a few ways of exposing it to the light of day: "People fighting factory farms are causing conflict and unnecessary divisions in rural communities. These people are being bad members of rural society by making waves."
Here's how one farmer recently replied to this common misconception: "They came into our neighborhood and put up a huge lagoon, and they expected us to just roll over and take it, like people usually do. These investors -- some of the largest landowners in the area -- are used to getting their way. But when we stood up and opposed them, they said we were making the conflict. No way. They made the conflict when they started with the factory farm."
Grassroots organizing is often criticized as a negative or counterproductive act. The fact that organizing initiates tension is a key reason for this criticism. People in power make these criticisms to defend and steer attention away from their own positions, privileges, and actions.
In a different context, one of the best answers given to attacks against organizing was Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." Religious leaders had called the Alabama civil rights demonstrations, for which King had been arrested, "unwise and untimely," and called for King to back off.
King replied: "You may ask, `Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etc.? Isn't negotiation a better path?' You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such a creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue."
Mark Schultz directs LSP's Policy Program.
By Lynn Lokken
What does preserving an oxcart trail and rerouting a proposed highway have to do with good land stewardship? Often, preservation efforts concentrate on saving historic sites, buildings and rivers. But what about landscapes?
At issue is a proposed realignment of Lac qui Parle County Road 20 in western Minnesota that threatens to destroy a particularly scenic and historic river valley near Lac qui Parle village. The area is rich in character and a source of scenic beauty and community pride. It is a local treasure, a quiet legacy where many find solitude.
Hans Lokken, my great grandfather, made a wise choice when he homesteaded near the Lac qui Parle River in 1869. The soil, rich and black, sustains a variety of agricultural crops as well as a diversity of indigenous grasses and wildflowers. The river valley provides water, timber and wildlife. And the view is breathtaking!
The Red River Oxcart Trail, which runs through the farm, was Minnesota's primary route of transportation 150 years ago. Other sites of historic interest are a dam, millrace, fur trading post and a ford for crossing the river. There is also an early farm site (1862) that served as a schoolhouse, blacksmith shop and mission. The Dakota Chief, Spirit Walker, and his people lived nearby at the present-day site of Lac qui Parle Village.
I have spent sleepless nights with nightmarish images of bulldozers pushing over the huge old oaks in the meadow. I have cried at the thought of the hills being demolished. My heart aches for the silent valley abundant with wildlife.
We had a pastor at our church a few years ago who "discovered" this area. Most of his summer sermons were written there. It made him feel as close to God as he could while still residing on Earth.
The Lac qui Parle River valley, like many other rural landscapes, helps us define our sense of community. Local and former residents feel their heritage is threatened by the proposed destruction. These folks value a sense of "home" -- a place for their roots -- to experience wholeness. Destroying even a small part of the river valley will undermine the character of this area and deny future generations an opportunity to enjoy it.
So what is the Land Stewardship Project doing about it? Our western Minnesota office is a base for educating the public and organizing local citizens around preservation of the river valley. This work has led to the formation of new partnerships with organizations such as the Preservation Alliance of Minnesota, Lac qui Parle County Historical Society, Waywest Chapter of American Bikers Awareness, Training and Education (ABATE) and various sportsmen's groups.
LSP intern Lynn Lokken lives on land overlooking the Lac qui Parle River valley. The land has been farmed by the Lokken family for more than a century.
By Jane Brox
Published by Beacon, Boston
1995
143 pages
$18.00
Reviewed by Meridith Levy
"We live 30 miles inland along the road to the coast, a road laid down on an early wagon track which followed the Indian trace -- a long day on sure feet giving way to oxcarts that took half the week to return from the sea with their burdens of salt hay."
Early in Here and Nowhere Else: Late Seasons of a Farm and Its Family, the above passage lyrically initiates the reader to Jane Brox's world and provides a clue for what is to come. Following a rolling stream of thoughts which change and take on new characteristics throughout the course of the book, Brox always returns to the same place: her family farm in the Merrimack Valley of western Massachusetts.
This book describes a family operation from the perspective of a woman who has returned to the farm she grew up on after 15 years of separation. In a sense, this memoir proceeds in two story frameworks. The first one is the personal account of Brox revealing her immediate relationship with the farm, its history in relation to her life and all of the characters connected to the farm. The second framework steps apart from the present situation of this family and gives an historical and sensorial illustration of a place which evades boundaries of situational time.
On an immediate level, we learn that the family to which this farm belongs is well seasoned, and approaching an end to the work which carried them through a lifetime. The account of the farm strays from a linear documentation of its history, instead revealing its identity though a patchwork of anecdotes and descriptions. By the book's end, we have learned about its previous years as a dairy, a turkey operation and finally, its current state as an orchard and vegetable farm. The land first came into the hands of the narrator's grandparents in 1900 when they bought it after having traveled to America from Lebanon to work in the mills.
The family members of this farm come to life through Brox's assorted descriptions. We taste the pain of an aging man, Brox's father, who struggles against the reality of what it means to stop farming. We see the enduring commitment of the mother, or "matriarch" of the household, gathering grapes just before they're ripe in order to get the most pectin for successful jelly, or making infinite pies filled with the fruit of the season. We get glimpses of the brother who is plagued by fleeting bouts of ambition in his commitment to the farm without the ability to follow through; he whiles away endless hours in front of a flickering television in his otherwise dark house.
Finally, we get a sense of the narrator, a woman who cut herself off from the farm for years to live a separate existence, but could never fully erase the farm's grip on her identity. She returns to the farm to rejoin the family, but confronts a reality within herself that seems to reflect that of her surroundings: The farm as she knew it will never be the same, and the power to resuscitate its vitality is beyond her.
While the "story line" of the family offers a gossamer framework for the work, its pulse is faint in comparison to the second framework of the book; a kaleidoscopic presentation of the farm in all its shapes and senses. It is this framework in which the author truly excels: conveying the greater meaning of the land. She illuminates the changing facades of the land through descriptions of the place in all of its seasons, through its geologic changes and its evolution of land use. The land is marked by the tools of Native Americans, the stone walls of early pioneers, antiquated agricultural machinery and the shadows of impinging developers. All of Brox's themes fold into the rhythm of the seasons, which ultimately merges into the larger horizon of time. Even the present occupants of the land fall into their place as players who are simply part of a broader current of past and future occupants of this place.
What is most appealing about this book is the author's commitment to revealing the soul of the land without getting lost in the need to ground it in a more temporal story line. Brox artfully bridges the two frameworks by interweaving pieces of the characters' stories with her vivid descriptions of the land and all of its history.
However, Brox presents enough morsels of the family's story to confuse the reader. Why has the author returned to the farm? What are the details which lead to her decision to stop farming again? How are the other siblings involved with the farm, and what is to become of the brother who lacks volition and has an inclination toward chemical dependency? All of these questions arise from the bits of story Jane Brox feeds the reader. They are laden with hints of a depth beyond the reader's reach. Perhaps this strategy is meant to demonstrate that all of these questions are unimportant in relation to the greater reality of the land's existence.
And Brox more than makes up for any holes in the "human" story with full and satisfying descriptions of the farm in all of its faces and phases: "Timothy and redtop give in to all the winds. They'd lie down easily beneath needlebed, seedbed, leaf bed, the way this orchard never will. I have dreamt of the long sweep of a burnished inland sea, now glinting and now in shadow, always a bed for my weariness, a resting place for my eyes. I hear those grasses make a consoling sound in the wind, a harmony of reeds so unlike the winter branches clattering."
Meridith Levy recently left LSP's southeast Minnesota office, where she worked as an organizer.
By Paul Gruchow
Published by Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis, Minn.
1995
212 pages
$13.95
Reviewed by Patrick J. Moore
For those of us living in Chippewa County, Paul Gruchow's new book presents a challenging mirror to behold. Like Sinclair Lewis' Main Street, Grass Roots: The Universe of Home is an award winning (and controversial) book about an out-of-the-way place in western Minnesota. This time, the focus is not on the pettiness of small town life at the turn of the century. In Grass Roots, Chippewa County native Gruchow gives us an intimate portrait of his family and their farm and the struggle to survive what Wendell Berry calls the "unsettling of America" of the 1950s and 1960s.
In a book brimming with fine essays and memorable imagery, the piece on Rosewood Township is perhaps the finest. In it, Gruchow makes a compelling case against the excesses of industrial agriculture. He defies the taboos of polite conversation in rural society when he rails against the loss of wetlands and diversity, as well as the rise of chemical- intensive agriculture. Gruchow's polemics are tempered, however, by his ability to bring us deeply inside the fertile imagination of a young farm kid in love with his local slough.
Toward the end of the Rosewood Township essay, Gruchow states: "I had dreamed of a retreat into a world long past, but it was in the present world, I saw, in which I would have to make my way." In many ways, this in the underlying theme and challenge of the book.
And this remains a challenge for Chippewa County's current residents. Yes, our rivers and wells are polluted. Yes, we live in a desert of corn, beans and sugar beets. Few young boys and girls in Rosewood Township will come to know and love nature as Gruchow did as a child. And yet it seems we can't go back -- too much has been undone. How are we to make our way?
The truth is, reading Gruchow can be a depressing experience for those open-minded enough not to be offended by what he as to say. As his masterpiece, The Necessity of Empty Places, proved in 1988, he has no equal when it comes to describing what our culture has destroyed and ignored. Rarely, however, is he as eloquent in envisioning the new society that must emerge. But then, warm memories make much better fodder for beautiful prose than cold conjectures about the future.
As a result, if "Rosewood Township" is the heart of the book, the essay entitled "Guerilla Warfare" is the brains. It is a somewhat academic treatise requiring more careful thought and study.
Unfortunately, Gruchow's use of a military analogy in this essay is offensive and needlessly divisive. This is not a war. This is about an emerging consciousness. It has nothing to do with one-upmanship, and everything to do with vision, skill and plodding determination. To his credit, Gruchow conveys this understanding through his essay, "Dreaming in West Bend, Iowa," which is about the priest who built the Grotto of Redemption. Through Father Dobberstein, we are urged to invest our energy in the "imperishable power of our dreams."
By the end of the book, it is humble individuals like Gruchow's father, mother and Father Dobberstein who emerge as inspiring testaments to the power and integrity of everyday people. And this is the message that resonates with us still here in Chippewa County -- that in spite of all that has been lost, the power and integrity of everyday people lives on.
Hope lies with the grassroots, according to Gruchow. For that's where people come together to build community upon a new foundation of environmental awareness. Signs of this new awareness and community building are everywhere in the western Minnesota of 1996. Environmental activism and education thrives in Gruchow's home county through the work of the Land Stewardship Project, the Sustainable Farming Association of Western Minnesota and Clean Up our River Environment. There is a new generation of small farmers producing food in a manner that sustains their families and the land. There are big farmers that care about wetlands and native prairie. And there's a whole slew of Chippewa County residents speaking out against factory farms. We are making our ways in the present world. The future will not be like the past, but there is still enough awareness of our heritage to draw from.
Of course, Chippewa County is not unique. Gruchow often says in speeches that as a society we have finally come to realize that we cannot save what is special without saving what is common. And everywhere he goes, Gruchow finds common, powerful people working together, in community, to resolve problems and restore hope in the land.
Through the eyes and truth-speaking courage of writers like Gruchow, we've come to realize that no manifesto or ideology, no machine or software package can create community for us. This is a people-to-people, neighbor-to-neighbor process. In it is the domain of the grassroots universe of home.
Patrick J. Moore is an organizer in LSP's western Minnesota office. He shamelessly promotes Chippewa County every chance he gets.
The 1996 edition of the Farmer-to-Consumer Directory is available. This guide lists southeast Minnesota farms which produce food in a sustainable manner. It includes descriptions of the farms (with a general map of the area) and details about what they offer. This publication, which is in its second year, is produced by the Land Stewardship Project and the Southeast Chapter of the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota. For a free copy of the guide, contact: LSP, 180 E. Main St., P.O. Box 130, Lewiston, MN 55952; tele. -- (507) 523-3366.
Members of LSP's marketing committee are giving presentations to informal groups, clubs, church congregations, etc., in the southeast Minnesota area. Through a 20 to 30 minute talk and slide show, the farmers explain some alternative approaches to agriculture and explain direct-to-consumer marketing concepts.
For information on getting one of these farmers to speak to your group, contact: Doug Nopar, LSP (507) 523-3366.
Looking for locally produced chickens that are hormone-free and raised under humane conditions? Several members of the LSP's Southeast Minnesota Alternative Marketing Group have formed "Home on the Range," a chicken marketing collaborative.
For an order form, contact: LSP (507) 523-3366. When calling the LSP office, ask about sustainably produced eggs, beef, lamb and pork available from southeast Minnesota farmers as well.
The Midwest Sustainable Agriculture Working Group has prepared an easy-to-understand guide to the new farm law and how it can be used on operations that are adopting sustainable agricultural practices. To order a free copy of Production Flexibility Contracts: A Guide to the New Flexibility Provisions of the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996, contact your local Land Stewardship Project office or call the White Bear Lake office at (612) 653-0618.
"Reflections for an Ecological Age" will be held in Mankato, Minn., Sept. 20-22. This is a weekend of workshops on the health of the Earth, our connection to it and our growing responsibility to care for it for future generations. Presented by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, the workshops will feature Paula Gonzalez, SC, the founder of Earth Connection, a center for learning and reflection about "living lightly" on the Earth. Incorporating insights from science and spirituality, Gonzalez has offered more than 1,000 consciousness-raising programs on learning from the Earth, our common global future and ecological spirituality.
For more information, contact Sr. Kathleen Storms or Sr. Mary Mark Tacheny at (507) 389-4238.
One of the oldest organic farms in the nation will celebrate its 50th anniversary by hosting a summer harvest festival Aug. 10 in Penns Creek, Pa. Featured will be presentations on such subjects as heirloom seed saving, soil building, crop rotations and insect identification. Mike McGrath, editor of Organic Gardening, will be on hand for a question-and-answer session.
For more information, contact the farm, Walnut Acres, at 1-800-433-3998, or call the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture at (814) 349-9856. p
To stay abreast of changes in the National Organic Standards, you can get on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Organic Program mailing list by contacting:
Grace Gershuny
National Organic Program
USDA/AMS/TMD/NOP
Rm. 2510-South Bldg.
PO Box 96456
Washington, D.C. 20090
tele. -- (202) 720-8331
e-mail -- Grace_J_Gershuny@usda.gov
Each year the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute compiles a list of farms/gardens in the Upper Midwest that have internships. To receive a copy, or to add your farm to the list, call (414) 642-3303.
Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCD) are in need of people willing to take local leadership roles in natural resource conservation.
SWCDs are local units of government that manage natural resource programs in rural areas. Each SWCD is run by a board of elected supervisors who set local soil and water conservation priorities, educate the public about the environment and work with other units of government. In Minnesota, being a SWCD supervisor involves attending one board meeting a month and many incidental responsibilities. Supervisors receive no salary, but do get per diem and expenses.
For more information on filing for a bid to be a supervisor, look up your local SWCD office in the government section of the phone book.
The 1996 edition of the Sustainable Agriculture Directory of Expertise is now available. The directory lists contact information, areas of expertise and profiles of more than 700 organizations and individuals involved with sustainable agriculture. It includes seven indexes for cross-referencing.
For a copy of the 280-page guide, send a check or money order for $18.95 payable to "Sustainable Agriculture Publications" to: SAN, Hills Building, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405-0082; tele. -- (802) 656-0471.
One of the most innovative sustainable farming operations in the country will hold its annual field day Sept. 5, starting at 2 p.m., near Boone, Iowa. The 1996 Thompson Farm Field Day will feature hog housing facilities, antibiotic-free livestock production, windbreak plantings, various cultivation practices, manure storage, management intensive grazing of beef cows, livestock feeding equipment, low-tech pest control and marketing of livestock.
No pre-registration is necessary. The fee is $5, which includes a copy of the farm's latest research report. For more information, call (515) 432-1560.
By Rebecca Kilde
I recently had the wonderful experience of watching my daughter pick her first lilac of the season ... and tear it up into pieces. She also got a hold of a snake for the first time (ask her and she'll call it a worm), planted a few seeds, held a chicken, collected eggs . . . and threw them.
It's a lot of fun watching her explore the world. It's a constant job to teach her not to squish frogs, eat irises, or throw rocks at birds. In other words, to teach her to live safely in harmony with her environment. It's a hard-won lesson with frequent refresher courses, and it's easy to ignore.
It seems we adults are constantly "throwing rocks" at the very ecosystem we rely on for survival. For example, in hog manure-contaminated streams in North Carolina, a microscopic life-form transforms into a "killer algae," poisoning fish with a toxin so powerful it can cause serious illnesses in people who live near infested streams. State officials tried to discredit the North Carolina State University Researcher who first described this, even after it had been determined that the toxin was responsible for killing thousands of fish.
A study published in a recent issue of the journal Science suggests that combinations of pesticides can be up to 1,000 more times potent than those same chemicals by themselves. A University of Minnesota study points to a possible link between agricultural chemicals and birth defects in rural families.
Is chemical use decreasing? No. A study by the Environmental Protection Agency reports that worldwide agricultural chemical use has doubled since Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962. And the U.S. accounts for more than a quarter of that use.
It makes it tough to teach my daughter how to live responsibly in an environment we are making more inhospitable to humans. And how do I teach her to stop squishing frogs when we're squishing whole ecosystems? Happily, there are good and shining examples that inspire and support me.
LSP and other organizations, as well as the people who support them, are doing much to stem the toxic tide of environmental contamination. You don't have to read very far in this newsletter to find active and committed people putting stewardship ethics in the forefront of political and social debates in Minnesota and beyond. I certainly encourage you to go to a field day or workshop and meet some of these people. Or just stop by your local LSP office and chew the fat. LSP members and staff don't have all the answers, but they're willing to stop tearing up flowers long enough to ask some important questions.
Rebecca Kilde is LSP's Membership Coordinator.
JULY 27 -- Grand opening for the Northeast Minneapolis and Powderhorn Neighborhood farmers' markets; Contact: Urban Lands Program (612) 872-3299
JULY 28 -- Western Minnesota Sustainable Farming Association summer picnic, Ambush Park, Benson, Minn.; Contact: (320) 847-3432.
Farm tour featuring alternative livestock in Carlton County, Minn.; Contact: (218) 727-1414
JULY 29-31 -- Holistic Management introductory course, Marshall, Minn.; Contact: Audrey Arner, LSP (320) 269-2105
JULY 31 -- Field day at the Tom and Irene Frantzen farm, New Hampton, Iowa; Contact: Practical Farmers of Iowa (515) 364-6426
AUG. 1 -- Farm tour featuring soil, manure management on ridge tillage and sows on pasture, Austin, Minn., area; Contact: (507) 256-4876 or (507).433-3591
AUG. 3 -- Field day featuring rotational grazing of sows & gilts, Byron Bartz farm, Barrett, Minn.; Contact: (320) 528-2301
AUG. 4-5 -- Midwest Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (MSAWG) meeting, Madison, Wis.,-area; Contact: Mark Schultz, LSP (612) 823-5221
AUG. 6-8 -- CURE sponsors "Alternative Use of Flood Plains" conference, Montevideo, Minn.; Contact: Patrick Moore, LSP (320) 269-2105
AUG. 10 -- CURE Chippewa Cub Scout Canoe Trip; Contact: (320) 269-2105
AUG. 14 -- Course on "Forest Stewardship through HRM," Kahler Hotel, Rochester, Minn.; Contact: Amanda Azous (360) 376-5649
AUG. 15 -- Course on "Community Planning with HRM," Rochester; Contact: Amanda Azous (360) 376-5649
Pastured poultry & CSA field day, Todd Lein farm, Northfield, Minn.; Contact: (507) 645-9036
AUG. 16-17 -- "Share the Wealth of Knowledge, Experience and Inspiration," the 1996 International HRM Gathering, Rochester, Minn.; Contact: Audrey Arner, LSP (320) 269-2105
AUG. 19 -- An HRM workshop with Amanda Azous on making land-use decisions, Stillwater, Minn.; Contact: LSP (612) 653-0618
AUG. 20 -- Butcher hogs on pasture & marketing organic crops field day, Linda & Mike Noble farm, Kenyon, Minn.; Contact: (507) 789-6679
SEPT. 5 -- Chippewa River Stewardship Partnership and LSP's 1000 Friends of Minnesota regional meeting on planning and zoning as it relates to urban sprawl; Country Inn Suites, Benson, Minn.; Contact: LSP (612) 653-0618.
Thompson Farm Field Day, Boone, Iowa; Contact: (515) 432-1560
SEPT. 7 -- N.E. Minn. SFA Harvest Festival, Duluth, Minn.; Contact: (218) 727-1414
SEPT. 12 -- LSP 1000 Friends of Minnesota regional meeting (see Sept. 5), DeWitt-Seitz Building, Duluth, Minn.; Contact: LSP (612) 653-0618
SEPT. 20-21 -- "Reflections for an Ecological Age," a conference with Paula Gonzalez, SC, Ph.D, futurist, educator & environmentalist, Good Counsel Education Center, Mankato, Minn.; Contact: (507) 389-4238
OCT. 1 -- LSP's 1000 Friends of Minnesota regional meeting (see Sept. 5 item), Best Western Apache, Rochester, Minn.; Contact: LSP (612) 653-0618
NOV. 1-3 -- "The Animal in Agriculture" Biodynamic Farming Association/CSA conference, with guest speakers Trauger Groh and Fred Kirschenmann, Humphrey Institute, Minneapolis, Minn.; Contact: LSP (612) 653-0618
NOV. 7 -- LSP-sponsored Landmark Series talk on the pros and cons of statewide land use planning by John DeGrove of Florida Atlantic University, St. Paul, Minn.; Contact: LSP (612) 653-0618
NOV. 9-10 -- 2nd Annual LSP Membership Gathering, Camp Omega, Waterville, Minn.; Contact: Rebecca Kilde, LSP (612) 653-0618
Check the Calendar for the latest on upcoming LSP events.
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