The official newsletter of the Land Stewardship Project
DECEMBER 1996 VOL. 14, NO. 6
Purchasing development rights offers a way for farms and farming to remain a major part of a community's future.
By Brian DeVore
David Dixon is a man of many deep passions. One minute the central Minnesota farmer can be talking excitedly about the joys of plowing soil that's never been exposed to chemicals; the next he's off on sugar mapling, deer hunting or the story of how his great-grandfather came to the area in 1856 looking for "clear water to make coffee with." The patriarch ended up homesteading on a hill overlooking Lake Charlotte, a place where one can still see a sunken dime in 10 feet of water. Dixon's farm sits across the lake from the original homestead site.
But on this particular November morning, farming, hunting and history are taking a back seat to another subject: How can he and his neighbors continue producing food in the midst of sprawling development?
"Houses will be built there," he says, pointing out the window of his brown Suburban truck as he drives by a neighbor's plowed field, black soil peeking out between caps of snow.
He says it with a sense of finality. And for good reason: Dixon's 150-acre crop and livestock farm sits in a part of Wright County that's just a half-hour commute from downtown Minneapolis. Across the lake from where he lives, only 130 acres of the original 213-acre Dixon family homestead is left as farmland: The rest is occupied by 100 houses. A sewer line proposed for the area promises to draw more development like flies to a leaking septic tank.
"Twenty years ago there were 20 dairy farms in the seven miles between here and the town of Buffalo," he recalls. "Now we can count them on one hand."
Dixon sold his first crop of certified organic soybeans for a premium price this year, and he's ecstatic about the increased profitability such alternative enterprises offer farming. He's also proud that his land is sending a minimum of chemicals into the ground water. A look across Lake Charlotte to where chemically manicured lawns hug the shoreline tells a different story.
But even high-value, environmentally friendly crops can't compete with the juggernaut of sprawl. Dixon and his neighbors fear they will eventually be cut off from the rest of agriculture by residents that won't cotton to slow tractors on the roads, manure spread on fields, or any of the other inconveniences that come with farming.
That saddens Dixon: The big bucks he could get by selling out to a developer pale in comparison to the idea that his two-year-old grandson may want to farm this land someday. But even if the 40 acres of maple trees, the cropland and the pasture don't stay in the family, Dixon would like to retire and sell out knowing that good farmland will be put to use raising food, instead of being wasted by sprawling housing tracts.
So it's a bit surprising that as Dixon drives by yet one more nest of subdivisions planted in the middle of a former farm field he makes this statement: "We're not beyond hope yet."
Even though sprawl is knocking vigorously on the door of Dixon's community, this area still has at its core an agricultural economy. If there were a way to guarantee that enough farms remained viable to maintain an agricultural infrastructure, some sort of balance could be struck that would preserve the rural character that drew people out here in the first place. And places like Lake Charlotte might be cleaner, to boot. But such a land protection program would have to take into consideration that a farmer's land, is a farmer's retirement fund, says the 57-year-old Dixon.
Promoters of a concept called "purchase of development rights" (PDR) programs say areas like Dixon's community are prime locations for such a land protection strategy. PDR programs are a recognition that even if society could afford to buy up and lock away all the farmland threatened by development, it would not create the kind of rural communities we truly want. Rather, this land protection system makes it possible to buy just one right off that farm -- the right to erect subdivisions, parking lots, and other non-ag developments. The farmer keeps the land and continues producing food and fiber, passing on that right restriction to anyone who owns those acres in the future. In other words, PDR programs are a community's recognition that a thriving, working farm culture is a key element in what makes a rural area a good place to live.
In the past, land has been protected via voluntary conservation easements, where landowners essentially donate their right to develop. Although those are still effective and economical ways of protecting land, they are not always practical in areas where farmers rely on thin profit margins to stay in business.
The mechanics of PDR programs can vary widely depending on location and circumstances, but they usually work something like this: A state, county, township or nonprofit community group pays a farmer an amount of money based on the difference between what a developer would have paid for the land and what its agricultural value is. In return, the land's deed is changed to exclude in perpetuity the establishment of non-ag development. But the rest of the "rights" that come with land ownership stay in place: The farmer can still practice agriculture or sell the property.
In a simplistic example, if a farm could be sold to another farmer for $1,000 per acre, but a developer would pay $2,500, then the development rights would be worth $1,500 per acre. The group that is administering the PDR program can't always afford to pay the same amount of money a developer would, but it can offer a price that will stave off the lure of real estate speculation while providing a nest egg for the farmer. Those administering a PDR program usually arrive at a final sale price through an appraisal process.
Financing for purchasing those rights often comes from property tax increases, although local and state governments are utilizing various other creative ways of generating funds, including taxes on real estate transactions and even "sin taxes" on cigarette sales.
Participation in a PDR program is voluntary, with farmers applying to have their development rights put on the market. A committee considers the applications, using such criteria as how good the soil type is, the farm's production history, how threatened it is by development and the proximity of other protected lands. Farmers can increase the chances of getting their rights purchased by offering them for a lower price than the appraised PDR value.
Such programs are often implemented in conjunction with zoning rules that designate a certain portion of a township or county as "agricultural," and thus not open to development. But planning experts say such a program has a distinct advantage over protection strategies that rely only on zoning. After all, zoning rules can be overturned by legal challenges, or a change in local government.
Some of the farms in Suffolk County, on New York's Long Island, have been around since the 1600s. The region, which is still known for its production of potatoes, nursery plants, sod and wine, is also home to some of the nation's original suburbs. So perhaps it's not surprising the first PDR program originated there in 1974. County officials knew that living in the shadow of New York City would always make Suffolk County vulnerable to sprawl; they needed some sort of tool that would take land out of the development picture permanently.
"The east end of the county is more like rural New England than New York," says Roy Fedelem, a planner with the Suffolk County Preservation Program. "You take out the farms and it just looks like any other suburb."
Thus far, the County has purchased the development rights on 7,000 acres, with approximately 30,000 other agricultural acres left. The Suffolk County idea has spread down the East Coast and beyond. Today, an estimated 400,000 acres of U.S. farmland is being protected through PDR programs. At least a dozen eastern states are using the tool, while several local versions of it are being administered by county or township governments (some in the Midwest and on the West Coast). Maryland and Pennsylvania are the undisputed champions of preserving farmland using this tool. As of 1996, PDR programs had purchased the development rights on 128,000 acres in Maryland and 78,000 acres in Pennsylvania.
The grain, beef and dairy operations of Harford County, Md., are a 30-minute commute from Baltimore, and a one-hour drive from the nation's capital. With its lush countryside and rural atmosphere, this part of the state has long been inundated by urbanites willing to commute. Since 1979, state and local purchasing of development rights has placed 20,000 acres (that represents approximately 70 farms) under permanent protection in the county. Another 15,000 acres is being guarded against sprawl by the designation of agricultural districts, where development is restricted. The size of farms that sell their development rights varies from 150 acres to 400 acres, with one 800-acre operation included in the program.
Bill Amoss, the county's agricultural planner, says their ranking system for choosing what land to protect favors highly productive agricultural areas, but county residents in general support the program for various reasons.
"Some people want to protect prime agricultural production, some open spaces. We'll take either one."
Farmers' reasons for supporting PDR programs also vary.
Bob Kelly's family has sold development rights on 500 acres of farmland within the past year. Kelly says that at first, the permanence of selling development rights concerned him. But the 53-year-old has a younger family member who is interested in farming the land.
Their accountant suggested enrolling in the program and spreading their development rights payments of $2,500 per acre out over a period of 20 years. The family will receive interest payments on that money, which will help pay inheritance taxes when Kelly's elderly aunt passes on her portion of the land.
"If you have someone in the family interested in continuing to farm, there's a real advantage to it," he says. "But if you are in a development envelope and have no one in line to farm it, then you'd be better off selling out for development."
But Pennsylvania farmer Dennis Drager says even if his two college-age sons never return to the 210 acres he produces milk and crops on, he's glad the development rights have been sold.
Drager farms in Lancaster County, which, with its 4,700 crop and livestock operations, is considered the crown jewel of diversified agriculture. Unfortunately, land that's good for farming is also good for development. Maytown, which borders Drager's farm, has seen its population double to 800 in the past 15 years; the farmer has sewage and water lines running through his property. He sold his development rights for $3,900 per acre in 1992, knowing that he could have sold even a part of his land for more as a development parcel. But subdividing the property would just bring neighbors closer to his operation, thus increasing chances they would object to certain practices that are part and parcel of production agriculture.
"Every morning I wake up and see a housing development on land that was a farm," he says. "But the way I look at it, now if I got tired of farming I could sell my land tomorrow and I could come back in 10 years and it would look the same. You can't say that about a lot of places."
But PDR is not a gold-plated cure for all our land-use woes. Tom Daniels, director of Lancaster County's Agricultural Preserve Board, says one of the hardest lessons local governments have learned is when it's too late to wield the PDR tool as a sprawl fighter. Sometimes isolated farms are chosen for protection, creating islands of agriculture in the midst of development. This creates a farming operation that is cut off from the social, business and environmental infrastructure required to carry on production agriculture.
The Lancaster County PDR program has emphasized protecting farms in blocks, thus creating large, contiguous tracts of permanent farmland. This not only keeps farms from being isolated, but reduces the need to purchase the development rights on all the agricultural land in an area. Once enough farmland is protected in a community, development pressure in general is relieved, creating a situation where the preserved farms create a protective umbrella that shields their neighbors who haven't sold their development rights.
"You must cluster farmland," says Daniels emphatically. "That absolutely has to happen."
It's also been made clear in the past few years that PDR programs aren't good at winning foot races against development. Because of the paperwork involved, and the general delay in the application procedure, it can take anywhere from six months to more than two years to conclude a PDR transaction. That gives developers plenty of time to swoop in and make a purchase.
Perhaps the largest barrier to PDR programs living up to their full potential is lack of funding. This fall, the federal government provided $15 million in cost-share money to qualified state and local farmland protection programs. That helps, but the price of preservation is rising at a time when we're losing 1.5 to 2.5 million acres of farmland to sprawl annually.
Without exception, communities using PDR program have many more farmers applying for protection than their budget can sustain. Daniels says there are 200 farmers on his PDR waiting list alone.
One of the more exciting low-cost alternatives to PDR programs is a concept called "transfer of development rights" (TDR). Under such a strategy, a local government sets up an area that will be left in agriculture in perpetuity, called a "sending area." Then a "receiving" or development area is designated. When developers propose a project, they are given a list of farmers with land in the sending area. It is then up to the developer to approach the landowners and purchase the development rights directly. Once those rights are purchased, the developer can then use them in the receiving area, which is zoned to promote the kind of clustered development that reduces land-wasting sprawl.
The TDR system is basically a private transaction, with local government acting as the coordinator. Farmers often prefer to deal directly with a developer, rather than selling their development rights to a government entity or nonprofit group. All of this makes for a very low-cost program; the main expense being the administrative staff needed to coordinate the sending and receiving.
Its drawbacks are that it can be complicated to implement, and difficult to find a municipality willing to serve as a receiving area, says Richard Tustian, a planner who helped develop a TDR program that's protected 90,000 acres in Montgomery County, Md., thus far.
But even the cheapest farmland protection strategy must have the support of local citizens. For one thing, the general taxpayer normally ends up footing the bill for such programs one way or the other. Some local governments have found it relatively easy to pass bonding referendums funding PDR programs. But many referendums run into the buzz saw of anti-tax feelings and concerns that such a program will provide unwarranted windfalls to landowners while inhibiting the kind of development needed to keep a community thriving.
Educating township or county residents about farmland protection can be particularly difficult in an area where the land is not particularly valued for scenic, environmental or historical reasons: it's just plain good for farming. That's a tough sale in a country with a seemingly endless supply of cheap food.
Dairy farmer Roz Gausman faced that question two years ago when Dunn Township, Wis., started looking for ways to preserve farming just 10 minutes from downtown Madison. Gausman is also the town's clerk-treasurer, so she has a good perspective on both sides of the issue: The desire to keep agriculture in the area balanced with the need to maintain a healthy tax base.
The township had long used zoning to protect agricultural areas. But as sprawling development continued to creep in, it became clear something more permanent was needed. Township officials contacted other local governments that had instituted PDR programs, wrote newsletters covering their findings and hosted many public meetings on the subject. It was a difficult education effort.
"People didn't even know what PDR stood for," she recalls. "It took people awhile to understand they will still own the land, we are just buying one right."
But the message eventually got through. In September, the township's residents voted 531-412 to establish a PDR program. It will be financed by a property tax increase of 50 cents per $1,000 of estimated market value. In other words, the owner of a $100,000 house will pay $50 more in property taxes annually.
Higher taxes aren't always easy to swallow, but Gausman is convinced paying more now will result in significant savings later. Each year, she posts on the wall of the town hall Dunn's property tax rates. Next to that, she lists the much higher rates of neighboring municipalities that have gone the "development route" and taken few steps to control sprawling growth. The contrast bears out what more and more studies from around the country are showing: Often sprawling growth, with its hunger for roads, sewers and other thinly dispersed services, extracts more from the tax coffers than it returns, while ag land provides a net increase to the property tax base (see OPPORTUNITIES/RESOURCES for information on ordering a cost of services study).
But ultimately, any ag land preservation effort must have at its core a desire on the part of the non-farming public to protect something valuable. If the public doesn't see agriculture as a thriving part of the economy that will keep subsequent generations on the land, no amount of development rights purchasing will keep farming as a way of making a living a part of the picture. And if subdivision residents see farms as polluting neighbors that ship all their food thousands of miles away, it's difficult for them to support agriculture on a personal level, no matter how much "feeding the world" rhetoric is bandied about.
Rural sociologists have been perplexed by what type of farming newly-arrived rural residents think they want to live next to. Often these urban refugees have a somewhat naive view of what food production is all about.
"They almost want farmland without the farmers," says Lancaster County's Daniels.
But studies have shown that rural residents react favorably to and value more highly those farms that offer produce and other food products through direct sale locally. They have a less positive view of farms that specialize in one commodity -- grain, meat, milk -- and ship it off somewhere else. So it's no surprise that areas which have diverse farms that offer food locally often are stronger supporters of PDR programs.
In Maryland, Harford County officials recognize this fact and have made ag promotion a part of their PDR program. They've helped establish farmers' markets, developed a directory of farmers offering food for direct sale to consumers, and served as a go-between for local producers and retail grocery outlets.
If this sounds like a chance for diversified, sustainable agriculture to team up with the PDR concept, it is. Pete Reese, a marketing consultant to farmers raising food sustainably, says some producers on the urban edge see the influx of non-farmers as a direct-marketing opportunity.
"We can look at it as our land base is shrinking, or as a situation where our customers are moving closer," he says.
The success of any farmland preservation effort hinges on the feeling among farmers that there is a long-term future for their way of life. Knowing neighbors will support their direct-marketing efforts is one part of it. But there must also be a larger commitment to farms and farming on the part of the community. The fact that Dunn Township had taken steps early on to protect farmland through ag zoning convinced the Gausman family it was a good place to stay and produce milk, despite its proximity to a metro area.
That commitment to an agricultural future also gave the Gausmans the confidence to consider sustainable farming methods that take time to adapt and perfect. During the past five years, they've been producing milk using management intensive grazing, a production system that is profitable and environmentally sustainable.
The feisty Roz Gausman likes to think this innovative method is showing their commuting neighbors that the land is good for more than growing subdivisions.
"We have very valuable farmland around here. When I say valuable, I mean for farming."
LSP is developing a PDR/TDR programIf state lawmakers cooperate, Minnesota's first farmland protection program using purchase and transfer of development rights will become a reality in 1997.
The Land Stewardship Project has received initial approval for a $500,000 grant to develop a pilot land preservation project that would serve as a model for the rest of the state. The grant would go toward developing a corridor of undeveloped land through Washington and Chisago counties, two areas threatened by sprawling development. Approximately 10,000 acres of land would be protected using such tools as voluntary conservation easements, PDR, TDR and land acquisition.
LSP's 1000 Friends of Minnesota program will lead the collaborative effort to set up the corridor. Working with LSP will be Washington County, Minnesota Farmers Union, the Minnesota Land Trust, the Trust for Public Land and the Committee to Preserve Chisago County's Rural Values.
The dispersal of the $500,000 is contingent upon the state legislature and Gov. Arne Carlson approving a larger Legislative Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCMR) package in 1997. For information on how to support the passage of this package, call LSP's Lee Ronning at (612) 653-0618.
Brian DeVore is editor of the Land Stewardship Letter.
EDITOR'S NOTE: In August 1994, the residents of Peninsula Township, Mich., voted to raise their property taxes to fund a program for protecting farmland. The 1.25 mill increase is expected to raise $2.6 million over 15 years to buy development rights on agricultural land in the area.
Township residents see purchase of development rights (PDR) as one way of protecting a unique farming area that provides breathtaking views of Lake Michigan. The township lies on a peninsula of land that extends into the lake, giving local cherry and wine grape growers an excellent micro-climate for producing crops. Grand Traverse and three neighboring counties produce 40 percent of the nation's tart cherries -- the kind put into pie filling.
But the land is also attractive to people looking for access to the lake and a beautiful setting to live in. More than 4,000 non-farm residents are starting to crowd the 137 fruit farms in the township. Development pressure from Traverse City (pop. 20,000; it borders the township), and even Detroit (450 miles away) is threatening the 10,000 acres zoned agricultural. By the first part of 1997, the township will have purchased the development rights on some 2,000 acres of prime farmland.
Rob and Lois Manigold farm almost 150 acres of tart cherries on the peninsula. Rob also serves as the township supervisor and has been instrumental in putting together a farmland protection package that includes the PDR program, a transfer of development rights (TDR) program, volunteer conservation easements and clustering of development into more dense patterns.
He recently spoke to the Land Stewardship Letter about what local government needs to get a farmland protection program started.
LSL: How did you determine that both farmers and non-farm residents wanted to preserve this land?
Manigold: In the early 1990s we kept surveying people and asking `well, why do you live out here?' The things that kept coming back is that they lived out here because of the scenic views and they liked the shoreline and the kind of ambiance of living in a farming community. One reason for living here was not distinguishable from the other; they both held a strong attraction to people.
Then a researcher from Michigan State University came up and asked 23 of the oldest farm families, `would you sell your farm or would you like to pass it on?' and 21 out of 23 said they would like to pass it on in their families, but the land values had gotten so high that the kids just couldn't afford to purchase it. That was an indication that if we could find something as an option to selling out for development, the farming community would look at it.
LSL: How did you go about educating residents on land protection options?
Manigold: We brought in speakers from other parts of the country where PDR programs have really taken off. And then some 60 township residents formed their own group to research the PDR concept. They even made a professional quality video featuring a longtime resident, a new resident, and a guy who had been here about 10 or 15 years and their perspectives on why it was important to protect this land.
These volunteers went from door-to-door and passed out literature on things like how development affects property values and property tax levels.
LSL: Do you have enough money to protect all the land you'd like to?
Manigold: No, so you have to make that dollar go further. When you save that farmland, you've got to do it in blocks. It makes no sense to save 100 acres and then let that be surrounded by development, and then buy another 100 acres somewhere else. We look at this 2,000 acres as a core of farming that will help keep agriculture here. It's going to keep Peninsula Fruit Exchange and some of the other orchard farming infrastructure. We needed a large enough group of farmers to keep those industries here.
LSL: Do developers support this?
Manigold: Yep, because we showed them we're not anti-growth -- you're going to lay out about as many houses, but just in a different pattern. The developers like it because they have to build less roads -- their overhead costs are a lot less building a mile of road compared to five miles.
When they come out here they know they're going to have to toe the line. Most of these people are nice guys and we work it out with them. Oh, we have a little blood on the floor but we always shake hands when it's over. A lot of these guys come out here because it gives them the opportunity to be creative; they like it. And it all comes down to if they can make money at it.
LSL: Why should taxpayers pay farmers for their land's development value in the first place? After all, farmers outside sprawling areas don't have this opportunity to receive a payment in return for keeping the land in agriculture.
Manigold: The reality is that without some sort of compensation, farmers in highly developed areas will eventually sell out to the highest bidder. So you're going to pay for it one way or another: You're going to pay for the additional costs of bringing people in under a sprawling growth system, or you're going to have to buy the development rights. We think it's cheaper to buy the development rights.
LSL: You live in a pretty unique area, both agriculturally and environmentally. How should a local government go about convincing people that "average" farmland needs to be protected too?
Manigold: It doesn't matter if you're growing corn or sugar beets or cherries or whatever -- we're not going to make that land again. If we lose it, we're going to be dependent upon other countries; you can't say some land is important and some isn't.
Also, I think if they look at what it's going to cost them when they bring in the people and the infrastructure, it can convince people of the value of ag land.
And there's something about when you're in a rural area and you kind of know your neighborhood and you know your neighbors. Then when the people are in the subdivisions a lot of times they don't even know the people next door to them. In the farming community, you've got that unique neighborhood feel a lot of people find attractive. That's something that when people think about it, it'll really hit home to them.
LSL: You also have in the works a transfer of development rights program. How will that fit into your overall land preservation plan?
Manigold: We've been working for probably two years now on what we call the village concept. That's where we intend on using our transfer of development rights. We would find a location that isn't really in the scenic view area and it really isn't prime ag land and then we allow that developer to go to that ag preservation map and actually buy the additional density he needs rather than rezoning. And we want to build some affordable housing into that village also because not everybody can afford the kind of houses that are going in out here. We're trying to encompass all of those things and make it look nice and put it centrally located to our commercial district so we can keep traffic down.
We see TDR as valuable because we have some people who just couldn't buy into that idea of selling those development rights to us. But they would negotiate something with a Realtor.
LSL: What do you see your township looking like in 20 or 30 years?
Manigold: Our growth will hopefully be clustered into little parcels, and hopefully this village concept will come. If we had a village of maybe 400 units, that would preserve a lot of the farmland. I see some sort of agricultural use long into the future, although it might not always be dominated by cherries; we're getting a lot of grape production here. I'm 45 and I have a son, Jeff. I hope he takes the farm over, but how do you ever know? Someone will have it. It will stay in farming, that's what I look for.
Dear Editor:
Dick, Sharon and Rex Thompson were amazed in 1984 when 500 people showed up for one of the first field days held on their Boone, Iowa, farm. The Thompsons have continued to hold a field day each September and have become well-known leaders in sustainable agriculture. They are perhaps best known for their on-farm research and their annual research report.
Each year the Thompsons conduct numerous experiments in long narrow plots that can be managed with the equipment they use to produce crops. These plots are set up in a design that can be analyzed statistically.
Over the years, the Thompsons have gained many good ideas for improving their 300-acre grain and livestock farm from the people who attended their field days. Discussions on how to improve parts of the farm are now becoming a regular part of the field day and seem to generate a good exchange of information.
This year's tour featured a new design for an open-front building to isolate single sows for farrowing. Rex designed the new "isolit" after getting suggestions for a new design at the 1995 Thompson field day. Specialists were available from Iowa State University and the National Soil Tilth Laboratory to help with the discussions of the new "isolit," new Austree plantings, weed control and manure management.
The Thompson field day remains one of the best educational events in sustainable agriculture. Anyone who can find time in early September should consider attending this field day. If you can't attend, you can get their annual report by sending $10 to: Thompson On-farm Research, 2035 190th St., Boone, IA 50036-1560. This report is more than 90 pages long and contains discussions of the Thompsons' sources of inspiration and their ideas on education and rural development, as well as all of their research results.
Jim Tjepkema, south-central chapter, Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota
By Dana Jackson
It took years of talking -- and listening -- to bring the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (MISA) into existence. That hard work has paid off. This unique institution is observing its fifth anniversary this winter, and it's clear it has already had a significant impact on sustainable agriculture's role in the land grant system.
In 1987, five community organizations, united by their desire to strengthen the University of Minnesota's role in sustainable agriculture, came together to form the Sustainers Coalition. The group included at that time the Land Stewardship Project, Minnesota Food Association, Joint Religious Legislative Coalition, Organic Growers and Buyers Association, and The Minnesota Project. Led by the late Ken Taylor, then executive director of the Minnesota Food Association, the coalition intended to challenge what they viewed as the University's resistance to sustainable agriculture, research and education.
After years of dialogue, representatives of the Sustainers Coalition and the University of Minnesota agreed in 1990 to establish an institute for sustainable agriculture to be housed at the University and governed by a board of community and university representatives.
The first MISA Board of Directors was named in 1992, and the College of Agriculture committed $200,000 for the first year of operation and $300,000 per year for the next four years.
The purpose of MISA is to bring together the interests of the agricultural community in a cooperative effort to develop and promote sustainable agriculture. The Institute is governed by a 15-member board of directors jointly appointed by the Sustainers Coalition and the University of Minnesota. Nine board members are nominated by the Sustainers group, and six by the University. At least seven of the 15 must be farmers practicing sustainable agriculture.
To continue the important dialogue between the university and community groups, a joint seminar was also formed, comprised of 20 people appointed by the College of Agriculture and another 20 appointed by the Sustainers Coalition.
The Sustainers Coalition now includes the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The Joint Religious Legislative Coalition is not an active participant in MISA.
So what has MISA accomplished in five years?
It has funded three interdisciplinary research and education teams: the Biological, Financial and Social Monitoring Team; the Sustainable Dairy Farming Team; and the Graduate School Program Team. The teams have included farmers, university researchers, staff of non-profit organizations, staff of state and federal agencies, and private consultants. The Monitoring team, coordinated by the Land Stewardship Project's George Boody, has obtained funding from other sources to disseminate its findings through a tool kit and newsletter when the MISA grant ends in 1987.
The MISA Graduate School Team succeeded in establishing a graduate minor in sustainable agriculture at the University in 1995. This minor is distinguished by its requirement that students serve an internship with sustainable farmers or non-profit organizations.
Another MISA accomplishment has been the establishment of an Information Exchange made possible by a 1995 state legislative appropriation. In addition to functioning as a clearinghouse of information, publishing papers and maintaining a Worldwide Web Site, MISA funded six interdisciplinary teams that will create educational materials on such topics as whole farm planning and marketing and business planning for sustainable farms.
In addition, MISA is managing an endowed chair in agricultural systems established by the College of Agriculture. MISA staff and board members worked with other community members to develop this unique "rotating" position that will bring numerous visiting scholars and experts from all over the world to the University of Minnesota for varying tenures.
To apply for the endowed chair, or to nominate someone else, contact: Donald Wyse or Marvin Johnson, MISA, University of Minnesota, 411 Borlaug Hall, 1991 Buford Circle, St. Paul, MN 55108-1013; tel: (612) 625-8235; e-mail: misamail@gold.tc.umn.edu .
LSP associate director Dana Jackson is on the MISA board of directors.
The University of Minnesota needs to take a serious look at whether it's going to allow Twin Cities area land it owns to become an economic, environmental and social liability, says George Boody, executive director of the Land Stewardship Project.
LSP has joined 11 other farm, environmental, social justice and religious organizations in calling on the University to delay making a decision on the future of 12 square miles of metro-area land until at least 1998. The land, which is home to the Rosemount Agricultural Experiment Station and Research Center, is one of the largest contiguous pieces of real estate left in the Twin Cities region. Earlier this year, the University hired a consulting firm, BRW, to draw up proposals for future use of the land. The firm's recommendations thus far have included establishing a 30,000-home development project and building a large transportation depot
LSP has raised concerns that Minnesota taxpayers and the research facility's rural neighbors have not been consulted as to the future of the public property. Dakota County officials and residents have spent years trying to protect their farmland from sprawling development. There are also concerns that developing experiment station land now will severely hamper the University's ability to respond to increased agricultural research needs in the future.
One early proposal presented to the University maintained that there was local support for developing the land. However, in November the Rosemount Advisory Council voted unanimously to recommend that the University keep the land and develop long-range plans for pursuing research and education efforts there. The Advisory Council is made up of Rosemount-area farmers, as well as representatives from local government, agribusiness and educational institutions.
"Opening up 12 square miles to development all at once would undo years of ag land protection and would be extremely shortsighted," says Boody. "It's ironic that a land grant institution could be instrumental in bringing about land use that ends up being an environmental and economic burden on the public."
In a two-page letter drafted in November, the coalition urged members of the Board of Regents and the University administration to provide time and resources for Minnesota citizens to become involved in discussions about the future of the land. The decision on what to do with the land was originally put on an "accelerated" schedule. But after the proposals became public, residents from Dakota County and other parts of the state raised concerns about the lack of public participation in the decision process. As a result, University officials have recently backed off slightly on pushing through a decision in the immediate future.
The letter raised these questions about the future of the Rosemount land:
The letter-writing coalition includes: LSP; Minnesota Food Association; Minnesota Farmers Union; Alliance for Metropolitan Stability; Minnesota Catholic Conference; Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy; Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture; Minnesota Project; Minnesotans for an Energy-Efficient Economy; Rural Life Office, Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis; Sierra Club; Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota. Rollin Dennistoun signed on as an individual.
LSP staff changes
Marsha Neff has joined the Land Stewardship Project's Lewiston office as a community organizer. Neff has a degree in English education from the University of Iowa. She also has a master's degree in social work from the University of Minnesota, where she is currently working on a doctoral degree in American studies. Neff has taught history, women's studies and American studies on the college level and worked extensively with the Women's Resource Center in Winona, Minn.
Richard Ness has returned to LSP to coordinate the Monitoring Project and the Beginning Farmer programs. He worked as an on-farm researcher and educator for LSP from 1989 to 1994, and was instrumental in introducing Holistic Management to Minnesota. Ness has a master's degree in animal science from Iowa State University and has worked as an extension agent and consultant. Most recently he and his wife, Julia, farmed in Iowa. Ness is based in the Lewiston office.
Lynn Lokken is the new administrative assistant in LSP's western Minnesota office. Lokken served as an organizing intern with LSP in 1995 and early 1996. Lokken has worked as a nurse and lives near Montevideo on the Lac qui Parle River.
Jill Broeker is the new intern in LSP's Lewiston office. Broeker has a bachelor of science degree in natural resources and environmental studies from the University of Minnesota, where she concentrated on soil science and sustainable agriculture. Broeker has worked as a soil conservationist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She also helped plan and start up a Community Supported Agriculture farm and coordinated a local chapter of Literacy Volunteers of America. She lives in Lanesboro, Minn.
Faye Larson has left her position as LSP's financial manager to become the foundation fund administrator for the Children's Hospitals of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Larson joined LSP in 1991, and oversaw all of its budgetary operations. She also managed LSP's computer system and managed its Twin Cities office.
Efforts to control sprawling growth in Minnesota will be useless unless done under the auspices of a statewide land use framework, according to a nationally-recognized expert on sustainable land use. John DeGrove, director of the Florida Atlantic University/International University Joint Center for Environmental and Urban Problems, spoke to some 300 people at the Landmark Center in St. Paul on Nov. 7. His talk capped the Land Stewardship Project's fall discussion series, "Growing Smart in Minnesota."
County, city and township officials often resist the idea of guiding growth within a statewide framework because they believe it denies them control of the way local land is used, said DeGrove. In fact, without a framework that allows various zoning ordinances and infrastructure development projects to exist side-by-side without coming into conflict, a local government has little control over its future, he said.
"Local governments don't have any home rule if they don't have protection from their neighbor doing them in."
Approximately a dozen states have adopted some sort of growth management strategy within the past 30 years -- none of them in the Midwest. DeGrove said Minnesota's strong economy puts it in a prime position to adopt such a strategy.
The tools used to bring about sustainable development can be implemented using incentives and other voluntary measures, but local governments must be mandated to do planning in order for incentive-based growth control to work, said DeGrove. And even a mandated plan can be flexible. For example, a state can set up its growth strategy so that the requirement for creating a plan does not kick in for individual communities until they achieve a certain threshold of growth. That way, growth can be directed toward areas that have the room and are not threatened by sprawling development.
Local governments need to stop fighting each other and recognize they have a common foe that is fiscally irresponsible, destroys farmland and ruins the environment, said DeGrove.
"Sprawl is the enemy."
LSP's 1000 Friends of Minnesota program is proposing legislation to create a statewide land-use framework.
By Mary Schulte
The Land Stewardship Project's 1000 Friends of Minnesota program obtained new insights into the land-use concerns of citizens from all walks of life through public meetings in Duluth and Rochester this fall. Similar in format to the public forums held in St. Cloud last year, citizens and local policy makers voiced their concerns about regional land-use issues and discussed possible solutions. Although each region had specific concerns and solutions regarding land use, a common thread emerged. Overwhelmingly, each region cited the lack of direction from the state as a major problem. No one was advocating the state become involved in local planning, but rather provide a common framework and resources for local residents to carry out good coordinated planning.
Some of the common land-use concerns that the more than 300 participants shared included: lack of a statewide framework to facilitate local planning efforts; residential and commercial development that uses land space inefficiently; quality farmland being lost to low-density development around urban and regional centers; lack of sufficient efforts to redevelop areas within urban and regional centers; many local units of government not possessing a comprehensive plan and not involving their citizens in the planning process.
Common solutions discussed at the meetings were: a statewide framework would provide local governments with predictability and baseline goals in their planning efforts; coordinating planning with adjacent jurisdictions would reduce conflict and promote good land use; clustering of new houses and high density zoning would reduce development pressure on outlying areas; land use tools such as conservation easements, transfer of development rights and purchase of development rights would help preserve prime farmland; providing resources to townships such as legal and professional assistance would help local governments facilitate good planning.
The public is invited to a series of follow-up meetings entitled "Smart Planning for Smart Growth" (see OPPORTUNITIES/RESOURCES for dates and locations). It's hoped these meetings will serve as the next important step toward building a grassroots-based land-use framework for Minnesota.
Mary Schulte is an organizer in LSP's Twin Cities office.
By Fran Bockenhauer
Our "Taste of Lewiston" celebrations have always been a way for southeast Minnesota residents to come together, eat some good food and celebrate our rural culture. This year, we decided to acknowledge the "younger" aspects of our community with the theme "Rural Youth and the Arts." Five elementary, junior high and high school arts teachers from the Lewiston-Altura area joined us in bringing 85 students together for an evening of entertainment and celebration.
As the day of the gathering, Nov. 7, approached and our registrations kept rolling in, it became clear that Lewiston's St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church would be filled to capacity and then some. Indeed, in the end we had 250 registered guests. This left standing-room only and we ended up tearing down four tables after the chili supper to allow a staging area for our performers.
The volunteer "table hosts" who helped feed the participants had to use some creativity to accommodate so many people. Bruce and Laura Klein set a fabulous table that looked like a festive cruise atmosphere. No long tablecloth? No problem. Laura brought several brightly colored card table cloths in bright shades of red, blue and green and lapped them diagonally. Then they served their guests chili from bread bowls.
English teacher/drama director Mark Reisetter gave a powerful address about the importance of the arts. He criticized Minnesota politicians for cutting spending on the arts at a time when they were considering spending a budget surplus on a new Twin Cities baseball stadium.
After Reisetter had set the tone of the evening, the students came on and dazzled the standing-room only crowd. Elementary vocal music director Sheila Warner had her third- through sixth-grade students sing and dance on a very tight stage setting where they twirled scarves, as well as themselves. Throughout the event, artwork was displayed by the students of high school art instructor Gene Stevens. Ron Haugen, who teaches elementary band and high school vocals, used his guitar to help singing student Steve Baer with a solo. Mackenzie Haugen played a selection on the piano.
Reisetter's junior high students performed a scene from The Hobbit. High school band director, Gene Olstad, ended the evening with a percussion group as well as a scaled-down version of the band consisting of more than 20 students.
To top it all off, we had a number of volunteers who stayed to clean up so we were out of there shortly after 11 p.m.
Hopefully, this is just the start of something big. We know there will be changes made such as the need for a larger hall or school site, but that's a small price to pay for an evening of celebrating rural culture.
Fran Bockenhauer, LSP's southeast Minnesota office manager, lives on a farm near Lewiston.
By Brian DeVore
It can be a pricey proposition to keep a food producer like the milk cow healthy. In fact, no group of farmers spends more money on antibiotics, vaccinations, surgery and general veterinary care than dairy producers. The length of a cow's milking life -- several years -- combined with the fact that it must calf frequently and produce a commodity every day, twice a day, makes herd health care a major factor in the success of a dairy operation.
But a unique sustainable agriculture research project is challenging the notion that increasing veterinary bills are an inevitable part of dairying. Some farmers taking part in the Biological, Financial and Social Monitoring Project are seeing their herd health costs dropping well below the average for other dairy producers in the area.
They credit a low-cost, low-energy, environmentally-friendly farming method called management intensive grazing. Also called timed grazing, this system allows the animals to harvest their own feed by rotating them through a set of paddocks planted to a variety of forages. Sustainable agriculture experts say the system reduces overgrazing, allows fertilizer (in the form of manure) to be spread evenly and efficiently, and reduces a farm's reliance on confined housing and other expensive technologies.
And now it appears reduced health costs can be added to that list of management intensive grazing's advantages.
The Monitoring Project is a joint effort of the Land Stewardship Project, the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture and the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota. The project consists of a 25-member team that includes six farm families using management intensive grazing. Also on the team are biologists, soil scientists, an economist, a rural sociologist and government agency staff. They have been meeting for three years to research user-friendly ways of monitoring a farm's transition toward environmental, social and economic sustainability.
It was an analysis of the financial state of the farms that flagged the reduced animal health costs. One Monitoring Team dairy farm saw its proportion of gross income spent on health costs drop from 4.8 percent in 1990 to 1.5 percent in 1995. Another milking operation involved in the project had a health bill in 1995 that was less than half a percent of its gross income.
In comparison, the average proportion of gross income spent on herd health care by a sampling of 17 dairy farms in the Southeast Minnesota Farm Business Management Association was 4.7 percent in 1995.
Farmers and researchers believe the lower health costs are a result of management intensive grazing's ability to closely replicate natural processes, allowing ruminates to develop the kind of physical and biological systems that make them resistant to disease and injury.
"I think reduced health costs is a pretty common observation among management intensive graziers," says Dennis Johnson, a University of Minnesota animal scientist. "The animal is more fit than in a confined situation."
An example of where natural cow fitness can directly reduce health costs is in the case of "displaced abomasums." This is a condition where the cow's fourth, or true, stomach changes position inside the body cavity. Called DA for short, it throws a nasty monkey wrench into the normally efficient digestive system of the cow, making it so the animal simply can't absorb enough nutrients from the food its eating. This slashes production and, if left untreated, will eventually kill the cow.
It's a fairly simple procedure to have a veterinarian sew a wayward stomach to the abdominal wall, but such an operation costs $100 to $150 a pop. Toss in the lost milk production while the cow recovers, and the expense mounts.
But that's one expense New Prague dairy farmers Dave and Florence Minar don't have anymore. Their 100-cow operation, which is part of the Monitoring Project, switched to management intensive grazing five years ago. Their health expenses have been plummeting ever since -- from nearly 5 percent of total gross income to less than 2 percent.
Dave says besides the elimination of displaced abomasums, the farm has seen a reduction in overall digestive, reproductive and foot problems. He attributes the reduced health problems to better muscle tone on the part of the cattle; they get plenty of exercise, even in winter when the Minars spread hay in a manner that requires the cattle to walk on a regular basis.
A grass-based diet also provides cattle with an opportunity for their natural digestion system to develop. Small feed particles such as corn -- the mainstays of a confinement dairying -- have been pegged as one source of DA problems.
For 24 years, the Minars produced milk under a system that kept the cows totally confined year around. Corn and other types of feed were brought straight to the animals, eliminating their need to move more than a few yards during a lifetime. Manure was scraped out of the barn, stored and eventually spread on the land when weather and time permitted. Under such a system, the herd received little exercise or fresh air, and the family's veterinary bill showed it.
But simply letting the cows roam at will may not make them as bright- eyed and bushy-tailed as they can be. Research in Vermont has shown that herds under a management intensive grazing system are even healthier than those on permanent, non-rotated pasture. Dave believes moving cattle to fresh grass frequently is crucial to keeping them healthy.
"They're on clean pasture every 12 hours -- a pasture that's been sanitized by clean air and sunshine for 30 or 40 days," he says.
Economists have argued that the increased health costs of confinement milking are more than made up for by the greater production such a system brings.
But farmers using management intensive grazing often find it more economical to concentrate on profitability rather than overall productivity, says Johnson. A study conducted at the University of Minnesota North Central Experiment Station in 1991 and 1992 found that although a herd under management intensive grazing had a 7 percent lower milk yield when compared to its confined counterpart, reduced production costs resulted in a $48 higher average net return per grazed cow.
For more information on the monitoring team and its work, contact Richard Ness, Land Stewardship Project, 180 E. Main St., PO Box 130, Lewiston, MN 55952; tele. -- (507) 523-3366.
Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century
By James Howard Kunstler
Published by Simon & Schuster
New York
1996
318 pages
$24.00
Reviewed by Susan Maas
Bold imagination and plain-spoken common sense coexist naturally and effectively in James Howard Kunstler's book Home from Nowhere: Remaking our Everyday World for the 21st Century -- much the way a citizen and a business owner will flourish, individually and together, in the pleasant, cohesive, mixed-use "New Urbanist" towns the author envisions. Home from Nowhere and the New Urbanism it describes have enormous implications for the environment, the marketplace, agriculture, transportation, education, crime, social interaction and aesthetics in the civic realm.
The bad news is that many, if not most, communities born in this century were abysmally designed -- if they were "designed" at all -- and destined from the get-go to be anything but attractive, viable or sustainable. The good news is that architecture and construction standards have gotten so low that our buildings and other structures won't last anyway. The question is whether we'll replace this crumbling system with more of the same, something worse, or "places that are worthy of our affection," as Kunstler puts it.
The author believes a set of design principles for villages, towns and cities called New Urbanism offers a way to create something we will like long into the future. Essentially, New Urbanism produces settings that resemble the American town prior to World War II. In this respect it is fundamentally conservative -- although one of the many paradoxes surrounding this movement is that people who call themselves "conservative" can typically be counted on for knee-jerk opposition to New Urbanist ideas. It is radical, in that it presents a departure from almost everything we've built and paved for the past 50 years.
In listing some of the primary principles of New Urbanism (or "civic art," as Kunstler calls it), the author includes mixed-use neighborhoods (business and residential) limited in size, with housing for people of varying incomes; grid-type street patterns around a focused center, with well-defined edges; plenty of attractive, accessible civic buildings and spaces (like parks); efficient, affordable public transit; and -- however a community might decide to define this -- quality and harmony of architecture. Perhaps the biggest difference between such a community and Sprawl Division, U.S.A., is that in Kunstler's ideal community, human needs actually take precedence over the automobile -- not the other way around.
Though he certainly isn't proposing to do away with cars altogether, Kunstler makes no bones about his belief that they've done more damage to American towns and cities than any other single "advancement" in our time.
Much of the "charm" of old towns, Kunstler writes, is that they were built to the human scale, not around the convenience of cars. And miraculously, the people who live in these towns, as well as the thousands of tourists who flock to them, get by anyway.
Like his ground-breaking The Geography of Nowhere, Kunstler's latest book is full of theories about what's wrong with sprawling development and why -- most of them logical, a few of them arguable, and a couple that are borderline offensive. Writes Kunstler in an especially simplistic passage: "One of the unfortunate side effects of the psychology of entitlement is the notion both among the poor and government officials that jobs must be given to idle people, and that they must be good jobs -- which I take to mean something like professional careers. . . menial labor is now beneath all Americans, including those who have the skills or ambitions to do nothing else."
This statement is totally unsubstantiated. I didn't realize that every member of the American underclass was demanding an office and a company car. I thought people just wanted a livable wage and health coverage -- which used to be provided to even "menial laborers."
Although I found some specific discussion of social problems to be baseless, I agree with his basic underlying premise that an exaggerated sense of entitlement and a lack of civic responsibility permeates the culture. Suburbia has always promised, to a nation of individualists, "freedom from the consequences of one's social behavior." We've gone from calling ourselves "citizens" to being "consumers:" a word which implies no obligations to anything larger than our own needs and desires. Kunstler asks: "How can this be construed as anything but an infantile state of existence?"
Home from Nowhere is cautiously optimistic about our prospects for doing better. Working models for New Urbanism do exist. We have dozens of them in some of our older towns, many of which are being revitalized in a way that honors these important principles.
The New Urbanists have formidable challenges to meet, not least of which is convincing timid, bottom-line-oriented banks, developers and policymakers that spending money to make towns and cities truly habitable is worth it in the long run. But if the pride and contentment of these towns' residents doesn't convince skeptics, housing prices and the success of local businesses -- approval from "the market" -- should help.
Of course, New Urbanism just prescribes a "new" approach to buildings, roads and open space. It cannot force the changes in our habits and attitudes that will be required for it to work. In the end, Americans must decide, as Kunstler says, whether we "have the will to be civilized."
For me, it starts with a bus pass.
Susan Maas lives in Minneapolis.
By Dan Looker
Published by Iowa State University Press
Ames, Iowa
1996
183 pages
$22.45
Reviewed by Karen Malin
Farmers for the Future is neither a panacea for the modern agricultural malaise, nor an insulting step-by-step, farming-by-the- book approach to agriculture. Rather, it's one of those rare works that balances practical information about getting started in farming with the sense of excitement (and fear) beginning agrarians have as they attempt to make a go of it on the land.
Looker is a veteran agricultural journalist who has covered farming for the Des Moines Register and Lincoln Star newspapers, as well as the now defunct New Farm magazine. He now serves as Successful Farming magazine's business editor. This has given him a background not only in the business side of farming, but also in the personal, family-based aspects of life on the land.
"For those bold young people who want to farm, this book is a first step toward a lifetime of learning about agriculture -- and harvesting its true richness of self-reliance, a sense of place and community, and a love of the natural resources we have been given," Looker writes.
But the book does not sugar-coat the challenges facing would-be farmers. It begins with a sober, no-holds-barred trip through the hazardous world of market concentration, vertical integration, the farm debt crisis of the 1980s and the fickle assistance of government farm programs. Those who were asleep or otherwise occupied during the 1980s will find themselves overwhelmed at the odds that have been and are still stacked against the aspiring farmer, and will gain a new appreciation for the difficulties that face rural communities. Those who live and work in farming communities will appreciate the depressing, though honest, summary of the reality that is present in rural America. Farmers and non-farmers alike will be touched by the stories of people like Andy and Rita Steffen. "Losing the farm was almost like a death in the family," Rita tells Looker. "When it happens, you're losing your life's work."
But this book is no epitaph for the family farmer. Amidst the dire news, a case is made for the necessity of beginning farmers. Never one to play upon the nostalgia factor, Looker explores the economic and sociological consequences for rural communities when small family operations disappear. He quotes Walter Goldschmidt, a USDA economist who told a committee of the U.S. Senate in 1968 about his research comparing two California farming communities: one surrounded by many small to mid-sized family farmers, and the other dominated by a few corporate operations. His study showed that smaller-scale farms produce a middle class that has a "strong economic and social interest in their community. Differences in wealth among them are not great, and the people generally associate in those organizations which serve the community."
After wading through what may be old news to anyone familiar with the state of agriculture, Looker gets to the meat of the book. He provides a good overview of the direct and indirect help available to would-be farmers. From services that match beginning and retiring farmers to special credit opportunities and apprenticeships, Looker takes the reader through a vast array of potential, though tenuous, lifelines available to beginning farmers.
The most promising of these appear to be the approaches through which farmers are bypassing government programs and helping themselves and others become established. Filled with real life stories of visionary farmers who recruit their own successors, develop innovative partnerships, find creative ways to finance their farms, and form their own cooperatives, the last portion of the book leaves the reader wishing for an entire collection of such inspiring stories. In fact, Farmers for the Future's readability could have improved with less of an emphasis on the recent history of family farming, and more about the people who are making a positive future in agriculture.
The chapter, "Technique Not Technology: Skill and Intelligence Can Compete with Money," is by far the most informative and promising of the beginning farmer options that Looker offers. In this section, he shows how young, energetic families are making up for a lack of financial resources with intense applications of hard work and brain power.
"Sometimes it takes a fresh point of view to see whether this technological treadmill is helping or hurting your farm. We've seen how Steve Hopkins and Sara Andreasen used what Steve calls `high technique, not high technology' to get started in dairying," writes Looker. "Because Steve is willing to work hard moving fence to rotate milk cows from one paddock to the next, he can produce milk with less investment in land and machinery than conventional dairy farms."
From Don and Ruth Lowenstein, who sell beef and veal directly to their consumers in Missouri, to the Tom and Irene Frantzen family's ridge tillage system in Iowa, this section offers examples of innovative ways to make farming a conceivable endeavor without expensive and stressful investments in technology.
It is encouraging to see an emphasis placed on an often overlooked and under-appreciated resource when it comes to reviving the family farm -- the intelligence, innovation, and problem-solving abilities of farmers themselves. Families considering small scale farming as an occupation and way of life often receive only dire predictions for the future. If the predictions are accepted as fact, they will indeed become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps Farmers for the Future's greatest contribution is that it fosters the awareness that with hard work, innovation and a mind open to alternative solutions, the extinction of small- and moderate-scale family farming is anything but inevitable.
Karen Malin is a volunteer in LSP's southeast Minnesota office.
By Rebecca Kilde
Don Maronde grew up in Wood Lake, Minn., and he lives there now, just a few miles from his original home. In between, he's had quite a journey.
He left western Minnesota in the mid-1950s to go to college, and then became a Methodist minister. He worked in Brooklyn, N.Y., while in seminary and then took a job as a chaplain at a residential treatment center for mentally unstable boys. After seven years, he became disillusioned with the church, and quit. For a number of years, he worked factory jobs, and as a caretaker and handyman. In the mid-1980s, he returned to the Twin Cities, and eventually ended up back in Wood Lake, where he took a position as a social worker. Then he realized that social work as he knew it was just enabling the status quo to continue, and he left that position also.
Normally, all of these negative life experiences would serve as the ingredients for brewing up a potently cynical personality. But Maronde has maintained hope for the future through his experiences with good land stewardship.
His concern for environmental issues coalesced in 1975, when he ran across a copy of A Sand County Almanac at a book sale. Maronde had never heard of Aldo Leopold, but he bought the book because of its beautiful drawings.
"Once I started reading it, I didn't put it down until I was finished," he recalls. "I went out and bought copies for everyone I knew. It lit a fire."
Maronde's concern for the way we treat the land burned even brighter after reading Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America. By the time he had attended his first Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota meeting, he was hooked: Maronde felt right at home among people looking for practical alternatives to the current ways of treating the land.
One farmer Maronde met a few years ago, who was combining spirituality, social activism and old-fashioned hard work to bring about positive changes, was Larry Olson. Besides being a farmer, Larry is a minister at Yellow Medicine Lutheran church and a community activist. Currently, he is chair of the Land Stewardship Project's board of directors.
"Larry stands like a beacon, struggling to help a community of faith realize its full potential," says Maronde. "There's light there that illuminates what's wrong in the world. But there's also hope there, of empowering people to speak to what's wrong and wrestle with it."
Such illumination will be important as society grapples with the very difficult issues we are faced with, says the soft-spoken Maronde, who now works as a carpenter. Maronde used to think that making people aware of serious problems was the first step in solving them. Now he feels that we need to first examine and define our value system.
It's people, not technology, that will bring positive change, he says. One of the ways that Maronde helps make people part of positive ecological change is by serving on the Clean Up our River Environment (CURE) board of directors. CURE was started by LSP and is based in our western Minnesota office.
"CURE is bringing some of the vitality back to the community. I think we're working in the right place at the right time. Patrick Moore [LSP staff] has a skill for saying hard things in a way that can be heard. I'm glad to be a part of that. It's not just what CURE does for the watershed, but what it does to bring people together that's so important."
Maronde thinks it'll be hard to move people in his neighborhood to make significant positive changes, and says he's been a little timid about speaking out. But sometimes the most difficult (and important) dialogue takes the longest to get rolling.
"I'm a slow starter," he says with a laugh. "I just turned 61, and I still feel like I'm finding my voice."
Rebecca Kilde is LSP's membership coordinator.
Sprawl speaker's bureau application deadline Feb. 14
The Land Stewardship Project's 1000 Friends of Minnesota program will be holding two training sessions this winter for a newly formed volunteer speaker's bureau. Trained volunteers will be called on to give presentations and lead group discussions concerning the work LSP is doing in the area of controlling sprawling growth and bringing about sustainable land use.
To apply for the speaker's bureau, contact: LSP, 2200 4th St. White Bear Lake, MN 55110; tele. -- (612) 653-0618. The application deadline is Feb. 14. The training sessions are the evenings of Feb. 25 and March 4.
Biodynamics for beginners
The Michael Fields Agricultural Institute in East Troy, Wis., is offering an introductory course on Biodynamic Agriculture during four weekends in January, February, March and April.
For more information, contact the institute at: W2493 County Rd. ES, East Troy, WI 53120; tele. -- (414) 642-3303.
Dial-an-answer
Minnesotans with access to a touch-tone telephone can get free information on topics ranging from safe home food preservation to methods for managing a small farm. "Info-U," a service of the University of Minnesota Extension Service, is available 24 hours a day. This service also offers fact sheets via fax on yard, gardening and nutrition topics. In the Twin Cities area, call 624-2200. If you live in a participating county outside the metropolitan area, call 1-800-525-8636. p
Dutch farm tour March 3-9
"The Netherlands Farm Tour" is an intensive one-week study seminar that offers participants a chance to see Dutch farming operations that are developing and using economically and environmentally sound farming methods.
The cost is $1,295, which includes accommodations, food and in-country transportation. For more information, contact: Emily Green, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, 1313 5th St. S.E., Suite 303, Minneapolis, MN 55414; tel: (612) 379-5980; e-mail: egreen@iatp.org.
Valuable PDR/TDR ally
"Cost of Community Services" studies have proven to be excellent tools for educating the public on the need for permanent farmland protection. This kind of research examines tax records in individual communities and determines the true net cost to taxpayers of allowing development to take place uninhibited.
For example, a 1994 analysis of three Minnesota communities experiencing development pressures found that for every $1 in tax revenue generated by residential development, on average $1.04 was spent to provide services such as sewers and roads. Farmland, on the other hand, added on average twice as much to the local tax base as it demanded back in services, according to the report, titled Farmland and the Tax Bill: The Cost of Community Services in Three Minnesota Cities.
For a copy of this study, send $10 (that includes postage; Minnesota residents add 6.5 percent sales tax) to: LSP, 2200 4th St., White Bear Lake, MN 55110. Call (612) 653-0618 for information on bulk orders. p
The pesticide highway
Pesticide Management at the Crossroads is a 288-page Consumers Union report that analyzes trends in pesticide use, examines the threats these chemicals pose to people and the environment, and tallies the costs and benefits of pesticide regulation. It also documents several examples of "integrated pest management" being used as a pesticide-free alternative to the current chemical-intensive food and fiber production system.
For a copy, send $39.95 (that includes shipping & handling) to: Professional Mailing & Distribution Services Inc., PO Box 2013, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701; tele. -- (301) 617-7815.
Sicking the dogs on factory hogs
Hog Wars: The Corporate Grab for Control of the Hog Industry and How Citizens are Fighting Back is a 21-page summary of what concerned citizens are doing to keep industrial pork production from taking over their communities.
For a copy, send $5 (that includes shipping) to: Missouri Rural Crisis Center, 710 Rangeline St., Columbia, MO 65201. Make checks payable to the Missouri Rural Crisis Center. Call (573) 449-1336 for information on bulk orders.
Sustainable ag & social capital
Social Capital and Sustainability: the Community and Managing Change in Agriculture is a 22-minute video that describes how sustainable agriculture contributes to vital rural communities. It discusses how changes in the use of resources such as reduced federal programs, increased globalization of markets, advanced information systems and increased concern for the environment alter the landscape and require changes in human, financial and social resources within the community.
To order a copy, (specify publication EDC-88) send $20 to: Extension Distribution Center, Iowa State University, 119 Printing & Publications Building, Ames, IA 50011-3171; tel: (515) 294-5247; e-mail: pubdist@exnet.iastate.edu.
JAN. 7 -- Minnesota Legislature begins new session; Contact: LSP's Lee Ronning or Mark Schultz at (612) 653-0618 about legislation pertaining to stewardship issues
JAN. 12 -- Brewster Kneen, editor/publisher of the Ram's Horn, and author of Cargill: The Invisible Giant, will speak in the Twin Cities; Contact: Jan O'Donnell, MFA, (612) 644-2038
JAN. 15 -- Chippewa River Stewardship Partnership Interdisciplinary Team meeting, 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Cottonwood Creek Hunting Preserve, Benson, Minn.; Contact: Patrick Moore, LSP (320) 269-2105
JAN. 16 -- LSP's 1000 Friends of Minnesota's first "Smart Planning for Smart Growth" meeting, 7 p.m.-9 p.m., Courtroom 317, Landmark Center, 75 W. 5th St., St. Paul; Contact: Lee Ronning or Scott Elkins, LSP (612) 653-0618
MID-JAN. -- A series of three public meetings in Minnesota to review legislative issues related to sustainable agriculture and family farming; Contact: Mark Schultz, LSP (612) 823-5221
JAN. 17 -- LSP's Board of Directors will meet with western Minnesota-area LSP members; Contact: (320) 269-2105
JAN. 17-18 -- Northern Plains Sustainable Ag Society conference, Jamestown, N. Dak.; Contact: (701) 256-2424
JAN. 22-24 -- Introductory Holistic Management course, taught by LSP's Audrey Arner, Mankato, Minn.; Contact: Tim King, Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota (320) 732-6203
JAN. 24 -- LSP's Lee Ronning will speak on sprawl at the Minnesota state meeting of the Soil and Water Conservation Service, University of Minnesota, St. Paul campus
JAN. 30-FEB. 1 -- Minnesota Fruit & Vegetable Growers Association annual conference and trade show, featuring sessions on organic weed control, direct marketing, alternative crops and small-scale greenhouse production, St. Cloud Civic Center; Contact: (612) 434-5929
FEB. 1-7 -- LSP's George Boody will attend Kellogg Foundation's Farming Systems Initiative meeting, Earth College, Costa Rica
FEB. 6-7 --1997 Farmer-Led Watershed Conference, Good Counsel Academy, Mankato, Minn.; Contact: (612) 379-5980
FEB. 7 -- Clean Up our River Environment (CURE) annual meeting, 7 p.m., Granite Falls, Minn.; Contact: LSP (320) 269-2105
FEB. 7-9 -- First Annual Gathering of the Midwest Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, Des Moines, Iowa; Contact: Mark Schultz, LSP (612) 823-5221
FEB. 20 -- "Smart Planning for Smart Growth" meeting (see Jan. 16 item)
FEB. 21-22 -- Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota annual meeting, Rochester, Minn.; Contact: Tim King, SFA (320) 732-6203
Joint annual meeting of the Neb. Sustainable Ag. Society and the Neb. Fruit and Vegetable Growers, Columbus, Neb.; Contact: (402) 254-2289
MARCH 4-6 -- Holistic Management course, central Minnesota; Contact: Audrey Arner, LSP (320) 269-2105.
MARCH 7-8 -- LSP's Audrey Arner & Jodi Dansingburg will give presentations on Holistic Management & the Monitoring Project at the Upper Midwest Organic Farming Conference, Sinsinawa Mound Center, Wis.; Contact: Faye Jones (715) 772-3153
MARCH 20 -- "Smart Planning for Smart Growth" meeting (see Jan. 16 item)
APRIL 12 -- Public forum on purchase of development rights (PDR), transfer of development rights (TDR) and creating greenbelts; Contact: Scott Elkins, LSP (612) 653-0618
MAY 17 -- Clean Up our River Environment (CURE) canoe trip and canoe drawing, Minnesota River; Contact: Patrick Moore, LSP (320) 269-2105
MAY 17-19 -- 8th annual Minnesota Environmental Education Conference; Contact: 1-800-657-3843
JULY 30-31 -- Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture's 10th Anniversary Conference, Ames, Iowa; Contact: Rich Pirog, (515) 294-3711
Check the Calendar for the latest on upcoming LSP events.
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