COVER STORY: The Stream Team --Improving water quality isn't just about keeping pollution out of our streams and rivers. It's also about people like Ralph Lentz and Larry Gates.

LSP Q&A: Nancy Paddock and Laura Clark talk about the Planting in the Dust play.

POETRY: "If there was no room at the Super 8, & Christ was born in a confinement barn," by Linda Winter-Hodgson

LSP NEWS: Flood control sparks strong emotions; Marsha Neff now interim membership coordinator; Narine Ghazarian new LSP intern; Farm Beginnings classes to start soon; Freedom to Farm guide now available

LSP OFFICE UPDATES: Sharing a vision of quality of life; Policy - Speaking out for family farming

BOOK REVIEW: Deady Feasts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague by Richard Rhodes

STEWARDSHIP SHOP: An updated listing of Land Stewardship Project resources

STEWARDSHIP CALENDAR

Cover Story:
The Stream Team

Improving water quality isn't just about keeping pollution out of our streams and rivers. It's also about people like Ralph Lentz and Larry Gates.

By Brian DeVore

It's the kind of brilliant fall day when even a lowly farm stream takes on the look of a sun-soaked gem. But as Larry Gates and Ralph Lentz tramp along a short section of Sugarloaf Creek in southeast Minnesota, it becomes clear to the two men that this particular waterway's glowing complexion is more than the result of the season's temporary luster.

Its grass-covered banks have a gentle slope to them. The channel is deep and there are overhanging areas at the water's edge, perfect habitat for fish and other creek residents. To put an exclamation point on the stream's already excellent bill of health, Gates squats next to the fast running water and scoops up a handful of the creek bed. He cracks a smile as the water drains through his fingers, leaving a mound of clean gravel. The presence of relatively silt-free alluvial material is a sign that little erosion is coming off the pastures adjacent to the creek. It's also an indication that the current is running fast enough to cleanse itself of excess silt.

A creek doing this well can appeal to all the senses. Lentz steps into the channel and cold water slurps around his rubber chore boots. The stream is making the kind of "babbling brook" sounds associated with fast, narrow waterways.

"I like the sound," Lentz says as he wades against the current. Gates agrees: "It's turning into a gurgler."

This is a far cry from the kind of waterways normally found in farm country: slow, wide creeks filled to the brim with chocolate braids of silt-carrying water. Constantly sloughing cliff-like banks devoid of vegetation make it almost impossible to stroll down to the channel for a closer look at the state of things.

Sugarloaf Creek is unusual for a couple of other reasons, also. For one thing, its good health is due in large part to a strategy that utilizes cattle - long considered the enemies of healthy watersheds - to improve the stability of the streambank. But just as importantly, this stream is the product of a unique alliance between two people who normally may not see eye-to-eye on the issue of land use.

Gates is a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) watershed coordinator. Lentz is a farmer. The stretch of Sugarloaf that looks so good on this particular day winds through Lentz's 160-acres before flowing another three miles to the Mississippi River.

That a farmer and a natural resource professional would join forces to improve a waterway may seem unusual in this age of contentious debates over property rights and agriculture's role in degradation of water quality. In fact, when Gates and Lentz began discussing the relationship between farms and streams more than 20 years ago, they weren't always on the same page.

"It ended in a shouting match" recalls Gates of one of those first conversations.

The shouting was over whether cattle and creeks mix. But Lentz and Gates eventually got beyond the yelling stage. In fact, these days more often than not they speak with a united voice. This has made them respected and effective promoters of a way of managing streambanks that could prove to be nothing short of revolutionary. They are also living examples of the good that can come from joining forces to challenge conventional wisdom and cookie-cutter solutions to complicated resource problems. And perhaps most importantly, Gates and Lentz are proof that a farmer and a professional ecologist can get along; they can even become good friends.

Cussing over creeks & cattle
To comprehend the environmental/political chasm Lentz and Gates have bridged, one must consider the entire debate over having cattle in streams.

In the depths of summer, cattle love to lumber down to the creek and wallow in the cool water, foraging on the lush growth found there. Over time, the impact of several large cattle (the weight of one mature beef or dairy animal is roughly 1,000 pounds), each with four sharp hooves, can be disastrous. They denude the area of the plant life needed to bind the streambank soil together, creating a wide, shallow waterway that erodes easily. Couple that with the erosion that takes place on overgrazed pastures surrounding waterways, and the result is a big black eye for the livestock industry.

In the West, the grazing of riparian areas - the thin ribbons of vegetation that border waterways - damages more river miles than any other source of non-industrial pollution, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Streams in the rest of the country are equally at risk, particularly in areas where dairy and beef production is intense.

Waterways such as the Mighty Mississippi get most of the press. But 95 percent of the river miles found in this country are in the more humble form found on Lentz's farm: a winding creek just a few feet across and barely deep enough to swamp a pair of boots. The rural nature of most small waterways is one reason agriculture is the single biggest source of non-point water pollution in the country.

"So even if you don't have an impact with grazing on the larger waterways, you will have an inordinate impact on water quality overall by affecting these smaller streams," says Bruce Vondracek, a scientist with the Minnesota Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Unit.

That's why people like Gates (as a watershed coordinator for the DNR, he has waded the waters of just about every small stream in southeast Minnesota during the past two decades) are so concerned when they see cattle standing knee-deep in muddied water.

Water is for fighting over
Natural resource professionals aren't the only ones who get heartburn over agriculture's relationship with water. Many farmers cringe when a college-trained ecologist shows up to take a look at their land use practices. Even worse, they may see these people as the enemy, someone who is simply trying to punish them for not treating the land the way "experts" say it should be treated.

Two years ago, then Minnesota Agriculture Commissioner Elton Redalen made a statement about farmers wanting to "get out the shotgun" when DNR officials entered their property. Redalen, a farmer himself, made the comment at a meeting where officials and landowners were discussing ways of reducing sediment pollution in the Minnesota River, one of the dirtiest waterways in the Midwest. He later apologized for the comment and dismissed it as a bad joke, but the furor the statement created brought into the limelight long-standing tensions between some farmers and environmental officials.

"Sometimes we get in a situation where you're either a cop, or the one being copped," says Gates of farmer-environmentalist relationships.

Open eyes, open mind
Perhaps at one time the relationship between Gates and Lentz had the potential to disintegrate to such a level. But the way they interact today is more akin to two neighbors wrestling with a local problem they have equal stake in solving. The seed of this stream team is an informal experiment that was set in motion by Lentz three decades ago.

That's when he approached technicians in the local Soil Conservation Service office (now the Natural Resources Conservation Service) about creating a conservation plan for his portion of Sugarloaf Creek. What they suggested was the standard recommendation of the time: fence the stream off, plant trees and, most of all, keep the cattle out. There's sound reasoning behind such advice. One U.S. Department of Agriculture study of an Ohio watershed during the 1980s and 1990s found that creating a zone of riparian growth along a waterway via permanent fencing reduced a stream's sediment concentration by more than half. So in 1967 Lentz fenced off four acres along the stream, planted spruce, pine, cedar and white ash, and sat back to watch what would happen, convinced he had done the right thing. In fact, the farmer's initial plan was to fence off the entire creek where it ran through his property, creating a permanent riparian strip along both sides of the stream. He grazes approximately 100 acres, and doesn't really need the forage found next to the stream to make his cow-calf operation pencil out economically.

A changing paradigm
But things get busy on the farm and Lentz never got around to building more fence. And it was beginning to look like maintaining a permanent riparian area was a lot of work, anyway. Over the years, a couple of major floods wrecked the posts and wire, forcing the farmer to rebuild and perform more maintenance on the fencing than he would have liked.

And by 1989, another disincentive for building more permanent fence emerged. Lentz didn't know this in 1967, but by not getting around to fencing off the whole stream, he had created a perfect laboratory for comparing different land uses on a stretch of creek roughly a quarter of a mile long. Within two decades, his makeshift demonstration plot began telling an interesting tale.

The fenced-off area, which was now heavily forested, was host to a wide, shallow stream with erosion-prone banks. Apparently, the trees had grown so well that they had shaded out the grasses and other undergrowth that hold soil together.

The section right above the fenced-off area, where Lentz retarded succession by allowing cattle to periodically graze, was far more stable. The grass-covered banks were rounded and gradual instead of sharp. The streambed itself was narrow and deeper in the grazed area. In short, the permanently fenced-off section looked worse than the grazed area.

"I was very surprised to see the fenced off area deteriorating," recalls Lentz. "What I had been taught was not what I was seeing." He became convinced that simply planting trees along a streambank was not the answer. In fact, Lentz began to believe that in some cases allowing cattle to graze along a stream on a limited basis could improve the waterway considerably by opening it up to more diversity of plant life.

The farmer had a hard time getting people - especially natural resource professionals - to listen to him. It wasn't like he was claiming that trees were bad for streambanks and livestock should be allowed to run amok in our floodplains. Lentz just wanted people to take a second look at the "cattle are always bad for streams" mind-set.

At first Gates was skeptical as well. But he was pleased that the farmer was willing to consult him on what he was observing on his own farm.

"It was real heartening to get a call from Ralph and to realize this landowner was noticing things in a very sophisticated way." And when the watershed expert went to the farm and saw what Lentz was so excited about, he realized something important was taking place. "Anybody with two eyeballs could see what was going on," Gates recalls. "The land was telling us a story."

In fact, what Gates saw at the Lentz farm fit with observations he was beginning to gather in other parts of southeast Minnesota at that time: Sometimes controlled grazing of a streambank helped, not hindered, its stability. It's based on the idea that cattle hooves can be used to create a disturbance in an area for a short period of time - no more than a few days. The ground may look like it was hit by a mud-filled atom bomb immediately after the cattle leave, but it also creates a nutrient-rich environment for new growth to take place.

All that intense impact can also break down the edges of a sharp streambank, creating a gentler slope for plants to establish themselves. Using short-term livestock disturbance to rehabilitate an area dovetails nicely with a livestock production method called "management intensive grazing." Lentz has been using this technique - he calls it "rational grazing" - since the late 1980s to produce beef cattle.

Also called "timed grazing" or "controlled grazing," this system rotates cattle among a series of small paddocks using movable electric fencing. The cattle only stay in one paddock for a short time - anywhere from several hours to a few days - allowing them to graze in a manner that fits with a forage plant's (and the soil's) ability to recover. Lentz reasons that since the animals only stay in the same paddock for a few days at the most, why not make part of a streambank in need of disturbance one of those grazed paddocks?

Farmers who use controlled grazing report lower costs and thus higher income returns per acre. Environmentalists like this technique because it spreads nutrients (in the form of manure) in a manner that allows the plants to make use of it efficiently, reducing pollution runoff. In short, timed grazing as it's practiced by farmers like Lentz can improve water quality two ways: by reducing the amount of runoff coming from the surrounding countryside; and by stabilizing streambanks so that they do not directly contribute to siltation problems. In fact, a three-year study of six farms practicing management intensive grazing, including the Lentz operation, found that such a technique can reduce the amount of sediment flowing into a waterway. The study, conducted by Laurie Sovell of the Minnesota Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Unit, also found that a stream degraded by overgrazing starts to recover as it flows through a timed grazing area.

It may be no surprise that controlled grazing is environmentally superior to highly erosive, chemical-intensive systems such as row crop production. But even continuous grazing systems, where cattle are turned out into one or two large pastures for the entire season, are ecological disasters when compared to the use of many smaller paddocks. Because the cattle are allowed to roam at will, continuous grazing often results in overgrazing, heavy manure concentrations and ruined waterways. And continuous grazing's dirty legacy has made it difficult for the environmental community to comprehend that cattle and creeks can ever be a good mix. Given this bias, it should be no surprise that it has become second nature for government personnel to prescribe a streambank management strategy that involves building a fence, planting some trees and walking away. A system that involves observing, reacting to the needs of the environment and repeating the procedure over and over, adjusting for changes the whole time, is much harder to write down in a how-to manual.

Todd Lein is a Minnesota-based staff member with American Rivers, an organization quite concerned with the amount of sediment and nutrients making their way into our nation's waterways. He's seen Lentz's streambank experiment firsthand and is a believer, even going so far as to try a version of it on his own farm near Northfield, Minn. But when Lein brought up the concept of controlled streambank grazing at a recent meeting of environmental professionals, the reception was less than enthusiastic.

"An Environmental Protection Agency analyst said, 'So all these years we've tried to get cattle off the streambanks and now you're telling us to put them back.' I can understand their confusion. It's pretty radical thinking to say cattle and streams mix. And to suggest cattle can be a tool to improve stream corridors, that's an even bigger paradigm shift. You don't believe it unless you see it. That's the strength of Ralph's theory, you can see it in action."

Natural resource experts also express concerns that farmers will see any official approval of controlled streambank grazing as a green light to do it everywhere and under any conditions.

"I have no doubt that streambank grazing can work, especially on smaller streams where the banks aren't too tall," says Richard Schultz, a forest ecologist working on riparian management techniques at Iowa State University's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. "But it's too sensitive an issue to broadcast."

Neither Gates nor Lentz are claiming that grazing is the cure-all for what ails a waterway. What works on this farm may have a negative impact on a different one in the same watershed. In fact, they point out several examples of streambanks in southeast Minnesota that have been improved considerably with the planting of trees and the exclusion of livestock. Indeed, Gates believes the portion of Sugarloaf on the Lentz farm that's the most ecologically healthy has a 50-50 mix of grass and trees. And in the end, trees protected by fencing are still preferable to continuous grazing or row crop production adjacent to the waterway.

The point is that each farm is different, with its own particular set of environmental, economic and human circumstances. The key is for each farmer to be in a position to respond to those circumstances. If Lentz was tied into one way of raising cattle - an expensive, high-tech total confinement system, for example - he would be limited in how he could manage other aspects of his operation, including the waterway.

"A system like this is never static. It's constantly changing," says Gates. "The key is to remain flexible enough to react to the changes." The advantages to that kind of flexibility are starting to become clear to more farmers and natural resource professionals, thanks to Lentz and Gates. The two were key in making stream monitoring a part of the Monitoring Team, an interdisciplinary project that's brought farmers and experts together (see sidebar). They have also teamed up to tell other farmers and natural resource professionals about the benefits of controlled streambank grazing. It is a partnership with a potential to reach a wide audience. After all, Lentz may have had a hard time getting natural resource professionals to listen to him 10 years ago, but with Gates around to help speak on the scientific basis behind streambank grazing, some are starting to see the possibilities it offers. And farmers who may have dismissed Gates as a desk-bound bureaucrat are more willing to listen to Lentz, a former high school vocational agriculture teacher who has decades of farming experience.

"We're a heck of a lot better explaining this together, than we are by ourselves," says Gates.

As a result, a handful of livestock producers in the area have adopted various versions of controlled streambank grazing after attending field days on the Lentz farm. As more farmers experiment with controlled streambank grazing, they'll no doubt help answer a lot of questions related to the technique. For example, when, where and for how long can it be used? Lentz and Gates often have heated discussions over these and other unknowns related to waterway management. But even during these contentious debates, it's obvious they share much respect for each other.

"Larry is not a complete idealist, he's a working scientist who is practical," says Lentz as he sips coffee on his back deck, watching Hugo the bull lumber out of Sugarloaf Creek a hundred yards away. "Larry and I complement each other and we both know the importance of getting out in the field. Teamwork between farmers and bureaucrats is always good, except we have too much of it taking place in meetings. It needs to take place out here, out on the land."

Gates says Lentz still possesses the power to find solutions to problems on his own land and in his own community.

"The important thing here is Ralph observes," says Gates. "Ralph could identify 50 plants on his own farm. He also understands you don't just look at something for one year and draw your conclusions. He does things in little bits and pieces and takes the time to observe the results, and adjust for them. "

The dream stream
It's been three decades since the experiment on Sugarloaf Creek began, and almost a decade since Larry Gates saw with his own eyes that cattle and streams are not always mutually exclusive. For study purposes, the quarter-mile stretch of stream has been divided into section A (a 50-50 mix of grass and trees, partial controlled grazing), section B (grass-only, controlled grazing) and section C (trees-only, no grazing). Lentz is still experimenting with different grazing periods and fencing techniques. This year he made section B into a paddock less than two acres in size. Then, in late June he turned 80 cows and calves into the paddock for two days of grazing and trampling.

Gates and Lentz examined the impacted area one day this fall.

"It was pounded. It was really walloped," says Gates as he checks out the streambank. He's obviously in awe at the destruction more than 300 bovine hooves can have. But the watershed expert is also impressed by the positive impact such a controlled intrusion can leave behind. Dozens of species of plants, including sedges, reed canary grass and bluegrass, are blanketing the area on this particular day.

The two men head downstream and Gates kicks up a leopard frog, an increasingly rare sight in farm country. Then a tiny shrew tears itself free of the overhanging grass and drops into the creek. In a burst of panicky energy, it motors the few feet of water to the other side and scrambles up the grass-covered bank.

Lentz says taking care of the stream and its inhabitants may not be critical to the financial success of his farm, but it is important to him for other reasons.

"It's just natural for me to be interested in streams. It's just who I am. I find it a lot more entertaining walking along a stream than on a golf course."

The two men wrestle their way through heavy brush into section C, where a dense stand of box elders and other trees throws the area into deep shade. Muck makes the walking difficult and steep, eroding banks offer no footing for soil-binding plants. The contrast within such a short distance on the same stream is astounding.

As they head back to the farmstead across the creek, the farmer and the ecologist get into a good-natured argument over the length of time a streambank should be rested between grazings. This isn't the first time they've debated the issue, and it won't be the last.

"We didn't even get in a fight today," Lentz says, smiling. "That's no fun."

LSL Q&A:
A ground-breaking performance

EDITOR'S NOTE: One day in the midst of the farm crisis of the early 1980s, Nancy Paddock went to her bedroom and began writing a play about one woman's feelings toward the land. Within a week, Planting in the Dust was completed. At first, this provocative play was performed in a few small towns as a way to spark discussion at Land Stewardship Project meetings. But it soon became clear that Planting in the Dust had a much wider appeal. It eventually traveled to communities throughout the country and even into Canada. Laura Clark, who did the bulk of the performances, estimates that at one time she alone was doing 75 presentations of the play annually. In fact, as many as 500 performances of Planting in the Dust were given beween 1985 and 1989. In addition, Planting scripts have been sent as far away as the former Soviet Union and Australia, where people have put their own spin on the play's stewardship message.

This half-hour, one-act monologue features Annie, a 35-year-old woman who has returned to the farm her great-grandparents homesteaded. During the course of the play, she talks about her relationship with the land and her frustrations at the disregard for soil conservation her neighbor Jordan has. She also talks about the experiences of her ancestors on the land, including the grandmother for whom she was named. This critically acclaimed play was one of the first attempts to address the land stewardship issue from a young woman's point of view. But audiences of both genders and all ages flocked to the performances, which ranged in venues from the great outdoors to church parsonages to college campuses.

Paddock and Clark recently talked to the Land Stewardship Letter about the origins of Planting in the Dust and the effect it had on audiences. Paddock, who worked for LSP from 1982 until 1994, now teaches high school English and journalism in Litchfield, Minn. In 1985, she, along with her husband Joe and fellow Minnesota writer Carol Bly, wrote the LSP book Soil and Survival. Paddock has also authored a book of poems called A Dark Light.

Clark and her husband, Paul Hansen, operate Cornerstone Productions, a theater production company based in Minneapolis. She specializes in "social justice" performances and is currently doing a project on the history of women in sports.

Nancy Paddock

LSL: How did you get the idea for writing Planting in the Dust?

Paddock: My husband Joe, Ron Kroese, Carol Bly and I were doing organizing work in the high erosion counties in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa in the early days of LSP. Carol and I were kind of frustrated that there were almost no women at these meetings. We thought, "Well how in the world are we going to reach women?"

I guess the thing that really stimulated it was when we had a meeting on soil erosion in Worthington [Minn.] and there were a whole bunch of Jordans standing in the back. They were very hostile and the poor local soil conservation official was trying to stand up to them. I was scared, but not in a physical way. I was scared because I didn't know how to talk to them. I didn't have any sense of being credible with them.

We thought we'd never reach these Jordan-like people. So what audiences could we reach? We also needed a vehicle for reaching urban people, and educating them about the problem of poor land stewardship. After all, they were the ones that would have major input into policy affecting agricultural land use. We needed to get a consensus for conservation on the part of all the people, not just farmers. In the end, the play was actually Carol's idea, but she didn't have time to write it, so I gave it a shot.

LSL: Up until that time, you had written poetry and oral histories, was a one-character play difficult to do?

Paddock: Well, Joe and I had collected a lot of oral history stories through our 10 years of work with the National Farmers Union's American Farm Project, and so the character of Annie was a composite of all the farm women I had met, as well as a little part of me.

I just started writing and pretty soon I had one line. All of a sudden she started talking and it was really amazing how it flowed. It was just like that character must have been cooking in my mind for a long time.

LSL: What was it like to see this character, speaking your words, the words of countless farm women, come to life on stage?

Paddock: Well, of course we had practiced it with Laura, but practice is practice. So when I was sitting in the audience at the first official performance and there she was on stage, it was all of sudden like there are the words made flesh, incarnate. It was so bizarre. It was like something magic was happening. My body just tingled for the whole 30 minutes.

LSL: Annie is a very controlled woman, but there seems to be a lot of anger seething below the surface.

Paddock: Yeah, that was the idea. When I worked with the actresses I'd always direct them to not show the anger but make it known that it's there, that you're trying to be a nice lady, but you're like a volcano about to explode.

LSL: You said there's a lot of yourself in Annie. Does that include the anger?

Paddock: Partly the anger, but also partly the mystical part about the land being in her body and water flowing through her veins. I have a lot of poems that have that sort of thing in them.

LSL: What would Annie be doing today?

Paddock: Well, she'd be about 45 now and her kids would be out of high school probably. She'd probably go get a job someplace to get out of debt. Maybe she'd go back to teaching, which is what she did before going into farming.

LSL: Were you surprised at how popular the play became within a relatively short time?

Paddock: Yes. We initially had a grant to just do 12 performances in small towns in Minnesota. But every time we did a performance, we would get several requests for more performances in other areas. It just started getting booked in all sorts of places. It went kind of nuts and pretty soon it ended up going to other states and I ended up rewriting it a few times to fit local conditions. Whatever local organization was sponsoring the play would send me some history from the region and I would rewrite parts of it to fit. For example, Illinois didn't experience the Dust Bowl like the western states did, so when the play was performed there it reflected that. And when the play was done for black audiences in Arkansas, it reflected a different rural experience as well. And Montana was very different because that state's Dust Bowl was so much worse than it was anywhere else.

I just happened to open up this Montana version of it and at one point the Montana Grandma Annie says, "Folks got so they could live on pert' near nothing - ground corn cakes and spuds. Of course they ate grasshoppers until rattlesnakes came in season." I guess sometimes when things are so extreme you just have to laugh.

LSL: So you would get actresses for different states?

Paddock: Laura still did a lot of the performances even in other states, but we also used a lot of local performers. I would go and help them get ready for the performance and give them tips and then come back to Minnesota. It was a lot of traveling, but I met some fascinating people.

LSL: LSP used Planting in the Dust as an organizing tool to raise people's awareness of stewardship issues. Were you surprised at some of the emotional discussion that would arise after the play?

Paddock: I didn't get involved in the after-play discussions as much as others but often there were older people there who talked about their experiences during the Dust Bowl and how this reminded them of that. And sometimes there were people who were in the middle of decisions about their land and were really very passionate about what they should do. I even heard of one person who changed what she wanted to do with her land as a result. And there were also the people who were angry. Once in a while Jordan was there, and he was very annoyed.

It really was the best writing experience I ever had.

Laura Clark

LSL: Before you did Planting in the Dust, you were performing in pretty conventional plays. What did you think when Nancy approached you about doing a half-hour, one-person play about a woman's relationship with the soil and the land?

Clark: My first thought was, "Oh my gosh this is dull." And my second thought was, frankly, "This will be a great gig for a couple of months to pay rent."

But then I read the play and was really affected by it. Oh, it was beautifully, brilliantly written. It really was. It's poetry. And I am telling you, it changed my life. It literally did. It changed my view of what success was. I couldn't help but be affected by the spirituality of it. And once I started performing it and witnessed the emotions it invoked in others, I really knew this was something special. People would be so worked up. It just seemed sometimes the tension in the room could be cut with a knife.

One person that stands out in my mind was a woman who was my age who came up and said, "My Dad has been a staunch conservationist for years and in this room tonight was a neighbor who farms fencerow to fencerow and leaves no stubble on the fields." She was in tears, and she said that she had wanted to talk to this neighbor for years, and her Dad had wanted to discuss land use with him for years but hadn't found a way to do it. She said, "Thank you, this is a way for us to talk to him." That's when I knew that wow, we had a tiger by the tail.

LSL: But couldn't people talk about their relationship to the land without some sort of play to prompt discussion?

Clark: It's not okay in many communities for people to experience overwhelming kinds of emotions when they're talking about the land. It's not okay for us to experience those in context of our own day-to-day life. But it is okay to talk about it in terms of the characters in the play and how these characters feel. It was so revealing to me. If people knew how much they were saying about themselves by talking about what they projected into the characters, they would have never opened their mouth.

LSL: Did you ever run into any Jordans?

Clark: Yes, the Jordans were scary people. But the one situation that really stands out wasn't during a general discussion after the play. It was at a discussion around the dinner table with a family who was hosting me. One faction was contracted to run a corporate farm, which was farming fencerow to fencerow. And another faction inside this family consisted of the people who brought us in to do this program that night. And they fought across the dinner table about it. It was like a family divided against itself on this issue.

Finally, I said to one member of the Jordan faction, "Don't we have the responsibility to leave the land in better condition than when we received it? Isn't that the responsibility that each of us is given as a caretaker of the land?" And he said, "Each of us is given a lifetime to use the land as we see fit." I swear, my eyes just bulged out. It was a totally different worldview. But the Jordan side of the family still all came to the program that night and showed their support for the family in a loving way, even though they disagreed vehemently with everything being said.

LSL: Would discussions like that change the way you did the performance?

Clark: Yes. In fact, each community I went into affected every performance. I'm a technically oriented performer, I'm very specific. But when it gets into the performance zone it's all real viscerally connected emotionally. So every community I went into impacted the performance.

LSL: What would Annie be doing today?

Clark: Well, she wouldn't be dying her hair, like I am. She'd probably still be on the farm. I am going to guess that she had to take a job in town, and that she's probably teaching art. And she probably created an English course called Women and the Land.

And she's still on the farm and I suppose by now her kids are in college and they're probably going places because they're probably geniuses. But she's probably really sad because none of her kids want to farm. p

Experience Planting in the Dust for yourself

For information on ordering the Planting in the Dust script package, or the 35-minute video of Laura Clark's performance, see LSP's resources section.

POETRY:
If there was no room at the Super 8, & Christ was born in a confinement barn

"Nothing?
You have no room?"

"No Sir.
Not even a roll-away.
King-size. Queen-size.
Water-beds. Suites.
You name it. Every bed is taken.
Besides, without a reservation
with a major credit card,
you're usually out of luck."

"But my wife;
She's pregnant.
Where can we go?"

"Well, I tell you what.
There's a hog confinement operation
down the road.

Come to think of it,
there's a twenty-four-hour milking parlor, too."

"Straw?"
"No, there's no straw.
But there's no germs, either.
Just clean, cold steel.
Sounds inviting, huh?"

"Well . . ."

"Not quite what you had in
mind, I s'pose, but then,
that's the way things are now.
No cozy stalls.
No cows and pigs and donkeys and sheep
and chickens all in one barn.
Efficiency, you know.

High tech.
Progress.
You gotta keep up."

"But my baby.
My wife.
I hadn't pictured it this way."

"Too bad, fella.
Next time remember that major credit card,
and call ahead.
By the way, what'd you say your
wife's name was? Give her my regards
when you have the kid!"

"I will, sir.
Her name is Mary."

- Linda Winter-Hodgson
Morris, Minn.

LSP NEWS:
Flood control sparks strong emotions

If you'd like some insight into just how divisive watershed issues can be, spend some time perusing a stack of survey results sitting in the Land Stewardship Project's western Minnesota office.

The surveys are an initiative of the Regional Long Term Flood Response Team (RLTFRT), a group made up of private citizens, government officials and staff members of nonprofit organizations. LSP organizer Patrick Moore is coordinating the effort.

The RLTFRT's mandate is to develop proactive ways of preventing a repeat of last spring, when disastrous flooding in the upper Minnesota River watershed caused record amounts of damage. This was the worst flood in the region in more than 100 years, and is the earliest - April 4, 5 and 6 - on record. The communities of Granite Falls and Montevideo (the home of LSP's western Minnesota office) were particularly hard hit. Even before the waters receded, questions were being raised by the public as to the effect farming, development and other land uses were having on the severity of the flood. Had drainage made the flooding worse, or prevented an even bigger disaster? Are more or less flood control structures needed? Would the use of alternative farming methods such as management intensive grazing allow farmers to make a living in a flood-prone area without negatively impacting the watershed's health?

The RLTFRT's main tool for answering these and other questions is citizen input. This fall, 9,000 surveys were sent out as a special insert in local newspapers. The surveys feature questions about the role alternative farming practices, dams, metered drainage systems, culverts, railroad bridges, wetlands and recreation areas play in a healthy watershed. Moore, who tallied the results, says the Flood Response Team is not only hoping to gauge public opinion as it relates to the causes and cures of flooding, but also wants to garner innovative new ideas for flood control projects and demonstrations.

Many of the surveys came back marked up with extra comments, an indication of how strongly people feel about the upper Minnesota River and the flooding they've just been through. Here's a sampling of notes made on two different surveys, each representing extreme ends of the spectrum:

"I have lived in Montevideo most of my life. In the past, I could go down on River Road and fish and swim and sit in the middle of the river on an inner tube and it had a clear and sandy bottom and there were lots of families living there. The farmers and their drainage ditches should have been stopped a long time ago. They spray for weeds, they fertilize, and where does it go? Right into the river. Now our river is dirty and black and not fit to swim in or fish or drink out of. Let Mother Nature take care of what should have been left alone. Plug the drainage ditches. What is a few acres of land under water from rain that used to have ducks and wildlife in these little ponds? All they worry about is another acre of corn or beans. I am a woman and I see what is happening. Why can't the farmers?"

"I am a farmer and find your survey an insult to our intelligence. If water quality is the issue, why not question the 20 years of data the University of Minnesota has indicating improvement [of the river's sediment levels]. Also, ask the Farm Services Agency office about productivity of our cropland and what has caused it to improve for the better: Drainage! It seems to me the larger issue is being ignored. During flooding we spend most of our time sandbagging the wastewater and freshwater treatment plants. Why not ask about relocating these?

But lest you give up hope that such divergent opinions will keep these neighbors from ever finding common ground, consider one respondent's reaction to the back page of the survey, which was headlined "Hydrology 101." That section provided a matter-of-fact primer on what makes the upper Minnesota River system tick, making it clear that problems plaguing such an intricate natural resource have no simple solutions. In other words, it will take hard work and compromise on the part of everyone - environmentalist and landowner alike - to bring about a sustainable watershed: "Hydrology 101 should be on the wall of every social science school room, farm home and agribusiness in the area. It clearly shows our unique relationship between drainage and farming, and by its nature encourages creative thinking about finding solutions to our water-related problems and business interests."

Membership sanfus? Give Marsha a call

Marsha Neff, an organizer in the Land Stewardship Project's southeast Minnesota office, has been named the interim membership coordinator. She will succeed Rebecca Schon Kilde, who helped start LSP's membership program in 1994. Kilde left LSP this summer following the birth of her second daughter.

Although LSP is 15 years old, it has only been a membership-based organization for three years. Kilde worked with staff and board to launch the membership program and coordinate its development. Because of Kilde's absence this fall, LSP got behind in database management of the membership list.

If you've missed receiving an issue of the Land Stewardship Letter, were mailed duplicate copies or have had other problems with your membership, contact Neff at (507) 523-3366.

New LSP intern

Narine Ghazarian has joined the Land Stewardship Project's southeast Minnesota office as an intern. Ghazarian, who is from Yerevan, Armenia, recently received a master's of science degree in public administration at New York University. She has a particular interest in management of nonprofit organizations and has worked for the United Nations and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Ghazarian also served as a program assistant and translator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Armenia/American Extension Program.

Farm Beginnings class to start soon

Years of efforts to create a program for getting more beginning farmers on the land in southeast Minnesota will begin to pay off in January. That's when the first group of Farm Beginnings apprentices will start an intensive nine-month program of workshops and hands-on training.

Farm Beginnings, a collaborative project of the Land Stewardship Project and University of Minnesota Extension-Wabasha County, was created to provide hands-on experience for people who are interested in getting started in dairy farming using low-cost, sustainable methods.

At the core of the initiative is an arrangement where Farm Beginnings participants will be matched with established farmers for an apprenticeship type of experience. Before the apprenticeships begin, participants will take part in a series of workshops on the basics of low-cost milk production.

This summer and fall, more than 150 people from across the country responded to advertisements calling for apprentices, says Jill Broeker, an organizer in LSP's Lewiston office. Many of those that showed interest had dairying experience. A class of 10 would-be farmers is currently being put together.

Here's the Farm Beginnings Class of 1997 schedule:

January - Program introduction; a look at the future of dairying and the requirements for a successful dairy farm; importance of goal setting and developing a business plan; principles of management intensive grazing; the hows and whys of using grazing as a ticket into dairying

February - Share-milking and various partnership options; introduction to whole farm planning; value-based decision making; wealth generation techniques and tactics; the importance of communication

March - Nutrition; exploring credit and loan options; preparing business plans and loan applications; introducing your lender to grazing and other farming alternatives

April - Apprenticeship/mentor matches made and on-farm portion of program begins

April-August - Various farm field days; establishment of a grazing network; assistance with business plan development; assessment and follow-up

September - Wrap-up session

For more information on Farm Beginnings, contact LSP's Lewiston office at (507) 523-3366. p

Freedom to Farm guide now available

The Land Stewardship Project has released Making the Most of Freedom to Farm: Innovative Uses of Planting Flexibility and Conservation Programs. This 40-page guide reviews profitable, environmentally beneficial farming practices that are easier for farmers to adopt under new federal farm legislation.

In 1996, Congress eliminated most of the planting rules that required farmers to plant certain crops in order to qualify for federal support payments. At the same time, the law, which its creators dubbed "Freedom to Farm," does away with protections against wide swings in prices.

Making the Most of Freedom to Farm, written by LSP's Washington, D.C., staffer Brad DeVries, offers farmers an overview of innovative practices that were difficult to adopt under the old system of commodity payments - beneficial crop rotations, integration of crop/livestock operations, conservation tillage - and points toward recent sources of more in-depth information. The guide includes chapters on "Managing for Total Farm Results," "Making Sense of Federal Programs," "Rotations and Cover Crops for Cost Control," "New Livestock Ideas," and "Tillage Tactics." Each chapter includes real-life examples of farms and farmers who are already having success with these techniques.

"As prices for the major commodities shake out a bit, I think more farmers will realize the solid, long term business advantages of diverse enterprises and more complex rotations," says LSP member Dave Serfling, a Preston, Minn., farmer who produces hay, corn, hogs, beef and sheep.

Free copies of Making the Most of Freedom to Farm are available at LSP offices in the Minnesota communities of Lewiston, Montevideo or White Bear Lake. If you'd like to order a copy through the mail, send $4 for postage and handling ($3.60 for LSP members; Minnesota residents add 6.5% sales tax) to: LSP, 2200 4th St., White Bear Lake, MN 55110. Call (612) 653-0618 for information on bulk orders. A web version of the chapter, "Making Sense of Federal Programs," and a complete table of contents is available on-line.

OFFICE UPDATES:
Western Minnesota: Sharing a vision of quality of life

By Amy Bacigalupo

Seven blind mice meet an elephant. Each inspects a different part of the elephant. Each mouse has a different idea of what they think they have found. They argue over who is correct. One mouse thinks it is a cliff, and another thinks it is a rope. Since each mouse had only perceived a part of the elephant it was not until they share their individual ideas that they come to understand that what they have encountered is an elephant.

- Adapted from an East Indian Fable

The process of defining quality of life is like the struggle of the blind mice to identify the elephant. To reach a common understanding of quality of life, people must communicate their perceptions of a shared reality. Defining quality of life and taking steps to move toward its improvement is important to the people who share the vision and goals of the Land Stewardship Project.

LSP and the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (MISA) have supported the work of Holistic Management trainer and LSP organizer Audrey Arner, as well as members of both the Biological, Financial and Social Monitoring Team and the Whole Farm Planning and Monitoring Team (part of the Chippewa River Stewardship Partnership) to develop and facilitate a process for people to assess and envision quality of life, the proverbial elephant of the fable.

Recently, members of the Whole Farm Planning and Monitoring Team were interviewed about their quality of life and relationship with the community. This project was supported by the University of Minnesota's Sustainable Agriculture Graduate Minors program and LSP.

This team's holistic goal contains a statement which defines the quality of life the team wants to experience: "We value work that gives us joy and is fulfilling. We value time to spend with our families and opportunities to teach our children what we do. The team values freedom to do what we want and the opportunity to enjoy nature in the Chippewa Basin." The interviews gave each team member and their family an opportunity to define quality of life on a personal basis and provided a base line from which they could measure whether or not their quality of life was improving through their participation with the team. The visual methods used encourage participation of children and adults and could be easily repeated by the group without an outside facilitator.

Unlike the discussion of the blind mice, the interviews gave structure to the process of defining quality of life. Each member of the group created a value diagram, a collage of 10 things that are important to them. Connections were drawn between things that had a relationship. Each person then shared their collage with the rest of the group. After each person in the group had shared their collage, the group came up with a list of shared values. Through a dialogue of the meaning of the shared values, the group was able to better understand their common vision of quality of life.

The second activity, an asset map, utilized the group's assets as a basis to map their relationship with the community. Once the map is made, the group goes back to the list they made of shared values and identifies the relationships or assets that contribute to those values. An important part of this process is to discuss values or components of quality of life that are being put into action by the group and individuals within the group. Children especially enjoyed the interview process. They not only got to spend quality time with their families but received an opportunity to look at their life from a new perspective.

The story of the blind mice and the elephant illustrates the need for sharing individual perceptions to build a common understanding. The method outlined here is one step in the evolution of a process to share a vision of quality of life among individuals. A potential way to remedy our "blindness" to a shared vision.

Amy Bacigalupo, along with her husband Paul Wymar, recently served an internship in LSP's western Minnesota office. In September they went to Paraguay, where they are serving as U.S. Peace Corps volunteers.

Policy: Speaking out for family farming

By Paul Sobocinski

I testified before the National Commission on Small Farms in Sioux Falls, S. Dak., on Aug. 22. I spoke from my experiences as a livestock and crop farmer in Wabasso, Minn., as well as my work with the Land Stewardship Project and the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment.

The National Commission on Small Farms was created by U.S. Secretary Dan Glickman in July. The purpose of the Commission is to gather and analyze information regarding small farms and ranches and recommend to Glickman "a national policy and strategy to ensure their continued viability," according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Sioux Falls meeting was one of several the commission held throughout the country this summer and fall. It is scheduled to issue a report on its findings later this year.

Much of what can be done to save independent, sustainable family farms starts here in our communities and on the land. However, as I made clear to members of the commission, the federal government also has an important role to play in determining if our food continues to be produced by independent farmers.

Everything from government loan programs to commodity checkoffs need to be overhauled to keep money from going into the pockets of corporations looking to expand their stranglehold on food production. Government-funded ag research is just one example of how a well-intentioned initiative has gone awry.

As I told the commission, research needs to be redirected within the USDA, land grant colleges and the Extension Service so that it benefits people (farmers) in agriculture, not just market share. Research needs to focus on viable options for independent family farmers to compete. Land grant colleges need to be directed to stop their promotion of the industrial model of livestock production.

For example, the University of Minnesota's Swine Extension program has put together a proposal for a 600-sow farrowing facility near Waseca, with nursery and finishing facilities at Morris. This proposal pays lip service to low capital pig production and acknowledges that sustainable systems such as outdoor production and Swedish deep bedded techniques may represent 10 percent to 30 percent of livestock production in the future. But there's no sign of that talk being backed up by concrete action. Not one dollar of the capital building request is devoted to alternative swine systems.

Family farms are profitable. Family farms can compete. A good example of this is the 1994 Land Stewardship Project case study of the profitability of four sustainable farms in Minnesota. However, a psychological war is being waged against the family farm system. The corporate-controlled, industrial system of food and fiber production has given policy makers, and the general public, the mistaken idea that their way is inevitable because it is more efficient.

What corporate agriculture's boosters fail to mention is that this nation's food and fiber production framework was built on family farming, a system that is efficient and profitable when given a chance. It's time we stopped tossing loans, research dollars, extension help and regulatory breaks at a system of production that has little to do with farming or the land, and even less to do with families. p

Paul Sobocinski is an LSP organizer who farms in western Minnesota.

BOOK REVIEW:
Deadly Feasts
Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague

By Richard Rhodes
Simon & Schuster, New York, NY
1997
259 pages
$24.00

Reviewed by Ken Wood

When you begin chapter one of Richard Rhodes' Deadly Feasts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague, you're almost relieved. After all, it's merely a graphic organ-by-organ description of a cannibalistic ritual in 1950s New Guinea. That may not sound like a relaxing bit of reading. But consider what one had to plow through to get that far: The dust jacket's five-alarm description of the book's subject, the transmissible spongiform encaphalopathy (TSE) diseases whose best known strain is mad cow disease. It's enough to send those of us who don't eat human organs onto the worry wagon real fast:

"...the terrifying specter of an ineradicable, untreatable, irreversibly fatal disease whose insidious spread may be unstoppable....[the book] will make your heart pound. It may save your life."

And therein lies the problem with the book. It's a highly readable and informative discussion of the medical and scientific search for understanding of TSE diseases written by a Pulitzer Prize winning science writer. Unfortunately, this work is wrapped in the kind of wildly alarmist rhetoric usually found in the type of web sites - such as the "mad cow" site I recently happened upon - that have self-tests enabling one to "check yourself for signs of early dementia." That's too bad, because if the time was ever right for a calm discussion of these mysterious killers, it's now.

Rhodes does do a nice job of leading the reader through the complicated subject of "prions," the very nature of which has been debated for years. (The discovery of prions won neurologist Stanley Prusiner the Nobel Prize for medicine in October.) These agents are responsible for animal TSE diseases, the most widely known of which are scrapie in sheep and mad cow disease in cows, and for human TSE diseases such as kuru, which devastated a New Guinean cannibal tribe in the late 1950s. They are also the cause of Creutzfeldt-Jakob, a rare disease found in humans throughout the world. Mounting evidence suggests that prions - short for "proteinaceous infectious particles" - consist of pure protein. Furthermore, prions are identical in their chemical composition to proteins that are already present in living cells. A single prion is able to act as a "seed" to induce the naturally occurring proteins to reshape into the prion configuration.

The existence of such an entity has unfortunate consequences. Because the prion form of protein cannot be removed by the cells' usual scavenging mechanisms, the protein accumulates and forms deposits until cells die. This, combined with the fact that the prions exhibit marked preference for brain tissue, accounts for the well-known effects of TSE diseases, among cows and humans alike: dementia, lack of muscular control, eventual paralysis and death.

Animal TSEs got little attention as long as it appeared that animal prions were not capable of crossing the species barrier and infecting humans (for instance, humans have been eating scrapie-infected sheep for centuries with no ill effects). This changed in the late 1980s when the mad cow disease infected cattle throughout Great Britain.

This brought up the question of whether mad cow disease could infect humans through consumption of meat and dairy products. When, in the ensuing years, a variant strain of human Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease appeared in Britain which seemed to result from contaminated beef products, the meat hit the fan. Whole herds were slaughtered. More importantly, action was taken to rigorously enforce the previously toothless ban on feeding dead and diseased animals and waste by-products back into the herd, a practice which had been responsible in large part for the explosive spread of the disease.

All this is described in illuminating detail in Deadly Feasts. Rhodes also entertainingly reports an all-too familiar scenario of public officials making pronouncements and decisions without a clue as to the actual risks involved, including the spectacle of the British Minister of Agriculture feeding his daughter a hamburger on TV in an effort to soothe a rattled populace.

Where Rhodes does the reader a disservice is his failure to dispassionately discuss the fundamental question at hand: To what extent can and will mad cow disease cross the species barrier into humans, and what will the consequences be? To this point about 30 human deaths in Europe have been attributed to mad cow disease, out of the millions who ate infected foods. The question for anyone who ate British beef in the 1980s is whether this reflects an intrinsically low ability of the bovine prion agent to cross the species barrier into humans, or whether, due to a long latency period of the prion, a time bomb is ticking which may kill thousands of people over the next 25 years.

The news is encouraging so far. Results published in the July 1997 issue of the scientific journal Nature suggest that mad cow disease may be only slightly more able than scrapie to cross the species barrier into humans. Hopefully, a human epidemic will not come to pass. Those of us who were exposed can only wait and hope. But it's difficult to buy into Rhodes' description of the TSEs as the most apocalyptic public health threat of our time, considering that more than a million people die of AIDS per year and an astonishing two million die of malaria.

In the end, the more practical question is how much we need to do to protect ourselves, individually and collectively, from TSEs. And, again, this is where Rhodes lets us down.

The evidence that the combination of factors that led to the rapid spread of the disease in British cattle was unique to that country's beef industry is glossed over. The fact that no cases of mad cow disease have been documented in American cattle or humans is also dismissed.

Instead, he closes the book with a deluge of warnings. According to him, we are in danger of TSEs from meat, milk and dairy products. Moreover, since animal wastes are used as chicken feed, and chicken manure is used as fertilizer for fruits and vegetables, even people who consume no animal products - vegans - are at risk. And it doesn't stop there. Products containing ingredients derived from tallow, such as cosmetics, lipstick, and cough drops, are dangerous, not to mention surgical sutures and leather goods, according to Rhodes.

So what to do? A good dose of common sense is probably the best medicine. TSEs are pretty far down the list of risk factors that most of us face. If you are a crop duster, smoke or don't wear a seatbelt, to name a few risk factors at random, you're already swamping out the TSE risk with other life-threatening practices. It's like worrying about the Earth being hit by an asteroid while climbing Mount Everest.

In the end, the most valuable service provided by this book may be its description of industrialized meat processing. The sheer quantities involved and the degree to which waste by-products are customarily recycled into feed means that a staggering number of different things - including disease causing agents - end up in processed meat. Again, common sense applies, whether regarding mad cow disease, e-coli, salmonella, or pesticide residues. The closer you can come to obtaining your meat, fruit or vegetables from the top of the processing chain, the more you will know about where that food came from and what went into it. Think globally, eat locally. It's simply mad to do otherwise. p

Land Stewardship Project member Ken Wood is a research chemist in St. Paul, Minn.

RESOURCES:

The Stewardship Shop
An updated listing of Land Stewardship Project resources

Ordering information

All of the prices listed here include postage and handling costs. You can pick up most of these resources in any of LSP's three offices:

180 E. Main St., PO Box 130, Lewiston, MN 55952; (507) 523-3366

103 W. Nichols, Montevideo, MN 56265; (320) 269-2105

2200 4th St., White Bear Lake, MN 55110; (612) 653-0618

To order through the mail, send a check payable to LSP to the White Bear Lake office. Minnesota residents please add 6.5 percent onto the price to cover state sales tax. Call the White Bear Lake office about bulk orders.

Publications

An Agriculture That Makes Sense: Making Money on Hogs focuses on the 50-sow hog enterprise of one Minnesota crop and livestock operation. The case study, written by LSP's Jodi Dansingburg and Doug Gunnink of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, compares the farm's production records to the averages of the top performing hog operations as reported in a regional Minnesota Farm Business Management Program annual report. The case-study farm minimizes expenses through such production practices as outdoor farrowing and low-cost housing. 1996; 8 pages; $4.00 ($3.60 for LSP members).

A Gentler Way - Sows on Pasture: Reports from Sustainable Farmers from Minnesota & Iowa. Compiled by Minnesota farmers Dwight and Becky Ault, this publication provides first-person accounts of alternative hog production practices. 1994; 23 pages; free when you order the above publication.

An Agriculture That Makes Sense: Profitability of Four Sustainable Farms in Minnesota is an exciting case study written by LSP's Jodi Dansingburg, along with Doug Gunnink and Charlene Chan-Muehlbauer of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. It found that on a per-acre basis four farms using sustainable practices were three times as profitable as their conventional neighbors. Writer-farmer Wendell Berry said of this publication: "Here is such news as we hunger for: hard evidence to confirm what we knew all along. Good farming makes sense. ... Every word and figure in it is worth its weight in topsoil." 1994; 43 pages; $7.00 ($6.30 for LSP members).

Directory of Minnesota and Western Wisconsin Community Supported Agriculture Farms. Updated annually, price subject to change; call LSP at (612) 653-0618 to check on availability.

Excellence in Agriculture. Interviews with 10 Minnesota farm families who are stewards of the land, edited by Ron Kroese, with interviews conducted by Patrick Moore, Doug Nopar and Joe Paddock. 1988; 105 pages; $5.00 ($4.50 for LSP members).

Farmland and the Tax Bill: The Cost of Community Services in Three Minnesota Cities. This analysis by LSP and the American Farmland Trust found that sprawling residential development imposed a net financial loss on these communities, inhibiting their ability to, among other things, fund quality school systems. 1994; 26 pages; $10.00 ($9.00 for LSP members).

Farming for the Future Booklets: Mechanical Weed Control, Nitrogen Management and On-Farm Composting. Results, information and observations gleaned from Midwestern farmers during three years of on-farm experimentation. 1991; 8 pages each; $4.00 each or a set of three for $10.00 ($3.60 each or set of three for $9.00 for LSP members).

Farmer to Consumer Directory for Southeastern Minnesota. This directory lists rural producers from southeast Minnesota who take great care and pride in the quality of their products. This pamphlet, which is updated annually, is free if you send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to LSP's southeast Minnesota office.

Holistic Resource Management. This is Allan Savory's classic book on an innovative decision making process that has revitalized farms across the country. 1988; 563 pages; $27.50 (no member discount; this publication only available in LSP's western Minnesota office).

Holistic Resource Management Workbook, a companion to Savory's Holistic Resource Management. 1990; $25.00; 182 pages. (no member discount; this publication only available in LSP's western Minnesota office).

Land Patterns. A quarterly journal published for LSP's 1000 Friends of Minnesota program, featuring articles and commentaries related to land use in Minnesota. $10.00 a year ($9.00 for LSP members).

Land Stewardship Congregational Tool Kit contains videos, resource materials and activities for small and large group gatherings with a focus on building healthy communities by linking people with their food, the land and each other. Also included are suggestions for involving individuals and congregations in supporting a local food system while helping those with special needs in their community. $10 for six-week rental; $125 to purchase.

Land Stewardship Letter. This is LSP's official, bimonthly newsletter, featuring insightful features and provocative commentary not found anywhere else. The LSL is a benefit of membership in LSP. Free sample issues are available.

Land Stewardship Minnesota Congregational Directory and Resource Guide features 13 congregations, primarily from the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, that are involved in local farm or garden projects whereby fresh, locally grown food is donated to people with special needs. A list of Twin Cities area food shelves which accept fresh produce is also included. 1995; 19 pages; $3.00 ($2.70 for members).

Making the Most of Freedom to Farm. A guide to options for farmers who are looking to use the flexibility of the 1996 Farm Bill to maximize their environmental and economic performance, written by LSP's Washington, D.C., staffer, Brad DeVries. It includes real examples of farmers who have diversified into sustainable systems. 1997; 40 pages; free; $4 if mailed ($3.60 for LSP members).

Monitoring Sustainable Agriculture with Conventional Financial Data is the first in a series based on the work of the Monitoring Team. In this publication, agricultural economist Dick Levins presents four financial indicators to evaluate the sustainability of farming operations. 30 pages; $7 ($6. 40 for LSP members).

Planting in the Dust script package. Hundreds of performances of Planting in the Dust, written by poet and teacher Nancy Paddock, have been given in the U.S. and Canada since 1984. Support materials include introduction and discussion guides, as well as resource directories. $25.00 ($22.50 for LSP members).

Reshaping the Bottom Line: On-farm Strategies for a Sustainable Agriculture. Written by David Granatstein, this booklet provides conservation-minded farmers in the Upper Midwest a collection of ideas which make farming more economically and environmentally sustainable. 1988; 63 pages; $5.00 ($4.50 for LSP members).

Soil and Survival. A look at the values that shape American agriculture and the care of our farmland, written by Joe Paddock, Nancy Paddock and Carol Bly. 1986; 217 pages; $8.95 (no member discount).

Songbook by Bret Hesla. Music of the Land, with songs about soil, ecology and care of the earth. $7.00 each ($6.30 each for members).

Sprawl Primer. A folder filled with fact sheets, tools and resources for individuals and groups confronting sprawling development throughout Minnesota. 1996; $4.00 ($3.60 for LSP members).

When a Factory Farm Comes to Town: Protecting Your Township From Unwanted Development. Produced by LSP's policy program, this booklet provides guidance on using the Minnesota Interim Ordinance and other tools in the state's Municipal Planning law. It also contains an extensive list of resources. 1997; 35 pages; $6 ($5.40 for LSP members).

Whole Farm Planning: What it Takes. A collaborative publication of LSP, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and the Minnesota Extension Service, this booklet summarizes comments given by approximately 40 farmers during a series of forums held throughout the state in 1996. 1997; free; $4.00 if mailed (no member discount).

Videos

An Agriculture That Makes Sense. A video about LSP helping people choose a sustainable future for farming and rural communities. 1994; 11 minutes; VHS; $15.00 ($13.50 for LSP members)

Farming for the Future video package. This series of four videos - Rotary Hoe, Nitrogen Management, Controlled Grazing, and Cover Crops is now combined on one cassette. They emphasize farmer-to-farmer information exchange and on-farm experience. 1991; 64 minutes; VHS; $30.00 ($27.00 for LSP members).

Houses in the Fields. This emotionally charged video about the loss of farmland in the Twin Cities Metropolitan area has won regional and international awards. 1995; 26 minutes; VHS; $25.00 ($22.50 for LSP members).

Our Garden: A Project That Supports Our Community and Protects our Land, is an instructional video describing the cooperative efforts of volunteers and organizations led by the Redeemer Lutheran Church to create the Redeemer Land Stewardship Garden located in Winona, Minn. 1995; 12-15 minutes; VHS; $15.00 ($13.50 for LSP members)

Planting in the Dust. Video version of LSP's live conservation drama, hailed as one of the finest presentations available on the subject of land stewardship. 1989; 30 minutes; VHS; $30.00 ($27.00 for LSP members).

Other Resources

Bumper Stickers: "Let's Stop Treating Our Soil Like Dirt" or "Stop Sprawl." $1.00 each (no discount)

T-Shirts. Organic cotton grown in the U.S.A. Natural beige color with green LSP logo on the front. Short-sleeved $12.00 ($10.80 for LSP members); long-sleeved $15.00 ($13.50 for LSP members). Please specify small, medium, large or extra-large.

STEWARDSHIP CALENDAR

JAN. 15 - A public forum entitled "The Future of Flooding," featuring Minnesota State Climatologist Mark Seeley, as well as experts from the National Weather Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Minnesota Geological Survey and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (televised on Pioneer Public TV starting at 8 p.m. as a call-in show), Appleton, Minn.; Contact: Patrick Moore, LSP (320) 269-2105

JAN. 22 - Public forum on the progress of the Advisory Council on Community-Based Planning, with a discussion involving lawmak-ers on what form 1998 legislation should take, Landmark Center, St. Paul, Minn.; Contact: Scott Elkins, LSP (612) 653-0618

JAN. 24 - Annual meeting of the Central Minnesota Chapter of the Sustainable Farming Association, with a focus on marketing; Contact: DeEtta Bilek (218) 445-5475...........

FEB. - (date to be announced) Chippewa Whole Farm Planning & Monitoring will co-sponsor a workshop featuring David Kline, author of Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer's Journal; Contact: Audrey Arner, LSP (320) 269-2105 - (date to be announced) 3-day Holistic Management course, northeast Iowa; Contact: Gary Huber (515) 294-1854, or Margaret Smith (515) 648-4850

FEB. 3 - A Farm Beginnings workshop on "share-milking" and various other partnership options for getting started in farming, Lewiston, Minn; Contact: Jill..Broeker, LSP (507) 523-3366 - Farmer-Environmentalist Day of Dialogue, 9 a.m.-3 p.m., Good Counsel Education Center, Mankato, Minn.; Contact: John Lamb, Minnesota Project, (612) 645-6159 or 1-800-366-4793 FEB. 5, 6 & 7 - Minnesota Fruit & Vegetable Growers Assoc. Educational Conference & Trade Show, St. Cloud, Minn.; Contact: (612) 434-5929.

FEB. 6-7 - Annual Winter Conference of the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society, Aberdeen, S. Dak.; Contact: Theresa Podoll, 9824 79th St. SE, Fullerton, ND 58441-9725; tele. - (701) 883-4304

FEB. 9-11 - Wisconsin Grazing Conference, Stevens Point, Wis.; Contact: Carl Fredericks (608) 437-4395

FEB. 13-15 - Midwest Sustainable Agriculture Working Group Annual Gathering, Rochester, Minn.; Contact: Mark Schultz or Dana Jackson, LSP (612) 653-0618

FEB. 20-21 - 9th annual Upper Midwest Organic Farming Conference, featuring more than 50 workshops, Sinsinawa Mound, Wis.; Contact: Faye Jones (715) 772-6819 - "A Thousand Webs of Life" - National Catholic Rural Life Conference 75th Anniversary meeting, featuring LSP's Dana Jackson speaking on stewardship issues, Washington, D.C.; Contact: (515) 270-2634

FEB. 21 - CURE 6th Annual Meeting, featuring Doug Wood, author of Old Turtle, 5:30 p.m., American Legion Hall, Granite Falls, Minn.; Contact: Lynn Lokken, LSP (320) 269-2105

FEB. 21-23 - National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture meeting, Washington, D.C.; Contact: P.O. Box 396, Pine Bush, NY 12566; tele. - (914) 744-8448; e-mail - campaign@magiccarpet.com

FEB. 27-28 - Annual state meeting of the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota, featuring discussions on climate change and whole farm planning, Alexandria, Minn.; Contact: DeEtta Bilek (218) 445-5475

MARCH 5-7 - Building on a Decade of Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (a conference celebrating 10 years of the USDA's SARE program), featuring Jim Hightower, Fred Kirschenmann, Margaret Krome, Karl Kupers, Lorraine Merrill & Frederick Payton, Austin, Texas; Contact: SARE (301) 405-5270

MARCH 8-10 - Media Skills & Strategy Workshop for Sustainable Agriculture, Luther Crest Camp, Alexandria, Minn.; Contact: Kat Griffith, Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, (608) 233-5029

MAY 16 - Clean Up our River Environment (CURE) Spring Observation Trip on the Minnesota River; Contact: LSP (320) 269-2105

JULY 9-12 - 4th Annual Mississippi River Basin Conference, St. Louis, Mo.; Contact: Mississippi River Basin Alliance (314) 822-4114

SEPT. 20 - Clean Up our River Environment (CURE) River Revival, Watson Sag, Minn.; Contact: LSP (320) 269-2105

Check the Calendar for the latest on upcoming LSP events.

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