The official newsletter of the Land Stewardship Project
NOVEMBER 1999 VOL. 17, NO. 5
Teaming With Ideas
Sustainable agriculture requires developing a whole new frame of mind when it comes to the land, people and the interactions between the two. More farmers are realizing there's no reason to take such a head trip alone.
By Brian DeVore
David, the Border Collie that tirelessly herds cattle and sheep on the grass-covered hills of the Joe and Bonnie Austin farm, doesn’t just jump into the back of a pickup. Rather, he dives in with the arch-backed grace of a competitive swimmer. When the Austin's nosed into management intensive grazing on their southeast Minnesota farm eight years ago, their entry wasn’t quite as smooth.
"We had nobody to go to," recalls Joe with a hint of exasperation.
The "information age" has hit the farm, and not just in the form of instantaneous satellite feeds on the latest Chicago Board of Trade prices. Farmers seeking out sustainable ways of doing things, such as management intensive grazing, are feverishly attempting to gather and interpret information on the land, animals, soil and plants that make up their operations.
For example, the Austin's started farming in 1962 and for many years were "pretty conventional," says Joe. They raised corn and hay on their crop acres and produced sheep on permanent pastures. Then the Austins started raising livestock by rotating the animals through a series of paddocks. They soon realized they had entered a world where animal behavior, perennial plant growth and soil biological activity interact in sometimes wonderful, oftentimes baffling, ways. Decisions based on the interactions between tractors, herbicides and hybrid seed didn’t apply anymore.
"There’s no comparison," says Austin. "It’s a different thought process. Once you put the corn in, everything is cut and dry until you market it. With grazing, every day is different. No two years are the same. You think you have it whipped and then something else hits you."
That’s why in April the Austin's joined a "management group." Once a month, the farmers meet with half a dozen other farmers who are in various stages of switching from input-intensive production techniques to a system that takes advantage of a ruminant animal’s natural ability to turn solar energy into meat, milk and money.
Jerry DeWitt, Sustainable Agriculture Coordinator for Iowa State University Extension, says such teams of farmers are prime examples of how sustainable agriculture management techniques can circulate through rural communities via the people who must use them on a daily basis: farmers. That’s different than the traditional model of spawning "innovations" in farm country. Under that model, land grant extension services pick out a respected farmer in a certain county or region and have that farmer host an on-farm experiment. After the experiment is established, a massive field day is held, exposing the innovation to hundreds of farmers at once. In theory, farmers then go home and attempt to mimic what they saw. But there’s a couple of problems with that model, says DeWitt. First, it doesn’t take into account the nuanced, but often critical, differences between farms — even ones that may be right across the road from each other. It also doesn’t give enough credit to the innate ability of farmers to develop their own innovations.
"This kind of rote dissemination of information has became common during the past several decades," says DeWitt. "But now we’re getting beyond the simple model of ‘I’m going to be just like that person.’ I think people want their information from multiple sources. It’s a different learning model than the ‘an expert tells you what to do’ model."
Growing trend
There are no experts in the grazing management groups such as the one the Austin's belong to — only people who are willing to share their successes...as well as failures. There are now at least seven of these groups in Minnesota. The initial groups were launched and are still coordinated by Doug Gunnink, a pioneering grazier and farm management instructor based in Gaylord, Minn. Within the past year, four new groups have popped up, says Richard Ness, who works with some of the groups out of the Land Stewardship Project’s southeast Minnesota office (see sidebar).
The idea behind these groups comes from New Zealand, where they’ve been common for about 40 years. The basic structure is simple: group members meet on a different farm each month. There is usually a set topic or two to be discussed at each meeting — pasture improvement, fencing techniques, supplemental feeding, etc. Once those topics are covered, it’s a discussion free-for-all. A coordinator is often used to lead discussions and schedule the meetings. The groups are consciously limited to no more than roughly a dozen people. The size limit it used to encourage more personal discussion, as well as to make the farmers feel they are part of a closed, safe, team that they can share sometimes sensitive information with. The make-up of a particular group can range all the way from the novice, wanna-be grass farmer to people who have been doing it for a decade or more (however, there are cases where a group is made up mostly of beginners or mostly of veterans).
DeWitt says many of the same farmer-to-farmer education principles followed by grazing management groups apply to other types of agricultural systems.
"I think whether it’s grazing, or someone in no-till or someone going toward organic, the principles are the same," he says. "If farmers are going to change their way of thinking, then they need a safe place in which to bounce around new ideas. You don’t make these changes in a formal setting."
In fact, one group is sharing things like what it takes to meet fixed expenses, milk production figures, feed costs, overall costs of production, and, that taboo of all subjects: net income information.
"It isn’t a contest, they’re just trying to help each other figure out what makes money and what doesn’t," says Ness. "They’re all doing things a little different and they’re trying to determine what profitable methods they can adapt from each other without trying everything on their own."
So far, the groups are mostly made up of dairy, beef and sheep farmers who are using management intensive grazing. During the past decade, this system, which involves rotating livestock frequently to make good use of forage while spreading manure efficiently, has proven to be a profitable, environmentally sound way of producing livestock in the Upper Midwest. But farmers who try it soon learn that it lives up to its name: management intensive. Important daily decisions have to be made on when to move the animals, how to manage pastures and whether getting rid of expensive cropping equipment is a smart financial decision or a rash endorsement of an untested production system.
And management intensive grazing, like other sustainable agriculture techniques that replace chemicals, high-tech equipment and high finances with hands-on management, does not lend itself to cookie-cutter solutions that can be passed on from one farm to the next unchanged.
"There’s lots and lots of ideas out there, many of which are good. But a good idea fitting into the wrong system or into the system wrong isn’t a good fit for me," says Dan French, a veteran southeast Minnesota dairy grazier who has belonged to a management team for almost three years.
Those different perspectives extend outside the groups. French says his group has connections with others in northern and central Minnesota through Gunnink, who helps coordinate groups there as well. That provides insights from regions that have different weather, soils and even economic situations.
And sharing within and between groups is apparently paying off. In a recent survey, it was found that some farmers reduced operating expenses by 20 percent since getting involved a management team. These savings can come about in many ways: from learning about a way to reduce labor when milking or moving fence, to lowering feed and pasture improvement costs. Some groups are also buying seeders and other pasture improvement equipment together and sharing the expense. In small ways these groups are smashing stereotypes about farmers taking independence to such an extreme that they don’t share the trials and tribulations of producing food and fiber with anyone — even their own neighbors.
Diane Leonhardt likes the sharing that goes on in the two management groups she belongs to. That kind of peer support is important as she her husband Larry consider changes on their 100-cow dairy farm near Kellogg, Minn. They have been producing some of their milk via management intensive grazing for about a decade. But they’ve taken a more serious look at grazing within the past few years, partially because it offers a low-cost way to bring one of their sons into the operation as a partner.
"In general I think we as farmers are too independent. Being part of a management group like this still allows our operation to be independent, but we aren’t so isolated that we can’t reach out to learn from each other," says Leonhardt, adding that she often can’t wait to visit the other farms to see how new ideas and methods are faring. "It’s almost like seeing half a dozen other on-farm experiments being done all at once. Some things I see being done on other farms work for us and some don’t. I think that kind of sharing would help any farm, no matter what kind it is."
But these groups aren’t just opportunities for people to politely pat each other on the back. In fact, respectful disagreement and brutal honesty are the key to the success of any given group.
"What I like is they’re willing to tell you what they did wrong," says Joe Austin of the other farmers in his group. "It’s not just people telling about how great everything is. Hearing that stuff makes you feel good until you go home and realize you didn’t learn anything meaningful. It’s like eating ice cream: It tastes good going down, but then later it makes you fat and you wish you hadn’t eaten it."
Pasture run
A lot of fat was being burned at a management group gathering that took place recently on the Austin farm. This "pasture walk" was no group of country squires, walking staffs in hand, taking a leisurely hike across a wind-blown meadow while cattle and sheep peacefully munch grass. For the half a dozen farmers gathered, the discussion, and pace, was fast and furious. It was proof that management intensive grazing is not some sort of passive pastoralism.
The Austins face a lot of challenges and have a lot of questions. In all, they farm some 700 acres in Fillmore County. They graze sheep, dairy replacement cows and beef cattle on approximately 300 acres of highly erodible land; they’ve converted 120 acres of corn ground to grass since the early 1990s. This is an area underlaid by a Swiss cheese-like limestone karst geology, which means sinkholes can pop up — or, more accurately, pop down — literally over night. Bonnie ran a four-wheeler into a surprise sinkhole some time back, and a neighbor bent up a combine as a result of a run-in with one of these geological features. As a result, runoff from row crops and large-scale manure systems can send contaminants straight into underground water supplies. The region offers a challenge when it comes to making a living that is economically and environmentally sustainable, but "it raises real good grass," says Joe.
Everyone piles into the back of a pickup for a trip to the top of a hill, where a 10-acre stand of rye grass, under-seeded with white clover and chickory, is thriving. As the graziers squat in the greenery to examine the growth, Joe explains his plans for the field. A trio of wild turkeys struts into a stand of trees across the road while the gathered farmers — there is a mix of dairy, beef and sheep producers present — ask questions about how to seed down and manage a new grazing area.
Next stop: a pasture full of dairy replacement heifers the Austins graze on contract. Bonnie and Joe ask the farmers for tips on how to judge the weight of the animals in the field. The discussion then turns to fly control methods.
Then it’s up to the "Mountain," the highest point on the farm. While David guards the gate below, the grazing group stands in a hay field at the crown of the hill and looks down on pastures broken into paddocks with portable electric fencing. The Austins get advice on when to graze and whether or not to cut the grass with a mower to keep it in prime grazing shape.
In a pasture next to some grazing sheep, Ness demonstrates how to use a "grazing stick," a simple wooden device with calibrated dots on one side and a table on another that allows one to calculate the feed value of a particular stand of pasture almost instantaneously. Farmers practice laying the stick in the grass and counting the number of dots they see (the fewer dots, the higher the density of the forage, and the higher the feed value). They discuss the merits of a computerized stick that allows graziers to feed pasture information directly onto a home computer for analysis and comparison. Ness also demonstrates a refractometer, a spy glass-type device that measures the sugar content of forage plants.
Bonnie climbs into the back of the pickup between field stops so she can explain how she and Joe spread seed on the ground in March, allowing the freezing and thawing cycle to do the work of improving pasture stands.
Back at the house over lunch, discussions range from new grazing publications, to pollution policy as it pertains to graziers to comparing the financials of various approaches to livestock production to whether the use of a certain type of clover that relies on herbicides to get established fits with the "philosophy" of being a grazier.
"It seems like we’re all experimenting and none of us know anything," Joe exclaims at the end of the meeting. It’s clear he is almost overwhelmed at the number of ideas that were tossed about during the previous few hours. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t been mentally filed away, waiting to be ruminated on while moving fence or fixing water lines. "There’s some information that slides by you the first time and then, three days later, bam, it hits you."
SIDEBAR:
For More Information
Richard Ness in the Land Stewardship Project's southeast Minnesota office is working with several management groups. For more information on these groups, as well as the farmer networks being developed through our Farm Beginnings program, contact Ness or Karen Stettler at: LSP, P.O. Box 130, Lewiston, MN 55952; phone: 507-523-3366; e-mail: rness@landstewardshipproject.org or stettler@landstewardshipproject.org
COMMENTARY
Mega-mergers…mega-problems
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an excerpt of testimony given by Dale Hennen in South St. Paul, Minn., on April 18 at a special town meeting on concentration in agriculture. Officials from the U.S. Departments of Justice and Agriculture presided over the meeting. Several state and federal lawmakers were also present. More than 800 farmers from 13 states, including several LSP members, attended the meeting.Hennen is chair of the Land Stewardship Project’s Board of Directors and Director of the Rural Life Office of the Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.
It should go without saying there is a crying need for immediate and targeted action to address the issue of concentration in agriculture. In the past, statements have been issued by numerous religious bodies calling for needed attention to address current trends in agriculture.
Many Catholic bishops, for example, and various Catholic conferences, have issued statements on the gravity of the situation in agriculture today.
Their concerns are based on the direction our food and agriculture system is taking, in large part because of what the system is doing to people, how people participate in it, or how they are manipulated by it. The suffering is real. There is tremendous pain, untold anxiety and grave financial distress on the part of farmers and others whose economic well-being is related to agriculture.
Those serving in religious communities see it, hear it and experience it on various levels: religious, economic, educational and social. High levels of concern and disillusionment are pervasive, with serious effects on the morale of farmers and others living in or in some way related to our rural communities.
The direction toward continued, and now intensified, corporate consolidation and vertical integration in agriculture, coupled with the resistance on the part of many government officials to enforce already existing federal laws such as the Packers and Stockyards Act fuels or deepens the public’s cynicism and skepticism toward government. There appears to be a lack of sufficient leadership and political will to take action against mergers. That must change. Without immediate and well-directed action to address issues of concentration and ownership within our food and agriculture system, the public trust will be eroded even more. And the situation, as desperate as it already is for so many, will become worse, and will be felt in very profound ways even in our urban sectors.
Catholic bishops have long expressed their grave concerns about corporate concentration in our food and agriculture system and the moral dimensions of paying fair farm prices. The bishops do not support an agricultural feudalism. They support an agriculture that builds connections between farmers and non-farmers so that consumers have a clear sense of who produces their food and where it comes from. This agriculture builds and sustains communities, provides safe and wholesome food and respects and nurtures the environment.
This kind of agriculture also recognizes that everyone working throughout the agriculture sector must realize profit and economic viability. Economic benefits earned within our food and agriculture system must not come at the suffering, hardship and expense of a particular segment within it, such as farmers or migrant workers. An increasing number of people in our urban sectors are coming to know and understand that a small and moderate-sized family farm system that is diversified, economically viable, sustains communities and respects the environment is in the best interests of all of society.
The stakes are tremendous, both short and long term. The U.S. citizenry ultimately will be judged by the moral values and principles we advance in creating a society and world where people can live with dignity and in freedom. I urge you, without equivocation, to listen to the people, to what they value most. As lawmakers and regulators, you must act to protect the interests of the common good, to provide hope for the future for our farmers and for the land itself. Face the corporate concentration issues, enforce the Packers and Stockyards Act and take antitrust action against the mergers.
SIDEBAR:
Agribusiness merger moratorium bill fails
A proposal to impose an 18-month moratorium on large agribusiness mergers was defeated by the U.S. Senate Nov. 17. The legislation was drafted by Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., and Byron Dorgan, D-N. Dak., at the urging of groups like the Land Stewardship Project.
In the days running up to the Senate vote on the bill, agribusiness firms lobbied heavily to get it defeated.
They won that battle, but their victory may only be temporary. Senators from both parties voted in favor of the moratorium and the vote helped focus national attention on the issue. Wellstone says he will bring the issue back to Congress next year.
LSP’s statement in support of the moratorium can be viewed at: www.landstewardshipproject.org/pr/newsr_110799.html
LETTERS
Not just for farmers
Dear Editor:
We do not live on a farm, but we want you to know how important we believe your work is for all of us. Your efforts for land, water and people mean a great deal to us. Every time we read the newsletter it makes us realize that all the more. Thanks for all your continued efforts.
— Ann & Bill Fox
Inver Grove Heights, Minn.
Indentured on land
Dear Editor:
Thank you for your excellent article on the threats of contract farming (April/May 1999 LSL). It sounds disturbingly like the debt peonage of yesteryear or the indentured servitude faced by many sweatshop workers in supposed U.S. "territories" like Saipan.
— John Peck, Jr.
Madison, Wis.
Sewer sausage
Dear Editor:
Having both raised hogs for food and worked in the wastewater industry, I was wondering how long it would take the hog confinement industry to admit that hog confinement buildings are nothing more than short sewer pipes. A March 22 Associated Press article reported how one swine building company is setting up a manure gas teaching facility at Northeast Iowa Community College. The facility will teach agriculture students about the dangers of gases produced by "condensed and confined" manure.
An enclosure with sewage in the bottom and poisonous gas in the top, monitors for the detection of the poisonous gases ammonia and hydrogen-sulfide, breathing respirators for workers, the need for constant ventilation of those poisonous gases to the outside and all the associated health problems mentioned in the article prove a one-to-one correspondence to a sewer collection system.
Because of the inherent danger posed by working in a poisonous environment, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has for years strictly regulated equipment and techniques used in sewer system work. Likewise, if the ventilation system in a hog confinement building stops working, all animals can be dead within 30 minutes. I’m amazed that people eat pork raised in a sewer, and that our government allows it.
I have long understood that to mount a successful effort to get rid of hog confinement systems, consumers must become involved. So as not to be only negative, I have two suggestions to make. First, the government can make it easier for small butcher shops to sell locally produced meat over the counter. I have never had a problem with meat butchered in my barn or in a small shop, and with all the health problems large processors are causing, it seems ridiculous to deny small shops the right to sell their product.
Secondly, an immediate alternative to hog confinement systems exists: hoop houses. The industry can convert to hoop houses, as Europe has done, and we can all benefit from the environmental benefits offered by such a system.
— Bob Watson
Decorah, Iowa
Who’s getting fed?
Dear Editor:
Many of the Minnesotans who normally don’t think about food and fiber production appreciate the recent media attention devoted to the family farm economic crisis. There is one aspect of the production of corn that has piqued my interest. How much of the harvest eventually gets transformed into corn oil sweeteners used in carbonated beverages? Also, the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper recently profiled the Cargill operation of a glucose plant in Russia that supplies Mars, Inc., with sweetener. The article listed the Mars Company as one of Cargill’s biggest customers worldwide, a surprise to me.
Family farmers are going broke with the vision that they are feeding the world. Are we really feeding the world or are we feeding multinational corporations that are making money peddling empty calories to a world craving what advertisements depict as the American life-style? How can anyone complain about energy production from corn in comparison to other end uses that fuel obesity and possible malnutrition?
— Charlotte Brooker
Maplewood, Minn.
LSP NEWS
Farming with Nature launched to market eco-friendly pork
The Land Stewardship Project has launched a new pork marketing co-op aimed at consumers opposed to factory farms. The first delivery of Farming with Nature pork was made to some 40 Twin Cities residents on Nov. 6. The pork was produced by LSP members who use environmentally sound methods such as pasture and straw-based production. The farmers also don’t use antibiotics or animal by-products in their feeding programs. Five farm families are producing pork for the co-op thus far: Eric and Lisa Klein, Dennis and Sue Rabe, Linda and Mike Noble, Dave and Diane Serfling, and Jason French.
Farming with Nature was born out of a need to allow those opposed to factory farms to vote with their wallets, says Jodi Dansingburg, who is coordinating the project out of LSP’s southeast Minnesota office.
"Concerned consumers don’t support factory farms when it comes to legislation, so why should they support them at the grocery store? This allows them to eat their conscience."
For the past several months, LSP has been working with Clean Water Action to connect sustainable farmers with consumers who are concerned about the environment. Clean Water is a national environmental group that has been active in fighting factory farms.
Says Dansingburg: "This initiative is a win-win, because 100 percent of the profit goes straight to the producers while the buyers get a product they know is raised by sustainable, family farmers."
Pork available
There will be a Farming with Nature delivery Feb. 4 in the Twin Cities. The co-op offers 30-pound frozen packages (one of these packages fits in the freezer unit of the typical refrigerator) of assorted pork cuts for $99. Smaller portions can sometimes be purchased. For more information, contact: LSP, Farming with Nature Co-op, PO Box 118, Lewiston, MN 55952; phone: 507-523-3366; fax: 507-523-2729.
Hog Wash begins production
The filming of Hog Wash was launched this summer by Blue Moon Productions and the Land Stewardship Project. Hog Wash is a 60-minute documentary program about the environmental and societal effects of large-scale livestock production. LSP staffer Brian DeVore is working with Blue Moon’s Will Hommeyer to develop the film, which will introduce audiences to the startling aftermath of manure spills, as well as to the farmers and other rural residents who are in the midst of the factory farming nightmare.
In July, the Hog Wash crew traveled to northeast Iowa to film the work of a group of University of Northern Iowa students who are gauging the ecological impacts a manure spill has had on a small farm stream. The crew also spent time with Tom and Irene Frantzen, who are using deep straw bedded systems and pasture farrowing to produce hogs in an environmentally and economically sound manner.
In September, filming for Hog Wash was done in Minnesota’s Renville County, where factory pork production has proliferated during the past decade. Farmers who witnessed the infamous Beaver Creek manure spill of 1997 — Minnesota’s largest documented manure-caused fish kill thus far — told their stories and talked about the impact factory farming is having on their community.
It is hoped Hog Wash will eventually be shown to national audiences via public television and other venues. But a lot of filming, editing and writing needs to be done before that happens. If you’d like to contribute financially to this exciting project, contact: Dana Jackson, LSP, 2200 4th Street, White Bear Lake, MN 55110; phone: 651-653-0618.
LSP members occupy ag chair
Land Stewardship Project members Cornelia Flora, Jan Flora and Julie Ristau are among those sharing the School of Agriculture Endowed Chair in Agricultural Systems at the University of Minnesota. During the next several months they will work to strengthen University-citizen collaboration for more sustainable development throughout the state.
The Floras are known for their research and outreach work on community social capital. Cornelia has done extensive work with the Monitoring Project, a collaborative effort involving LSP and the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (MISA). She is currently director of the North Central Regional Center on Rural Development, which covers 12 Midwestern states. Jan is a community sociologist with Iowa State University Extension.
Ristau is the former director of the national League of Rural Voters and co-founded the Minnesota Rural Organizing Project. She also helped create the Utne Reader magazine.
The Endowed Chair is managed by MISA. For more information, call: MISA, 1-800-909-6472; Jan Flora, 612-625-4243; Cornelia Flora, 612-624-3702; or Julie Ristau, 612-625-8132.
The plants that ate Main Street
Bumper crops of corn and soybeans may fill bins and barges, but they drain farm country of its people.
"There is an inverse relationship between the acres planted to corn and soybeans in a given county and recent population changes in that county," says Paul Porter, a cropping systems agronomist at Minnesota’s Southwest Research and Outreach Center. Porter’s analysis of cropping records and population statistics was recently summarized by the Minnesota Extension Service News and Information Bureau.
In the 12-state Corn Belt region, only four counties with more than 80 percent of their total land in either corn or soybeans increased in population between 1980 and 1990. Fifty-one counties lost population during the same period, according to Porter, who is working with weed ecologist Elizabeth Dyck to develop more diverse crop rotations in southwest Minnesota (see the November 1998 and December 1998 "biodiversity" issues of the Land Stewardship Letter for more information on their work).
This data provides more evidence of the connection between lack of biological diversity in farm country and the demise of small town economies. When corn and soybean prices go into the tank for extended periods — like now — rural businesses dependent upon those commodities suffer greatly, sending people to other areas to live and work. A 60-member task force consisting of Minnesota farmers, agribusiness firms, public agencies and nonprofit organizations came to that same conclusion in 1998.
Porter has more bad news: production costs for both corn and soybeans have been outpacing yield increases. As a percentage of total direct costs, the seed and crop chemical input costs have increased from 20 percent to 25 percent since 1989. Porter blames these increased costs on greater pressure from insects, weeds and diseases as the corn-soybean rotation loses its ability to naturally keep these problem at bay.
The corn-soybean rotation has been a great way to diversify during the past several decades, says Porter, but it’s agronomic and economic days may be numbered.
For more information on the work of Porter and Dyck, call 507-752-7372.
LSP lays out long range plan
For the next five years, the Land Stewardship Project will be guided by a long range plan completed and approved by the board of directors in July 1999. "Linking Food, Land and People" is the theme of this guide for LSP’s programs, operational structure, and fund-raising. In late October, the board and LSP staff from all of our offices met in Mankato to start implementing the plan.
This plan has been two years in the making. The staff management team, composed of George Boody and Dana Jackson from the White Bear Lake office, Mark Schultz from the Policy Program, Marsha Neff from the southeast Minnesota office and Audrey Arner from the western Minnesota office, took major responsibility throughout the process of developing the plan. Through dialogue with other staff, they helped translate the ongoing work and emerging projects of LSP into four program results to be achieved in five years (see sidebar). They also developed goals for capacity building in membership and communications and the financial results to be achieved in five years. Finally, the team listed strategies for delivering the results. The plan itself was written and edited by Jackson, who is LSP’s Associate Director.
Dale Hennen, Chair of the Board of Directors, says he is pleased with the plan: "It’s ambitious. It challenges us to rededicate ourselves and keep moving forward with enthusiasm."
The opening pages of the plan should be familiar to Ron Kroese, recently elected to the board. They reaffirm the vision for a sustainable society and the goals that LSP staff, board and constituents agreed upon in 1992, when Kroese was executive director.
"I’m pleased with the new programs that are developing at LSP. It’s gratifying to me that LSP is staying true to the work of keeping the land and people together, but it’s also fortunate that LSP has the flexibility and vision to take on new issues as they emerge," says Kroese.
The long-range plan isn’t written on stone tablets, and LSP expects to do a mid-course review and may make revisions in the future. However, for now this document points the way and helps us set priorities. It’s not being disseminated broadly because it’s primarily a working document for the staff, board and program steering committee members. But members may ask to read it at any LSP office.
SIDEBAR: Program results to be achieved in 5 years
We will have:
1. begun to implement a sustainable food system in the Upper Midwest region that provides new market opportunities for diversified, family-sized farmers and offers consumers wide choices to purchase healthful foods produced locally with environmentally-sound and socially-just practices;
2. organized and educated citizens to protect their communities, livelihoods and land in the face of the concentration of wealth and power in the crop and livestock industries and implemented rural reinvestment projects to build sustainable communities;
3. produced expectations in society that owners and managers of farmland should be stewards of the wild, in addition to being stewards of soil and water, and protect habitats for natural biodiversity on agricultural land;
4. influenced policy makers to develop a new approach to agricultural policy that leaves price-setting to the market, but provides incentives and rewards to farmers who produce multiple environmental and social benefits for society, in addition to commodities, on their land.
New LSP staff
Mara Krinke has taken the position of Multiple Benefits Analysis Project Coordinator with the Land Stewardship Project. Krinke holds undergraduate degrees in economics and botany from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and a master’s degree in public affairs from the University of Minnesota. She has worked as an environmental consultant and assisted in numerous research projects related to environmental policy analysis.
Janaki Fisher-Merritt has joined LSP’s southeast Minnesota office as an AmeriCorps Volunteer. He received a degree in sociology and anthropology (with an emphasis in environmental studies) last June from Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. Fisher-Merritt has worked at his family’s Community Supported Agriculture farm near Wrenshall, Minn., as well as at the Whole Foods Co-op in Duluth, Minn. While at LSP, he will work with the Farm Beginnings program as well as sustainable marketing initiatives.
Lewiston volunteer
Michael Gamber is helping out with livestock concentration issues as a volunteer in LSP’s southeast Minnesota office. Gamber has a degree in human services with an emphasis in environmental biology from Saint Mary’s University in Winona, Minn. Gamber has served as a farm apprentice with Featherstone Fruits and Vegetables near Winona.
Giving a creek a second chance
Streambank stabilization on an eroded stretch of Sand Creek got underway in mid-November with the help of New Prague, Minn., excavator Bob Austin and Larry Gates of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
Land Stewardship Project members Dave and Florence Minar hope the experimental intervention will slow down the erosion that now puts their property line over water. They use management intensive grazing to produce milk near New Prague, and are constantly striving to stem soil and nutrient loss from their share of Sand Creek. Sand Creek is the Minnesota River's biggest source of sediment runoff. The Minars and Austin are members of the Sand Creek Watershed Team, a group dedicated to restoring the biological health and aesthetics of Sand Creek through public education and personal farm management choices.
Work on the Minar farm was completed in one day, thanks to the donation of time and equipment from Austin, as well as technical guidance from Gates, a watershed coordinator for the DNR. On-site materials rather than more customary riprap and cement were used. Six-to eight-foot logs with their roots intact were shoved into the bank, roots outward and facing upstream. Logs and brush were then tied across them. The intent is to slow down water flow, catch debris and sediment, and encourage deposition along the newly created bank.
The use of local materials was made possible by an "individual permit" the Minars obtained from the DNR. Last summer, the watershed team worked to make available a "general permit" in Scott County that would allow farmers to undertake similar streambank projects along Sand Creek. However, the local Soil and Water Conservation District, which holds that general permit, requires an engineered plan that could add several thousand dollars to the cost of such a project. Enthusiastic about the Minars' preference for low-risk, low-cost stream reparations, the DNR encouraged them to seek an individual permit for the work, which was done under the auspices of the Sustainable Farming Systems Project.
LSP is a member of the project and coordinates the Sand Creek team. For more information on the Sand Creek Project, contact: Caroline van Schaik, LSP; phone: 651-653-0618; e-mail: caroline@landstewardshipproject.org
Farm Credit Administration officials hear sustainable ag lending concerns on farm visit
Federal farm credit officials got a firsthand look at sustainable farming practices this fall, thanks to the efforts of Land Stewardship Project members. The officials, Michael Reyna and Claire Donovan Rusk, also received an earful on the credit issues that affect sustainable family farming and rural communities.
On Oct. 28, Reyna and Donovan Rusk visited the Nolan and Susan Jungclaus farm near Lake Lillian, in southwest Minnesota. Reyna is one of three people who sits on the Farm Credit Administration board. Rusk serves as his executive assistant. Board members are appointed by the President and oversee the banks and other institutions that make up the Farm Credit System (FCS).
The meeting between LSP and Reyna and the FCS officials was arranged by Lou Anne Kling, a native Minnesotan who is Minority Outreach Director for the USDA's Farm Services Agency.
FCS has almost $70 million in loans outstanding to U.S. farmers, ranchers and agricultural cooperatives, making it a major source of credit in rural areas. However, smaller family farmers, especially those who are utilizing sustainable production methods that are considered out of the mainstream, have been frustrated in their attempts to get credit through FCS, says Paul Sobocinski, an LSP organizer who farms near Wabasso, Minn. In Minnesota, for example, a large portion of the FCS loan portfolio is tied up in large-scale factory hog operations. As a result, many of FCS's policies have actually contributed to economic and environmental problems in farm country, says Sobocinski.
"Investing in sustainable agriculture is a huge opportunity for FCS to diversify its loan portfolio into a type of agriculture that is profitable," he says. "We agreed to meet with Reyna because we wanted to get across the message that the system's money would be better invested in family-sized sustainable farms."
The Jungclaus operation is just such a farm. Since 1995, the family has produced hogs using a Swedish system that relies on deep-straw bedding. This system eliminates the need for confinement and liquid manure handling facilities and makes it possible to raise hogs without subtherapeutic antibiotics. And it's catching on in many parts of the Midwest; in Iowa alone more than 1,000 straw-bedded "hoop houses" have been built within the past few years. No wonder: Iowa State University research shows that on a per-pig basis, it costs about two-thirds less to set up one of these operations when compared to a high-tech confinement facility. In addition, they eliminate the air and water quality problems associated with large-scale liquid manure systems.
"And yet lenders view such a system as going backwards," says Nolan.
LSP members Dennis Timmerman and Rodney Skalbeck also talked to Reyna during the farm visit. Timmerman and Skalbeck raise hogs, and, along with the Jungclaus family, are involved in Prairie Farmers Co-op, a new initiative that in November broke ground on a Dawson, Minn., processing plant that will specialize in pork that's produced without the use of subtherapeutic antibiotics.
"More and more consumers value food being produced on family-sized farms in a healthy manner," says Timmerman, who is chair of the Prairie Farmers board of directors. "Prairie Farmers is in a position to offer the kind of product consumers want."
But some producers who had asked for FCS loans to help them join the co-op were turned down, says Jungclaus. Instead, lending officers offered to loan money for getting involved in large-scale contract swine production, he says.
Karen Stettler, who coordinates LSP's Farm Beginnings program in southeast Minnesota, explained to Reyna how creative partnership arrangements and low-cost practices such as management intensive grazing have allowed farmers to build up equity in the form of dairy cows. However, they often run into a stone wall when it comes to taking the next step in getting established in farming: obtaining credit for buying land. Unfortunately, lenders often don't recognize the asset value of, for example, a grazing paddock water system, whereas they will readily finance putting in tile drainage.
Lenders concede it's easier to loan money to a few mega-operations, rather than many smaller ones. That kind of strategy isn't good for rural communities in a lot of ways, says Jungclaus.
"What happens when that one mega-producer goes belly-up? I'm not as much of a risk to the lender or the community."
SIDEBAR: For more information
For more information on LSP's work with credit policy, contact Paul Sobocinski at 507-342-2323. Michael Reyna can be contacted at: FCA, 1501 Farm Credit Drive, McLean, VA, 22102-5090.
USDA delays checkoff vote
Hog farmers from across the country are "outraged" at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's handling of the signature verification process for the pork checkoff petition, says Mark Schultz, Policy Program Director for the Land Stewardship Project.
Between April 1998 and April 1999, the Campaign for Family Farms, of which LSP is a founding member, collected the signatures of 20 percent of the nation's hog farmers on a petition calling for a referendum vote to end the mandatory checkoff. Signatures of 15 percent of American hog farmers are required for the Secretary of Agriculture to call for a national referendum on the issue. Schultz outlines what has taken place since the USDA received the signatures in May:
"Finally, the USDA has spent months dreaming up a nightmare of a signature verification process, in which they hired a telemarketing firm to call 2,500 of the petition signers and ask them vague and confusing questions," says Schultz. "They then ended these phone calls by telling farmers—this was during harvest—that they had to prove they were qualified to sign the petition by immediately mailing the government a stub from one of their hog sales from the time period in question."
This verification process was either designed by USDA to fail, or is just a prime example of bureaucratic bungling," adds Schultz. "Twenty percent of the nation's hog farmers have spoken, and they are being ignored by an agency that's supposed to serve their needs."
SIDEBAR: What can you do?
* Call your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representative in Washington and tell them hog farmers need this vote now. Ask them why the USDA is blocking the vote. Tell them to call USDA Secretary Glickman and get him to launch the vote by March 1. You can reach your U.S. Senators and Representatives by calling the Capitol in Washington, D.C., at 202-224-3121.
* Call Secretary Glickman's office yourself (even if you have done so before, do it again), and deliver the same message. Call Secretary Glickman at 202-720-3631.
For more information, contact: LSP Policy Program, 3203 Cedar Ave. So., Minneapolis, MN 55407; phone: 612-722-6377.
LSP celebrates 15 years of work in western Minnesota
During the weekend of Sept. 18 and 19, the Land Stewardship Project marked its 15th year of work in the Upper Minnesota River Basin with a special celebration in Watson, Minn. More than 50 people participated in a Saturday evening banquet that featured foods produced by local, sustainable farmers. On Sunday, former LSP Board member Olando Gunderson gave a sermon, "Stewardship, Community, and What We Must Do," at Zion Lutheran Church, an historical landmark which has been restored with the help of LSP organizing.
The event was held in conjunction with Clean Up our River Environment's seventh annual River Revival, which attracted more than 400 people.
OFFICE UPDATES
SOUTHEAST MINNESOTA: It may not be rocket science, but…
By Richard Ness
In a recent article in a farm newspaper, the owner of a large confinement dairy put graziers in a class of farmers who aren’t up to making the management decisions he has to on a daily basis.
His comments made me laugh.
Yes, in some ways I can grant him his point: he is probably spending his evenings writing help wanted ads and worrying whether his city block-sized manure lagoon will leak its contents into the groundwater.
But based on my observations as coordinator of management groups for graziers, I believe he’s way off when it comes to the production side of dairying.
Large scale confinement dairying has been developed into a turnkey operation by the agribusiness suppliers of the equipment, feeds, seeds, fertilizers and management systems needed for them to work. It’s the cookie-cutter approach to management, with most of the innovative production ideas being developed and refined by researchers working for agribusiness firms and then delivered to the consumer — the confinement dairy farmer — at a cost. Grass-based dairy farmers don’t have the corporate research systems developing innovations for them. That’s because agribusiness figured out long ago that sustainable farmers don’t buy every expensive bell and whistle that comes through the door. But lack of gadgets doesn’t mean these farmers don’t have sophisticated management skills. In fact, often quite the opposite is true.
The Land Stewardship Project’s southeast Minnesota office has been working with farmers on implementing management intensive grazing since the Stewardship Farming Program in the late 1980s. Workshops, on-farm research trials and classes for beginning graziers are some of the ways we have been engaged with members and others in developing grazing systems for this region. Our current work includes the dairy management groups discussed on the cover of this Land Stewardship Letter.
One of the most interesting observations I’ve made through my involvement in the management groups is how many technical questions there still are related to grazing management. In some ways, grazing is simple, like some of it’s proponents claim. After all, it allows a farmer to take advantage of a bovine’s ability to turn sunshine into milk or meat. What could be more simple than that? But let’s not confuse simple, with simplistic. It can take a lot of sophisticated decision-making to arrive at a simple end. Some of the management decisions needed to make grazing work for a dairy are extremely complicated. And there are a wide range of opinions on what grazing management should look like on a dairy farm — or other livestock farms for that matter.
Just how tall and/or mature should you let forages get before they’re grazed? Are commercial fertilizers needed to improve pastures? If so, which ones, in what amounts and how often? What influence do fertilizers have on soil life and is that even an issue of concern? Where does manure fit in the fertility issue? Just what is the relationship between pasture species mix, recovery period, drought resiliency, forage production, animal health and animal performance? I could go on and on.
Then throw into the mix the fact that there are some major differences of opinion on the overall nature of how grazing should be carried out. At the risk of oversimplifying the issue, let me say there are two main camps in grazing circles. First, there’s the biodiversity-is best, let’s-mimic-nature camp. These graziers use few off-farm inputs and give the forage plants longer rest periods between grazings. On the other end of the spectrum is the New Zealand-style, high-input camp. These farmers use intensive applications of nitrogen fertilizer to get such specialized forages as rye grass to grow quickly.
Both camps make good points. The biodiversity camp argues that we should use grass and legume species that can grow and thrive in a farmer’s immediate region. They argue that they’re managing for pastures that can stay fairly productive through extended periods of little rainfall, and are more stable in light of risks such as winter kill, disease and insect damage.
Their more input-intensive counterparts say their own efforts are paying off in terms of more milk in the bulk tank, and, in turn, more money in the bank. As an example, they point to New Zealand, which has used input-intensive grazing to make itself the low-cost dairy capital of the world.
So is there the right answer to all of these management questions? Of course not. What path a farmer chooses to follow depends on his or her individual goals and values. And even once a path is chosen, there are innumerable hybrid variations on each management system. A biodiverse farmer may choose to use nitrogen fertilizer to improve pastures. And, in turn, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a New Zealand-style producer experimenting with longer rotations.
The point of all this is to show just how complex one "simple" sustainable farming system can be. Farmers who are looking to adopt such a system must be prepared to work with the land, animals and weather conditions found on their particular operation. That requires the kind of input no chemical company or implement dealer can provide: an ability to allow goals determine what methods are used, rather than vice-versa.
Richard Ness, a former agricultural extension educator, works in LSP’s southeast Minnesota office.
TWIN CITIES: Multiple Benefits Project launched
By Dana Jackson
A new program is getting underway in the Land Stewardship Project’s Twin Cities office. The "Multiple Benefits Analysis Project" is similar to other LSP programs in that a team of farmers, university researchers, public agency staff and nonprofit organization partners guide and advise the work. It’s different because it is basically a study in the relatively new and evolving area of ecological economics. The ultimate goals are to have an impact on public policy that will support sustainability for the land and family-sized farms.
Giving sustainable ag its due
About a year ago, LSP’s federal policy steering committee had a conversation about the way society ignores the external costs of government farm policy. Consistently, government programs have supported and encouraged industrial agriculture, giving subsidies and tax breaks to farms that focus on high production of one or two commodities, such as corn, soybeans or sugar beets. To achieve high yields, these monocultures require large quantities of fertilizer and pesticides, which end up polluting groundwater and surface water. Factory livestock systems also threaten water quality with their huge concentrations of liquid manure, and, in addition, they cause human health problems and provoke disputes among neighbors, robbing communities of valuable social capital. Grocery store prices for ham or bread don’t reflect these costs.
The committee agreed that people may be familiar with agriculture’s negative impacts, but haven’t given much thought to its potential to make positive contributions to environmental quality and social resilience. From their experience doing biological monitoring on an LSP project, some of our farmer-members knew there is hard evidence that farms which switch from continuous open grazing on pastures to a more sustainable system of management intensive grazing produce significant environmental benefits. The committee decided that LSP should show that sustainable agriculture can produce many benefits, in addition to food, for society. However, they believed that without attaching economic values to at least a few of these benefits, such as clean water, flood retention, landscape enhancement and tourism potential, society at large would not readily come to understand the value of sustainable farming systems.
A study is born
So a study has been designed to measure what those economic values are. It will also analyze government policies for their ability to foster production of multiple benefits.
Mara Krinke joined LSP’s Twin Cities office in early November. She will coordinate the project, assist with modeling and facilitate outreach. The project will also employ a postdoctoral scientist in the Applied Economics Department at the University of Minnesota and a graduate student at Bemidji State University. The other two partners in the project are the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
This project will be guided by a Core Working Group, which includes individuals from various specialties.
Krinke will work with residents of two watersheds to develop scenarios about the kind of farming systems they believe could be in place in their region in the future. The two areas chosen for the study are the Wells Creek watershed, which feeds into the Mississippi River, and a sub-watershed of the Chippewa River, which feeds into the Minnesota River in Western Minnesota. The team will select up to five scenarios for each watershed to study, and then estimate the value of environmental and social benefits each could contribute to society, based on economic modeling. In addition to quantitative modeling, researchers will develop methods of assessing the qualitative benefits the farming systems could produce.
Economic studies in farming have tended to focus on cost-benefit analysis of potential regulations, pollution credit trades between agriculture and urban areas and trade-offs between water quality and farm profitability. Most have evaluated existing row crop systems or large-scale concentrated livestock production and assumed agriculture’s primary role is to produce a limited number of commodities for the market.
In contrast, the Multiple Benefits Project will value non-market benefits either as willingness to pay or avoided mitigation costs. In other words, will consumers pay a farmer to set up a cropping system that locks up carbon, helping to reduce the greenhouse effect? What economic value is a grass-based livestock production system that doesn’t produce stream-killing manure spills?
LSP’s policy committee, working with the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, will use this data to make a compelling case for farm policies that reward farmers for good stewardship and the production of multiple benefits for society. The results of this study will be made available to policy makers locally and in the nation’s capital. The ultimate goal is for the next U.S. farm bill to be a stewardship Farm Bill.
We’re excited about the endless possibilities the Multiple Benefits Project offers. In some ways, it’s as diverse and rich as a good sustainable farm.
Dana Jackson is LSP’s associate director. She can be reached at 651-653-0618, or danaj@maroon.tc.umn.edu
For more information on the Multiple Benefits Analysis Project, contact Caroline van Schaik; phone: 651-653-0618
BOOK REVIEW
Hired Hands: An Oral History
Edited by Floyd E. Pearce
1998 & 1999
1st book: 96 pages; 2nd book: 104 pages
$15.00 soft cover; $25.00 hard cover
The Pterodactyl Press
Hired Hands, P. O. Box 111
Cumberland, IA 50843
Reviewed by Brian DeVore
People employed seasonally or full-time on Midwestern farms aren't called "hired hands" anymore. I'm not sure why, but I can venture a guess: Such a term conjures up images of people who have no head, heart or history connected to those "hands." When considered that way, the name demeans the person as well as the work they do. It denotes someone who has no connection to the land whatsoever, but is just brought on to a farm to do a specific job, and then leave.
But the stories told in both volumes of Hired Hands: An Oral History make it clear that the people who worked on Midwestern farms during the 1930s, 40s and 50s for often less than a dollar a day not only have history, heart and heads, but a connection to the land that goes far beyond what a real estate deal can buy.
Hired Hands is a project of the Hired Hands Committee, a group of volunteers based in southwest Iowa's Cass County that has obtained grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Humanities Iowa to capture stories on the verge of being buried with their tellers. It's fortunate they received those grants; the more than 60 former hired men (and, just an importantly, the often ignored hired "women") represented in these books tell important stories about hard work, how to overcome seemingly insurmountable circumstances and the common, everyday decency of people.
In 1997 and 1998, award-winning specialty books printer Floyd Pearce helped the committee members record and transcribe the stories of people who had worked as hired hands from approximately the time of the Depression on into the 1960s. These stories are not completely new to me. In fact, I was born and raised on a farm near the town of Cumberland (pop. 400), which is where Pearce is based and is within a few miles of where most of these stories take place. Both my father and mother worked as hired hands and sharecroppers themselves during the Depression and after World War II. My father even traveled to the Pacific Northwest to pick apples during the 1930s. They had told me some stories about those years: the constant search for a livable wage, the difficult employers, the bone-chilling conditions under which eared corn was hand-picked.
But it wasn't until I read Hired Hands that it became clear to me that such stories can tell us a lot more than how easy we moderns have it. These stories give us insights into a time when a willingness to work hard opened many a door in our society. These books offer descriptions of hired hands who were taken into farm homes and treated as one of the family. Perhaps they spoke only Danish, or another foreign language known to Iowans as "Missourian." But if they were willing to work, they were given a chance, a chance all too rare in these days when plain and simple sweat equity is overlooked in favor of advanced degrees or "high-tech skills."
That's not to say the subjects of these books are simple, muscle-bound brutes who speak simplistic truths about the salvation that comes with working yourself into the ground. These are people who had skills and insights into the land, weather, animals and other people that we cannot even begin to comprehend today.
In fact, while reading these stories, I was reminded of what farmer-poet Wendell Berry once wrote about "Nate Shaw," an African-American farmer who was memorialized in an oral history several years ago: "He had, obviously, a superior intelligence, but he was not a modern intellectual. His thought was not speculative or experimental; it was not an overrefined maundering among "alternatives." It was a mediation upon experience, always related to acts."
These stories use the true oral history technique to get at these people's "superior intelligence." Pearce did not attempt to gussy up the earthy grammar and sometimes archaic language to make it easier on the modern reader (although he does provide a glossary in the backs of the books). At first, these true-to the-source stories will frustrate people used to the polished, homogenized language of today. But after a few of these yarns, I found myself getting into the rhythm of the stories, even when the speaker started talking out of sequence —which is how real stories get told anyway.
These stories also offer intimate insights into historical events that no history book or CD-ROM could. In a few short sentences, G. Mahlandt Baier distills the Dust Bowl down into all its brutal basics: "In 1934, there weren't any jobs because of the drought. I stayed home and helped dad cut corn. Most of the stalks didn't have any ears. We cut the corn for fodder, it was all they [cattle] had to eat. In the summer there was so much dust in the air, it was overcast, could hardly see, hard to see the sun. The sun was there but just a little red ball. We didn't have pasture for our milk cows. It hadn't rained for a long time and the grass was gone, therefore, we herded them along the roadsides."
But in the end, it's the stories about the everyday events of farm work that stick with the reader. These hired hands—some of whom went on to own farms themselves, some of whom did not—don't romanticize life when manual labor ruled. But one can't help but be enthralled at the perfect pleasure of a job well done. And, as the story told by Ron Van Ryswyk, relates, how the confidence that comes from doing such work grants one the ability to commit all-important acts of human kindness:
"But in the summer time, on the threshing run, I remember one summer, vividly ... I was pitching bundles in the field. And one morning, during the run, everything was just right, and I remember by noon I had 19 loads and in the afternoon I did 20 more, I loaded 39 wagons of bundles that day. And at noon, my Uncle James, whom I loved, said, "You know, by golly, when I was a kid, one day I loaded 21 wagons of bundles in one day." And I thought to myself, should I tell him at noon that I've already got 19.
"I didn't tell him. He was so proud of that."
Brian DeVore is editor of the Land Stewardship Letter.
MEMBERSHIP UPDATE
Getting people together over food
Sixty-five Twin Cities area Land Stewardship Project members came together one night this fall for the first Local Foods Banquet. This was a time to enjoy locally produced, sustainable food. It was also a time for our members to learn about LSP’s work and how we can all support a more sustainable food system. More than 15 farm families supplied the food and some were on-hand to share in the feast.
Brad Beal, a local chef who prepared the meal, summed the evening up nicely in the following note:
"I was very impressed and inspired by efforts on behalf of everyone involved in pulling it off. It was especially meaningful for me to feed some of the people who had grown and produced the food. The volunteers in the kitchen were great."
We’d like to thank all the volunteers and members who contributed to this great event. We’re planning on having it again next Oct. 7. We’d also like to take this opportunity to encourage our members to put on "local food banquets" of their own. These don’t have to be affairs that feed dozens of guests. Rather, they can be small, intimate meals involving just a handful of friends or neighbors. It can be an informal and fun way to introduce people to the idea of eating local, sustainable food.
Here’s a few examples of ways to combine food, fun and education:
Potluck place mat
The "Minnesota Grown Potluck" place mat is designed to stimulate discussion about problems with our food system, as well as what we as consumers can do about these problems. It features family farm statistics, a list of suggested table discussion questions, a prayer and a guide on ways to support family farmers.
The idea for the paper place mat came from representatives of the Minnesota Council of Churches and the Minnesota Catholic Conference, says Dale Hennen, who is director of the Rural Life Office of the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis (he’s also chair of LSP’s Board of Directors). The place mat is being used by communities of faith to generate discussion at potlucks (it was used for the first time on Nov. 20 at St. Cecilias Church in St. Paul). Participants are asked to bring a dish to share that uses ingredients produced locally as much as possible.
"We are hoping that people will reflect a bit more about where their food comes from and who produces it," says Hennen.
For more information on the place mat, contact the Minnesota Council of Churches, 612-870-3600 (extension 20); or the Minnesota Catholic Conference, 651-227-8777 (extension 206).
Local food, local art
Farming is often called an art. So it’s appropriate that LSP members Brett Olson and Jan Joannides throw parties that bring the two together. For two years now, the husband and wife have annually featured the works of local artists, and, when possible, the artists themselves, at their home in St. Paul, Minn. The food that is served is produced by local sustainable farmers. Information about the farmers is featured at a display table.
"Most people have a clear concept of what is considered good food and good art, but they often aren’t aware that there are local people making high quality versions of both," says Olson, adding that their most recent open house attracted roughly 80 people.
On-farm feast
On Aug. 14, LSP Board Member Ken Peterson hosted a local foods lunch at his farm near Tamarack, in northeast Minnesota. Peterson, who raises beef cattle with his wife Ina, invited more than 50 people onto his farm for the event. The participants were farmers, consumers, state lawmakers and local agribusiness firms. Besides eating locally produced food, the lunch crowd heard Mark Schultz, LSP’s Policy Program Director, speak on the difficulties of bringing about sustainable farm policy and recent efforts to get consumers involved in getting grocery stores to replace factory farm meat with sustainably raised products.
For information on setting up your own local foods banquet/potluck/cook-out/lunch/brunch or whatever, contact Cathy Eberhart, 651-653-0618; email: cathye@landstewardshipproject.org
Cathy Eberhart is LSP's Membership Coordinator.
Check the Calendar for the latest on upcoming LSP events.
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