April/May/June 2000 LSL

New Plow. Same Crop. Crazy Policy

Current federal farm policy is turning out to be just a new twist on the tired old strategy of rewarding big, industrial agriculture for getting bigger and more industrialized (first of a two-part series).

Kevin Brussell remembers well when he realized Washington, D.C., was doing "exactly the same thing" that it had done for decades in terms of farm policy.

"It was when they brought out the LDPs," recalls Brussell, who farms near the southeast Illinois community of Casey.

LDPs, short for "loan deficiency payments," have an innocuous sounding name resulting from a hybrid of government-speak and business jargon. But to Brussell and others interested in a more diverse, sustainable agriculture, they represent all that’s wrong with federal farm policy, a return to the bad old days when raising lots and lots of a handful of crops was all that mattered, not whether you were farming the land in a way that protects the soil and water, while supporting rural Main Streets.

"LDP payments are based on commodity production and bushels per acre," says the crop farmer. "That has nothing to do with the sustainability of your farm or our food system."

Rather, LDPs are the latest indicator of Washington’s bias in favor of large monocropping operations. Supporters of a more diverse, sustainable agriculture also see this subsidy as a sign of just how limited policy is when it assumes the only benefit agriculture can produce is binloads of cheap crops.
"For decades we had a system of commodity programs that blatantly discriminated against stewardship farming," says Ferd Hoefner, Washington representative for the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. "Now that discrimination is just a little more behind the scenes."

Freedom to Farm
Until the fall of 1998, few people even knew LDPs existed. They were a mere footnote in a gigantic law called the Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act of 1996. More commonly known as the Freedom to Farm law, this legislation was touted by its creators in Congress as a landmark in agriculture. It was developed to end almost 70 years of government control over what crops were raised in places like the Upper Midwest. Under Freedom to Farm, farmers are paid fixed subsidy payments, no matter what they raise. Those payments will decline year-by-year until they are zeroed out by 2002. This is a stark contrast to how farm policy worked before. Prior to 1996, farmers participating in federal farm programs were paid to raise crops like corn, wheat, rice and cotton. If they varied from such restrictive planting regimes, they were penalized. The result was lots of cheap corn and other commodities, which pleased multinational grain traders, processors and mega-sized livestock producers (smaller livestock producers tend to raise their own feed). But such a system also produced a rural landscape dominated by monocultural agriculture that is extremely reliant on lots of chemicals and energy, and few people, to make it viable.

By decoupling payments from what was raised, Freedom to Farm, said its promoters, would produce financially sound rural communities through diversity. This promise of a more diverse agriculture made even supporters of sustainable farming cautiously hopeful about the potential of Freedom to Farm to bring some resiliency back to the land and its communities.

But old habits die hard, and during the first couple of years of Freedom to Farm, just as much corn and soybeans was planted as ever before. Why not? Market prices were good and so, in effect, it was working—farmers were planting for the market. Agricultural experts shrugged it off: just give it some time, they said. Then 1998 came, and LDPs gave farm policy a chance to show its true colors. Prices hit record lows for commodities like corn and soybeans, and stayed there. In fact, they were well below what it cost farmers to actually produce them.

They work like this: farmers are eligible to obtain a low-interest loan from the government by borrowing against a crop they’ve stored. But when local cash prices drop below the loan rate, farmers can sell their grain instead of storing it for future sale, and opt for a loan deficiency payment. LDPs are a cash payment, not a loan, and they’ve proven to be very popular among cash-strapped corn and soybean farmers subjected to low prices.

Now here’s the rub: if you are diversifying into, say, grass-based livestock or forage production, you can’t qualify for an LDP. But if you raise lots of corn, you get lots of LDP money. And the greater your yield, the more the pay-off.

In fact, in 1999 Congress doubled the amount of money one farmer could receive annually via LDP or marketing loan gains from $75,000 to $150,000. And as low prices continue, so do LDPs.

Brussell figures the average LDP payment for corn and soybeans in his part of Illinois last fall was, respectively, 20 cents and $1 per bushel. He farms a soil that was not glaciated, so it has poor organic content and low yields. In northern Illinois, which benefits from rich soils left by the glaciers, soybean yields were easily double the yields Brussell got. That means double the LDP payments. That hit Brussell hard in the pocketbook.

And a lot of Brussell’s crops are not the commodities the government likes to reward. Besides corn and soybeans, the 550 acres he farms is in an intense rotation that includes buckwheat, hairy vetch, rye, spelt, wheat and alfalfa. He also raises beef cattle. Because of the low organic matter present in his soil, rotations have always been important to Brussell for building up the natural fertility of his land. And rotations have become even more important since he started transitioning into chemical-free production in the mid-1990s.

He feels the fragile nature of his soil requires such care. Growing corn and soybeans means leaving a lot of the ground bare, exposing the land to erosion and a deterioration in soil quality. Growing those corn and beans on the same fields year after year without a rotation that involves some sort of soil building plant is even worse.
But even though Brussell is convinced he must farm in a way that protects the soil, he still needs to get rewarded financially for being a good steward if he is to stay viable. Judging by the way LDPs and other current elements of the farm program are operating, those rewards won’t come from the USDA anytime soon.

"When you’re diversifying, you get penalized," says Brussell. "That is backwards to what it should be."
Farmers who convert corn acres into grass are being kicked even harder by the farm program. Lyle Koenen, who farms with his brother Paul and father Ken in southwest Minnesota’s Chippewa County, estimates that their conversion of corn acres to grass cost them more than $3,000 in lost government payments in 1998 alone. The Koenens are part of a growing number of Midwestern farmers who are using management intensive rotational grazing to produce milk and beef on grass. In Wisconsin, for example, the number of farms using this grazing system increased to 3,600 between 1993 and 1997, a 60 percent increase.

No wonder it’s catching on: Studies in the Midwest and elsewhere show that a management intensive rotational grazing system can be established for about half of the cost of building a confinement dairy. Grazing systems also consistently produce more profit on a per-animal basis, according to studies done on farms as well as at university experiment stations. The environmental benefits are even more impressive: ecologists have found that the perennial grasses used in well-managed grazing systems slash erosion levels and keep runoff of contaminants like nitrogen at levels that are at least 35 times below that of a corn or soybean field.

"Recently when we had an inch and a quarter of rain it didn’t even lay the grass down in the gullies," says Greg Koether, who rotationally grazes beef cattle on some 600 acres of steep land in northeast Iowa. "My neighbors just had big gullies rip through their crop fields. Since we started grazing, we have been seeing our organic matter go up and up and are seeing more nesting birds and wildlife. It’s a real joy."

The dirty results
But such alternatives bring no joy to the federal government. The policy bias against diversity has its roots in a narrowly-focused philosophy that sees lots of cheap commodities as the only benefit to come from farming. Such thinking produces policy that, no matter how much tweaking is done, will still produce one thing and one thing only: more corn, soybeans, wheat, rice and cotton. Farmers and others interested in creating an agriculture that is more resilient say policy must be developed that recognizes the multiple benefits farms can provide beyond bulging grain storage bins.

Southwest Minnesota farmer Nolan Jungclaus, for example, thinks sustainable agriculture can bring a very important benefit to the rural landscape in the form of cleaner water and air. He saw the result of a narrowly focused agriculture one day this spring while driving down the road near his Lake Lillian farm. He could barely see 20 feet ahead because of the blowing soil. One neighbor had two feet of topsoil in the ditch; that farmer later took a front-end loader and dug the ditch out, spreading the soil back on his fields. Jungclaus says he could tell 50 feet into the fields where the soil had been blown off because of the contrasting color. It was a 50-foot apron of scathing commentary on the treatment of the land.

"It was like the dust bowl years," says the farmer, adding that the greatest tragedy is that such erosion is unnecessary under a diverse cropping system that builds up soil structure, something he does on his own crop and livestock farm.

Jungclaus’ experience isn’t unique. This spring farmers from throughout the Midwest reported seeing soil erosion rates they hadn’t seen in years. In fact, the latest USDA Natural Resources Inventory shows that although erosion on cropland has been reduced by nearly 40 percent since 1982, 30 percent of our farm fields continue to lose too much soil. Technically, farmers were required to bring their land under conservation compliance to qualify for farm subsidies. But since Freedom to Farm, conservation compliance has slipped into the background and the USDA’s on-farm compliance visits have been reduced.

That may be one reason that during the past five years there haven’t been any gains in erosion control, according to the USDA. But when farmers from the hills of northeast Iowa to the plains of western Minnesota are asked why they think they’ve noticed so much more erosion this spring alone, their answer is the same: LDPs are encouraging the planting of more and more soybeans and corn.

More corn, fewer people
Despite a third year of prices that are mostly below what it costs to produce them, plantings of corn and soybeans are up slightly, according to USDA estimates. In fact, a record 75 million acres of soybeans were planted.

"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. An analysis Porter did of cropping records and population statistics showed that 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 that same period.

In April, a study was released that showed large farm operations are benefiting the most from Freedom to Farm. The report, which was done by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, concluded that the very programs that are supposed to help family-sized farmers are hurrying along their demise. Nationally, Freedom to Farm provided almost $23 billion in subsidies to farmers between 1996 and 1998. Only 10 percent of those farmers collected 61 percent of the money. The top 10 percent averaged $32,000 in payments annually.

In May, low prices prompted Congress to approve a farm bailout that totaled $15 billion. Hoefner says such bailouts, which are happening with increasing frequency, may help some farmers in the short term, but they are given out with little rhyme or reason as to who really needs the money.

"In some sense we have the worst of both worlds. We have no farm program policy. We just have money and because we are in a farm downturn, we have lots of money being given out with no policy to direct it."

But to farmers like Jungclaus, there is a direction to the policy, whether intentional or not.

"The only thing the program is doing right now is allowing the large corporate producers to pay higher rents for farmland, which I have to compete with," he says. "If you can’t get as much profit out of the land, the rentals should go down to reflect that."

The seeds of sameness
Are LDPs, and whatever else that’s hidden in current farm policy, significant barriers to adoption of sustainable farming practices? The bottom line is that many farmers are still trying to be more diverse, no matter what the farm program is encouraging. But the majority of crop producers are satisfied to go where the money is, and right now the money is in LDPs.

And even for farmers willing to buck the trend, it’s tough. Brussell, the Illinois farmer, says it has taken him years to make the transition into a system less reliant on just going out and planting the same crop year after year.

"There is a reason simplified rotations caught on. It’s easier with the industrialized system. When you’re diverse you’re always busy."

Jungclaus farms 750 acres of land that he’s making increasingly diverse. He and his brother Scott produce feed corn, soybeans, wheat, peas and sweet corn. They also raise hogs using the Swedish deep straw system. This system allows the Jungclaus family to reduce their use of antibiotics in hog production while making sustainable use of composted manure. Small grains, which provide hog bedding in the form of straw, are key to this operation.

"The hogs allow us to use the wheat straw and recycle nutrients," he says. "That’s fertilizer we don’t have to buy. It’s essential. It’s organic fertilizer."

Jungclaus sees his farm as not only an environmental plus for the community, but as an economic one as well. Because he has less money invested in big machinery and high-tech confinement buildings with their accompanying multi-million gallon manure lagoons, the farmer says he is less of a risk to the community.

But for now farmers like Jungclaus are still competing in a marketplace that rewards size and monocultural farming over stewardship that results in real benefits to the land and community. That’s one reason he works four or five hours every morning as a rural mail carrier to make ends meet. He’s concerned because that work off the farm means less time doing the kind of management needed to farm sustainably.

Farmers need public support to practice the kind of stewardship the market isn’t paying for, says Jungclaus. But first, agricultural policymakers need to accept the fact that no matter what their planting intentions, the same old crop is emerging.

"Our policy is set up to encourage a glut of a few crops," he says. "And that’s what we’ve got—a glut of a few crops."

LSP & federal farm policy

In the next issue of the Land Stewardship Letter, we will describe how the Land Stewardship Project’s Federal Farm Policy Committee is working to develop policy initiatives that reward stewardship farming.

When I was boy growing up in St. Louis, I learned the phrase, "like a chicken with its head cut off," from my parents. That phrase had real, practical meaning in their lives. We didn’t have chickens, but my parents had them when they were children. This was typical for our town; in the Depression and even during the Second World War, most St. Louis families raised a few chickens for food.

During my childhood, I would accompany my mother to Louie’s Market a few blocks from our home. Here we would buy "whole chickens, cut up" and other wonderfully fresh meats from Louie’s extensive, dazzling case. Louie was a butcher, and his meats were the focus of his store, and rightfully his renown. Always fresh, always delicious.

Since that time, our paths have diverged. Louie eventually retired, and with company supermarkets grabbing a continually larger share of food shoppers, there was little incentive for his market to continue. I eventually found my way to St. Paul, Minn., and to my work with the Food Choices program. Food Choices, which the Land Stewardship Project has created in collaboration with several other organizations, is developing a certification and labeling system that will support local, sustainably produced food. And although there is good deal of time and space between Louie’s market and my current life, much of my thinking about sustainable meats is wrapped up in my childhood experiences. As I try to trace out for myself what a sustainable, regional food system might look like—especially for meats—I’ve discovered that reflecting on these experiences is yielding up a wealth of questions, and, hopefully, answers.

At the heart of my questions is the prevalence of fresh meat as opposed to frozen. At one time—during my parents’ lives and even during my early childhood—"fresh meat" meant "local meat." Freshness was proof that the animals slaughtered had to have been locally raised and butchered. A frozen product would have been looked upon with suspicion, as indeed, it could have come from anywhere.

Times, however, have changed. Distances have arisen between rural and urban communities. Additionally, industrialization has moved rural communities that produce meats to selected portions of the nation. Thus we as consumers and producers have suffered a double removal. For many shoppers, fresh meat now means animals that have been raised and processed at a great distance from their communities. These animals are not part of a local, sustainable food system. They do not contribute to the ecological well-being of local farms. They do not contribute to the economic infrastructure of local communities.

To add insult to injury, this fresh meat—at consumer request—is available year-round. That is, there is no seasonality to these meat products. Thus, when you think about it, the only possible system that could deliver fresh meat, year-round, at great distances, and still survive the economic losses due to spoilage and waste, is the system we have. And it’s no wonder that these companies are vertically integrated oligopolies—how else could we achieve these ends?

An alternative, and possible antidote, to these long-distance meat systems is frozen meat. I’ve come to this idea not as a visionary—I too had until recently been thinking along the lines of Louie’s Market—but as a listener. As I’ve worked with farmers to bring beef and pork products to our Food Choices test-market, "frozen" has been the chorus. For local farmers who raise animals, collaboratively market, and are successful at negotiating a fair price for their product, frozen meat is key to their commerce. There are several reasons why. Frozen allows them to work on a small scale, where individual farms can contribute individual animals to a cooperative marketing effort. There is less waste and spoilage. Their meats are available to several markets for a longer period of time than fresh meats. In all, it allows them to compete on favorable terms; it balances the playing field dominated by the large fresh meat companies.

And as frozen allows local farmers to flourish, it also allows local communities to flourish. It allows consumers to choose and purchase locally raised and processed meats. It makes a local economic infrastructure possible.

This is not to say that frozen meats are a panacea. Certainly, integrated long-distance meat systems could also benefit from selling frozen meats, and would if they could. Reading the label will remain just as important as ever. And frozen products need to be tracked and managed as assiduously as fresh products to ensure that they’re not out-of-date. Frozen meats do, however, hold out promise for initiating and developing a regional food system. They allow small producers to effectively market within their foodsheds. They allow us to operate human-scale, low-impact farming and marketing systems. Eventually, perhaps the niche they open and occupy will allow us to develop parallel fresh meat markets—fresh meat that is part of a local infrastructure.

So... think about it. About how you shop, and why you buy the meat products that you buy. Talk to your friends and neighbors about the local meat products they’ve discovered and support. I’ve realized that the path to a sustainable, regional food system challenges my previous experiences and thought processes. That what was once a sure sign of local meat commerce—fresh—may now be deceiving. And the frozen meat that carried the stigma of "distant" may be your local community’s best bet for sustainable development.

Ray Kirsch is Farm Program Coordinator for the Food Choices Project. The first Food Choices products will be on Minnesota grocery store shelves later this summer. Kirsch can be contacted at 651-653-0618 or rkirsch@landstewardshipproject.org

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Dear Editor: As one of your non-farming members, I would like to comment on your article, "Bigger is Better..." (Dec. 1999 LSL). Somehow it seems we are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past.

As the companies grow even larger and more and more in control of everything from seed going into the ground to the end product on the table—whether it is bread or bacon or anything else—there should be loud warning bells.

The government is responsible as it has not only been casting a blind eye on this development but has been encouraging it and even partnering in it. Read, once again, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four or Animal Farm and it will be all too familiar.

It certainly looks as if the large corporations and the government were trying to collectivize agriculture in the U.S. It did not work in the USSR and it will not work in the U.S.

Dear Editor: Farmers are giving up, quitting, or on a destruction path of expansion that will ultimately fail because the connection to the land and the animals is lost. It is just another business. Farmers of past generations had that connection to the land you just don't get in an office in front of a computer.

However, there are still organizations like yours out there, and people who do care. And as long as there are it gives hope to all the farmers and rural people who believe in the ideas that Land Stewardship represents. I know that sounds pretty strange to say, and really mean, but it can be overwhelming to deal with the current problems in agriculture every day. It is always a joy to read of the active interest folks in your area have for stewardship issues and rural interests.

MISA’s future in doubt
Link between university, public damaged by recent ag college actions

On April 7, Don Wyse was forced to resign as executive director of the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (MISA) by Charles Muscoplat, dean of the University of Minnesota’s College of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences. This event has set off a storm off controversy over the future of MISA, whether sustainable agriculture research and education will become a more significant presence at a land grant university and the role the public plays in determining the future path of public institutions.

MISA was started in 1992 by a group of organizations called the Sustainers Coalition as a unique experiment in creating links between a land grant university and the public. The Minnesota Food Association’s then Executive Director, Ken Taylor, led the efforts to form the Sustainers Coalition and develop the process that resulted in MISA.

The Land Stewardship Project was among the founding members of the Sustainers Coalition. LSP Executive Director George Boody says MISA was created out of a feeling that farmers utilizing sustainable and organic practices were being denied access to their own land grant university. Farmers seeking alternatives to the industrial model of agriculture in particular felt shut out of an institution that has increasingly become more dominated by agribusiness-funded research. MISA has served as a door through which farmers and others network with scientists who were doing work that could benefit them.

"Through MISA, scientists have gotten in contact with farmers they may never have met before," says Boody.

As a result, although it has operated on a shoestring budget of just a few hundred thousand dollars annually, MISA has notched some impressive accomplishments in a relatively short amount of time.

But all of that has been put in jeopardy by recent events, say members of the Sustainers Coalition and the MISA board of directors. The turmoil began when Muscoplat announced earlier this year that he was going to review all centers in the agriculture college to see where significant cuts could be made. Muscoplat maintains that he supports sustainable agriculture research and that his hands are tied: budget cuts throughout the agriculture college are forcing him to take a chunk out of everyone’s pie.

"One real constraint to our goal for sustainable agriculture—and to the range of efforts across our college—is the budgetary belt-tightening required at the University of Minnesota," wrote the dean in a letter dated April 27.

However, as early as Jan. 24, Muscoplat called for a review of the future of MISA and other centers.

"...we are continually faced with important new opportunities that we are unable to act upon for lack of new resources," he wrote. "These realities mean that we have no option but to make some hard choices, to be creative in looking at the use of available resources, and in seeking new ones."

It is becoming increasingly clear that the "new opportunities" the university, under Muscoplat’s leadership, would like to act upon center on genetic engineering. This spring, the university successfully sought funds from the Minnesota Legislature for a new $10 million plant genomics center. That will match $10 million Cargill has already put into the center. This, coupled with the agriculture college’s already overwhelming emphasis on research related to industrial agriculture, raises concerns about the balance of research and education activities taking place at the institution, says Boody.

Muscoplat is also ignoring the fact that MISA had a review three years ago (and is due for another one in two years). This review was done by farmers, researchers and outside evaluators. They concluded that the institute was doing an excellent job of fulfilling its mission, says Boody.

Nevertheless, a 25-page summary of MISA’s accomplishments and future goals has been submitted to the dean, who is slated to make a decision on the center’s future by fall.

Sister Mary Tacheny, chair of the MISA board, says perhaps the most troubling aspect of all this is that it undermines the whole idea of the public partnering with their university, and having a say in how it is run.

"That’s what really MISA was built on. It was just another model of how the research person out in the field can partner with the farmer," she says. "Those researchers really serve at the behest of all citizenry, not just industrial agriculture. This partnership is basic to the whole founding of the land grant. There are people who would like to forget about the land grant’s mission to the public, but it’s the law."

Wyse, a respected weed scientist, had been director of MISA since its inception. Neither he nor Muscoplat will comment publicly on the reason for the scientist’s departure from MISA, other than to say it was for "philosophical" differences.

But according to MISA bylaws, only the institute’s board has the power to accept the director’s resignation. Muscoplat has said that Wyse is his employee and the bylaws don’t apply to the office of the dean. Since mid-April, several meetings have been held between MISA Board members and university officials, including Muscoplat and Vice President and Provost Robert Bruininks and Vice President Sandra Gardebring. Recently, the Sustainers Coalition met with central administration officials. The coalition is seeking additional meetings in an attempt to rebuild the trust and garner commitments on the specifics necessary for the MISA partnership to function. Rebecca Knittle, a Minnesota Food Association board member and a participant in the Sustainers Coalition, notes that "the efforts that are underway, both by university administrators and the sustainer organizations, to try to salvage the unique partnership that is MISA may succeed if the university is willing to continue sharing power as it has for the past 10 years."

The threat of losing MISA has raised the ire of people representing many aspects of Minnesota agriculture. The president of the university, Mark Yudof, has been deluged with hundreds of letters and e-mails from farmers and others concerned about the center’s future.

Austin, Minn., farmer and Land Stewardship Project member Dwight Ault serves on the Alternative Swine Task Force that was created with the help of MISA. He says the way this issue has been dealt with has reinforced his belief that the agriculture college sees sustainable agriculture as "merely a nuisance."

Carol Ekarius farmed for 10 years in Minnesota before moving to Colorado. She says she was able to contact an entomologist through MISA to get help on alternative fly control methods in their dairy operation. Her family also used MISA to network with other farmers.

"One thing that has been disappointing to me is that [Colorado State University] has no comparable program for farmers," she says.

Boody says members of the university’s central administration have told the Sustainers Coalition they are committed to sustainable agriculture, and have shown a desire to see MISA continue to exist. The next step is to translate such verbal support into the kind of action that will give sustainable agriculture the support it deserves at public institutions, he says.

"Rather than reduce our focus on sustainable agriculture, it’s time for land grants across the country to increase their emphasis on this ten-fold. The need is getting greater all the time."

What has MISA developed in 8 years?

Information exchange. This initiative is devoted to developing sustainable agriculture information to the public, via printed and electronic means. Electronically, the MISA Web site (http://www.misa.umn.edu) has proven to be an invaluable resource for farmers and others interested in sustainable agriculture. It includes an interactive, "Ask MISA" section. MISA has developed five printed publications on subjects like direct marketing and assessing soil quality. Four more are due out by the end of the year.
Graduate minor in sustainable agriculture. This is available to any masters or doctoral student enrolled at the University of Minnesota.
Alternative Swine Systems Program. This program has brought farmers and researchers together to develop a research and educational system that supports sustainable pork production. Some of the results of this have been the Swine Source Book, the Alternative Swine Task Force and a research center at the West Central Research and Outreach Center in Morris, Minn.
Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships. These partnerships bring together diverse groups to discuss complex issues and identify research needs. The program is now established in five regions across the state.
Enhanced Landscape, Food Systems, Human and Animal Health Initiative. This was developed to facilitate interdisciplinary work within the university.
Farmer Summit. A farmer-led network designed to create long-term solutions that support healthy food and farming systems and thriving rural communities.
Sustainable Farming Systems Team. This consists of on-farm and experiment station research, demonstration and educational activities to examine the economic and environmental impacts of sustainable farming systems.
MISA Competitive Grants Program. This program has helped fund such Land Stewardship Project initiatives as the Monitoring Team and the Beginning Farmer research team.
Theodora and Arnold Johnson Undergraduate Research Fellowship. This endowment is designed to provide undergraduate students with the opportunity to do research on a topic related to sustainable agriculture.
School of Agriculture Endowed Chair in Agricultural Systems. This provides the unique opportunity to bring in expertise for a period of time ranging from two weeks to one year. Farmers, rural sociologists and activists have filled this chair thus far.

Help MISA now
The next few months are critical ones as the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (MISA) fights to stay in existence. Are you a farmer, student or anyone else who feels MISA is a valuable link between the public and the University of Minnesota?

Write a letter and send it to some key decision makers now. Letters that describe how MISA has helped you are particularly valuable. For tips on what to include in such a letters, contact any of the Land Stewardship Project’s offices for a MISA action alert.

These are the key people who need to hear from the public:

o Charles Muscoplat, Dean
College of Agriculture, Food & Environmental Sciences
University of Minnesota
277 Coffey Hall, 1420 Eckles Ave.
St. Paul, MN 55108
Phone: 612-624-3009
Fax: 612-625-1260
Email: CollegeOffice@agri.umn.edu

o Mark Yudof, President
University of Minnesota
202 Morrill Hall, 100 Church St. SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
E-mail: myudof@mailbox.mail.umn.edu

o Board of Regents
The 12-member Board of Regents is the governing body of the University of Minnesota. The legislature elects one regent from each of Minnesota’s eight congressional districts and four from the state at large. For information on who your regent is and how to contact them, call 612-625-6300.

To get the latest information on the MISA situation, see www.sustain.org/MISAfriends

Hog farmers with the Land Stewardship Project and the Campaign for Family Farms have sharply criticized the proposed rules for the referendum on the mandatory pork checkoff. The rules were released in early April by the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) of the USDA. Between the release of the rules and May 18, nearly a thousand hog farmers submitted comments to AMS on the proposed rules. Sixty percent of the comments were critical of the rules. No date has been set for a vote.

"Simple justice requires that this vote be as accessible as possible for all legitimate producers in order to obtain the highest level of voter participation," says hog farmer and LSP organizer Paul Sobocinski, of Wabasso, Minn. "As they stand right now, these rules don’t do that."

A major concern of hog farmers is that thousands of legitimate producers would be prevented from voting under the rules proposed by the AMS. On May 24, 1999, LSP and other member-organizations of the Campaign for Family Farms submitted the signatures of more than 19,000 hog farmers to the AMS. These farmers all called for a vote to end the mandatory pork checkoff. But since the petition drive began, thousands of farmers have gone out of business in the wake of record-low hog prices. Historically, small and medium sized hog farmers have stopped producing pigs temporarily in response to low market cycles. Such flexibility related to entering and exiting the market is a mainstay of a family farm-based system of pork production. But there is a real possibility AMS may bar farmers from voting on the referendum just because they didn’t raise hogs within a specific time frame, says Sobocinski, adding that many of those producers have been paying into the checkoff for a decade or more.

Another serious problem with AMS’ proposed rules is the balloting process, say farmers. LSP and the Campaign would prefer to see a mailed-out ballot to make it easier for farmers who live far from USDA offices. AMS has a list of more than 58,000 verified hog farmers that could serve as a basis for the mailing list. Instead, the federal agency wants to require producers to go into town to vote, and do it within a period of two business days (they also have the option of voting absentee, but must formerly request a special ballot to do this).

"AMS has mailed out ballots and allowed for at least four weeks of voting for every other checkoff referendum in the past year, which helps to increase the participation of producers in the referendum," says Sobocinski.

In addition, USDA officials are hinting that they will hold the vote during harvest time, one of the busiest periods in farm country. Such timing would lower voter participation significantly, says Sobocinski.

"Why are they making it difficult for hog producers to vote? Because hog producers want to vote down the mandatory pork tax and AMS wants to see it continue," he says. "Hog farmers fought for a vote on the mandatory pork checkoff, and we won that. Now it looks like we’ll have to fight to make the vote fair—but we’re ready to do that, too."

For more information on the mandatory pork checkoff referendum, contact the Land Stewardship Project at 612-722-6377. You can also view "Pork Checkoff Facts" on the LSP Web site. Also, check the website Press Releases section for the latest news on the checkoff referendum.

New LSP interns
Lynn Mader has joined the Land Stewardship Project’s western Minnesota office as an intern. Mader holds a bachelor of science degree in nutrition from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the University of St. Thomas. She is a registered and licensed dietitian and a certified healing touch practitioner who is currently in the graduate program in Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Minnesota.

Mader has worked in the food, nutrition and health care industry for more than 20 years, most recently as a nutrition coach, whole foods cooking class instructor and healing touch provider.

Melissa Driscoll is serving an internship in LSP’s Twin Cities office. Driscoll holds a bachelor of arts degree in anthropology from Colorado College. She has worked as a management coordinator for North Country Cooperative Grocery and as an organic chicken farmer. In addition, Driscoll has done breeding bird surveys at the Itasca Forestry and Biology Research Station in Minnesota and taught a course called "How to Raise Chickens in the City."

Driscoll’s internship is focusing on monitoring the environmental impacts of grazing. She lives in south Minneapolis, and, of course, raises chickens in her backyard.

Farm Beginnings position open
The Land Stewardship Project has an opportunity through AmeriCorps to have someone work with the Farm Beginnings program in our Lewiston, Minn., office. The Farm Beginnings program will begin its fourth year this fall, and is generating quite a bit of excitement in Minnesota. This initiative provides an opportunity for people to learn sound, low-cost, sustainable farming methods through a series of classes and workshops. Participants also have an opportunity to be mentored by established farmers who are using sustainable methods.

More than 75 percent of the people who have taken part in Farm Beginnings thus far are now on their own farms.

Janaki Fisher-Merritt, who just wrapped up his time working with Farm Beginnings as an AmeriCorps volunteer, says the experience was invaluable.

"This experience has increased my knowledge of organizations and my ability to communicate my feelings about farming and my perspectives on agricultural issues," he says. "Overall, the experience has been outstanding."

Pork packing plant update
An innovative pork packing plant cooperative is moving ahead.

Ground was broken in November on the Prairie Farmers Co-op processing plant near the community of Dawson. When it goes on line at the end of the year, it will employ some 45 people and have the ability to slaughter up to 400 hogs a day, says Dennis Timmerman, a Boyd, Minn., farmer and Land Stewardship Project member. Timmerman and 75 other farmers, several of them LSP members, belong to the co-op, which will eventually produce pork that is free of growth-promoting antibiotics for natural foods markets. The farmer-members all raise between 400 and 2,000 hogs annually for market, putting them on the small end of the hog industry spectrum. The co-op has already been recognized by Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura and others interested in economic development as a good example of farmers taking proactive steps to maintain access to markets.

Timmerman says the co-op’s farmer-membership drive has gone well, but now they’d like to give non-hog farmers an opportunity to buy preferred stock in the co-op.

For more information, contact Timmerman at: RR-1, Box 69, Boyd, MN 56218-9628; phone: 320-855-2311 (voice & fax).

LSP grazing school in Sept.
Grass and water take the lead during two, one-day grazing schools to be hosted in September by graziers in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Organized by the Land Stewardship Project in coordination with researchers and agricultural agencies in both states, the trainings will address the growing interest in both environmental and financial benefits of grazing. Riparian situations will receive special emphasis, as will teaching observation of environmental indicators. Participants will stay on-farm and "close to the ground" as graziers and experts alike study grass-based systems, monitoring, and the resources in each other to be shared.

For more information, contact Caroline van Schaik in the Metro office of LSP at 651-653-0618, or e-mail her at caroline@landstewardshipproject.org

Twin Cities: Multiple benefits, multiple views

By Marka Krinke

As you travel across the Midwest, you see lakes, trees, towns and farms. Sometimes you see a cow peering at you over a fence, other times you see hog barns or rows of corn and soybeans. As you look at the land, have you ever asked yourself what, in addition to animal feed, milk, and meat, comes from those fields?

Farmland has the potential to be home to birds and other animals, to clean our waters on the way to the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, and to provide healthy and profitable ways of life for our neighbors. Farmland can also be the source of erosion, air and water pollution, and destruction of rural communities.

"Multifunctional agriculture," is essentially a recognition of the environmental, social, and economic costs and benefits resulting from agricultural systems. While agriculture produces food and fiber, some of the effects of different agricultural practices include places for animals to live, water quality improvements, jobs, profits, and changes in rural communities. These non-food and non-fiber benefits are neither typically measured nor are they rewarded by public policy and programs. Some farms produce higher levels of environmental, social, or economic benefits than others. Depending on what society deems important, we can choose to reward farmers who produce the benefits we want to see in our communities.

That’s the thinking that goes into the Multiple Benefits of Agriculture Project. This initiative has moved into the community participation phase. We have been asking residents in the Chippewa River and Wells Creek watersheds to share their ideas about a future agricultural system that will result in maximum environmental, social and economic benefits. As reported in the November issue of the Land Stewardship Letter, this is a two-year project coordinated by LSP and conducted in cooperation with Bemidji State University, the University of Minnesota, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s Energy and Sustainable Agriculture Program. The project is guided by a 14-member core working group and a team of technical advisors.

The project is based in two Minnesota watersheds: a portion of the Chippewa River watershed, which drains to the Minnesota River in the western part of the state; and the Wells Creek watershed, which drains to Lake Pepin, a wide spot on the Mississippi River in eastern Minnesota. The team has established a methodology for the community participation portion of the research, begun surveying farmers about their practices and conducted initial focus groups in both watersheds.

Watershed residents speak out
Community members in the Chippewa River watershed gathered in April to talk about the different groups working in the watershed. They also discussed the commonalities and differences in the stated goals of those groups. Cornelia and Jan Flora, sociologists from Iowa State University, along with University of Minnesota graduate student Kristen Corselius, assembled an analysis of the stated goals and suggested methods for reaching them.

The Chippewa River watershed focus groups began addressing some of the difficulties in balancing environmental, social, and economic goals. One participant gave an example that showed how different farming systems foster different types of relationships: "Developing community means very different things, depending on the speaker. When I grew up, reciprocity definitely occurred—we helped each other with haying and made room for neighbors to move in. I’ve talked with a friend in a hog [production] co-op who thinks that it is a great addition to the community because it creates jobs. [But] those people are entering a relationship of employer and employee, rather than as equals."

People living in the Wells Creek and Chippewa River watersheds have also shared their ideas about what they want to create in the watershed, and then what would happen to communities, the local economy and the environment under each new scenario. During these discussions, participants were given maps of the watershed and asked to think about what the area might look like under a different farming system. In both watersheds, people talked about celebrating the natural beauty of the place and creating opportunities for families to thrive.

The next steps in this project will involve developing more detailed descriptions of future scenarios for the watersheds. To assist the decision-making, we will develop maps showing current land use and environmentally sensitive areas. We will also provide more data showing the economic and environmental trade-offs among different agricultural systems. This entire initiative relies heavily on the community members’ descriptions of their visions for the watershed, their expectations about the impacts of different farming practices, and their continued participation throughout the life of the project.

Caroline van Schaik is the Project Coordinator of the Multiple Benefits Project. She is based in LSP’s White Bear Lake office and can be contacted at 651-653-0618.

Policy: What is a family farm?
…and other important questions that guide LSP’s work

By Mike McMahon

Well, it’s that time of year again. During late spring and early summer, each of the Land Stewardship Project’s programs develops its work plan for the next fiscal year (which begins on July 1). For the Policy Program, the plans are an outline for what issues we will work on and how we are going to build the power of LSP.

In writing our program plan, what we decide to work on is based on how the work fulfills the mission, goals, and purpose of LSP and the Policy Program.

Finally, the purpose of the Policy Program has two parts. We organize people to build the power to:

The terms "sustainable agriculture" and "family farm" are used repeatedly in these principles. Although we use them often in describing the work of LSP, they are terms that are difficult to precisely define. To develop working definitions for sustainable agriculture and family farms, we spoke with LSP members and staff about what they believe are the key elements of the terms. Based on these conversations, this is what we came up with:

o Family Farm: a small to moderate-scale farm on which the majority of the day-to-day labor and management is done by family members, who live on the farm.
o Sustainable Agriculture: An agriculture that is environmentally sound, economically profitable for family farmers and rural communities, and socially just. Another word that we use throughout our work is "democracy."
o Democracy is defined as: A society in which the people hold the power to govern. We believe that working to build a society that is truly a democracy is essential to achieving our goals.

These definitions serve primarily as a guide to help us determine who and what we are working for. While these words are not a litmus test for what is and is not a family farm or a sustainable type of agriculture, they do assist us to differentiate our goals and constituency from those of industrial agriculture.

For example, they enable us to distinguish between a family farm, and a factory farm that happens to be owned by an individual or members of a family. Factory farms operate primarily on hired, non-family labor; consolidate very large acreages or livestock numbers in one business entity; and receive preferential pricing, contract, and lending deals from packers, processors and lenders solely because of their size (not based on food quality or high environmental standards). It is important to note that undue price premiums given by processors to factory farms are taken out of the prices paid to family farms.

Factory farms are the basic building blocks for a brittle and unjust food and agriculture system—highly dependent industrialized operations that require large amounts of chemical, pharmaceutical, and financial inputs. These operations sacrifice environmental and animal health and endanger the public in order to form a link in the corporate-controlled chain from genetic material to supermarket shelf or fast-food counter. In contrast, diversified family farms are a critically important base for a resilient and sustainable food and agriculture system, such as described frequently in the pages of the Land Stewardship Letter.

In the Policy Program office, these definitions and the goals, mission, and purpose of LSP’s policy work are printed on large posters and posted by the entrance. We believe that to be successful in our efforts to build a food and agriculture system we want, we must keep these principles in front of ourselves constantly—figuratively and literally.

There are important issues out there. The issues that members and staff involved in the Policy Program work on are ones we believe will gain us the most ground toward LSP’s mission and goals.

Much of our work in the coming year will be continuing projects that we are already involved in, like the referendum to end the mandatory pork checkoff and advancing federal farm policy alternatives such as the Farming Results Index. As we work toward our goals, we will continue to develop and implement innovative strategies to fight for family farms, rural communities and the environment. p

Mike McMahon is an organizer with LSP’s Policy Program. He can be reached by calling 612-722-6377.

Policy: LLCs are not family-farm friendly

By Paul Sobocinski

On May 15, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura signed the Agricultural Policy Bill. This legislation includes a new section under the Minnesota Corporate Farm Law which will allow "limited liability companies," known as LLCs for short, to own farmland and engage in farming. This may sound harmless, but in reality this piece of legislation violates the intended purpose of the Corporate Farm Law, which is to "encourage and protect the family farm as a basic economic unit, to insure it as the most socially desirable mode of agricultural production, and to enhance and promote the stability and well-being of rural society in Minnesota and the nuclear family."

Despite what supporters of LLCs say, this type of business arrangement is not family farmer friendly. An LLC is a business arrangement under which the owners are liable for the company’s debts only to the extent of their initial investment in the company. As a result, these owners are significantly shielded from liability for, as an example, pollution caused by a manure spill.

The bill allows the creation of a limited liability company which can farm and own agricultural land. The majority of the members of a family farm limited liability company must be related to each other within the "third degree of kindred" (a third cousin, for example) and one of the related persons must be actively operating the farm. This so-called "family farm LLC" allows for 49 percent of the investors to not be family members.

The bill also allows the creation of an "authorized farm limited liability company." Under this kind of company, there can be up to five partners. It is interesting to note that with this type of LLC, not even one of the farmer-members is required to be actively engaged in the company and, again, 49 percent of the investors can be outsiders who are not farmers.

The bill, in addition to the LLC changes, also provided an expansion in the exemption for limited partnerships so that an operation would be considered a "family farm partnership" even if none of the partners live or work on the land (if one of the partners owned the land for five years before transferring it to the limited partnership).

LSP, as a membership-based farm and rural grassroots organization, works to support a type of agriculture that is made up of independent family farmers producing food in an economically and environmentally sound manner. We believe that family farms provide the strongest support for our rural communities. Such farmers take responsibility for the messes they create, and don’t need a tool called the LLC to shield themselves from the "costs" of production.

LLCs give major advantages to large-scale investor-driven factory farms, plain and simple. They do this by protecting their investors from liability for environmental damage by passing their costs onto local communities. When there are damages caused by major spills, local units of government and the taxpayers could end up footing the bill. LLCs siphon profits out of local communities mainly because the entities that use them don’t do the majority of their business locally like family farmers do. Some of the largest and most troublesome factory farms in Iowa are LLCs. Now that it is easier to form such business arrangements in Minnesota, don’t be surprised to see LLCs in the news as sources of livestock pollution, particularly since the 2000 Legislative session also brought about a weakening of rules related to air quality standards near manure lagoons (large livestock facilities are now exempt from meeting air quality standards for up to 21 days annually).

The debate that surrounded this legislation made it clear, perhaps more than ever before, who supports the corporate take over of Minnesota agriculture. Senator Charles Berg was the chief author in the Senate. The House’s chief author was Representative Robert Ness. No surprises there. Lawmakers like Berg have long supported weakening protections for family farming. Leading the lobbying effort to further erode the Minnesota Corporate Farm Law were Jerry Schoenfeld of the Minnesota Pork Producers Association, Bruce Kleven of the Minnesota Association of Cooperatives and John Apitz, who represents the Farm Credit System. The Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation also worked to weaken this law.

But some "family farm supporters" also helped undermine the corporate farm law. It is becoming alarmingly clear that Senator Dallas Sams is giving up on the family farm system that he once spoke for and has instead decided to use his leadership skills to advance industrial corporate agriculture. In the past we have been able to count on the support and at times the leadership of state senators such as Keith Langseth, Leroy Stump, Steve Murphy and Don Samuelson. This year they decided to support corporate farming. On the House side representatives Tim Finseth, Torrey Westrom, Elaine Harder, Al Juhnke, Leslie Schumacher, Doug Swenson, Gregory Davids and Bob Gunther, among others, were responsible for eroding the corporate farm law. At the March 1 Rally (see Jan./Feb./March LSL), at which more than 1,000 rural farmers and citizens indicated their strong opposition to opening up the Minnesota Corporate Farm Law to allow for LLCs, the Speaker of the Minnesota House, Steve Sviggum, indicated that he was going to support the formation of LLCs to farm.

If any of these lawmakers represent you, ask them why they support policies that are a boon to corporate-controlled industrial agriculture.

On the other side of the issue, the bill was opposed by the Campaign for Rural Communities, of which LSP is an active member. Other participating organizations in the Campaign are Minnesota Farmers Union, Midwest office of the Izaak Walton League of America, the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition, Lutheran Coalition For Public Policy, Minnesota Catholic Conference, Minnesota COACT, Minnesota Dairy Producers Board, New Ag America, Clean Water Alliance, and the Rural Life Office of the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

If you are associated with any of these groups, thank them for standing up for independent family farmers.

In the coming month, LSP will be evaluating with our allies in the Campaign for Rural Communities about how we can build a more sustainable future for farming that is healthy for our communities, our environment, and, most of all, economically supportive of independent family farmers. For more information, call our Policy Program office at 612-722-6377.

LSP organizer Paul Sobocinski raises crops and hogs near Wabasso, Minn. He can be reached at 507-342-2323.

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MPCA ignores science, citizens in vote to not do EIS
Lawsuit filed against agency over controversial dairy in karst region

On May 23, The MPCA’s Citizens Board voted 5-2 against requiring Reiland Dairy to undergo extensive environmental study before building a 7.3 million gallon manure lagoon in southeast Minnesota’s Fillmore County. The Board was following the advice of MPCA staff members, but going against overwhelming evidence supplied by scientists, experts at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and local farmers.

As a result of the vote, a group of farmers and other rural residents who belong to the Land Stewardship Project have brought a lawsuit against the MPCA.

"The MPCA ignored the science on this decision," says Jan Poldervaard, an LSP member and farmer whose home lies within a mile of the proposed facility. "The MPCA has always acted as proponents of this project and refused to admit there could be problems. We hate to turn to the courts to force them to do their job as an environmental regulating agency, but that’s what it’s come to."

The MPCA’s unwillingness to consider the manure lagoon an environmental threat is surprising considering the sensitivity of the region, which is underlaid with "karst" geological formations. Karst geology is made up of limestone formations characterized by sinkholes, ravines and underground streams, and is recognized throughout the world as a hazardous area for storing toxic materials. There have been several documented cases of sinkholes developing near and under manmade structures in the region. In fact, three municipal sewage lagoons in southeast Minnesota have collapsed as a result of sinkholes. In Kentucky, a livestock manure lagoon leaked 2.4 million of gallons of waste into the groundwater in less than five hours when a sinkhole developed underneath it.

But even if a sinkhole doesn’t develop, karst geology can result in the rapid transmission of pollution from the land surface to groundwater, according to studies done in northeast Iowa. Calvin Alexander, a University of Minnesota professor and nationally-recognized karst expert, says Fillmore County is the "karst capital" of Minnesota.

"Even if everything worked perfectly, 700 to 1,260 new animal units could be the final increment that kills the Forestville Creek ecosystem," wrote Alexander in a letter to the MPCA. But "...everything will not work perfectly. The potential for routine and catastrophic failure is enormous."

The location of the proposed facility—it would initially house 500 cows—is particularly sensitive because the property drains into a stream which terminates in the Fairview Blind Valley, a major karst feature that is approximately 3,500 feet from the site. Water sinks into the ground in this blind valley then re-emerges at Moth and Grabau springs, the headwaters for the North Branch of Forestville Creek, one of the top trout streams in the state. Forestville Creek flows into Forestville State Park, a popular recreational and natural area.

However, the MPCA has maintained that the lagoon facilities fit environmental criteria and that a polyethylene liner will provide extra protection.

"The MPCA is banking on a piece of plastic to keep 7.3 million gallons of liquid manure out of Forestville Park and our drinking water," said LSP member and Fillmore County farmer Eloda Wood. "That’s crazy. They have relied on junk science to make their case."

Indeed, political science may have played a major part in the MPCA’s May 23 decision, in light of a closed door meeting on March 29 in which a group of legislators criticized the DNR and Department of Health (DOH) for recommending an in-depth environmental study, called an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), on the project.

In their comments on the Environmental Assessment Worksheet (EAW) of Reiland Dairy Farms’ proposal, both the Health Department and the DNR requested that an EIS be done. The EAW was prepared by the MPCA to determine if the project needed an in-depth environmental review in the form of an EIS. If the EAW process reveals the potential for significant environmental impacts, state rules require an EIS.

The Health Department’s comments, which ran nine pages, stated: "...we believe an Environmental Impact Statement is warranted. Our greatest concern involves the high potential for the new confinement project to contaminate drinking water supplies in the area."

The DNR’s comments also made it clear that an EIS is needed: "..the EAW demonstrates a significant potential for ground and surface water contamination from this project, due to its location in the karst region and the site having a moderate to high sinkhole probability... ."

The DNR still stands by its opinion that an EIS is needed. And on May 23, two DNR staffers testified before the Citizens Board, maintaining that the location of such a lagoon posed a significant threat to water in the area. They also made it clear that little is known about what is connected to what underneath the surface in places like Fillmore County.

"We have a unit of our [Forestville State Park] called Mystery Cave, and the reason they call it Mystery Cave is it’s a mystery how it was formed," Thomas Balcom, supervisor of the DNR’s Environmental Planning and Review Section, told the Board.

Political pressure?
However, MDH officials have not been so stalwart in standing behind their original conclusions. LSP posted the DNR and MDH memos on its Web site (www.landstewardshipproject.org) on May 15. In a two-paragraph letter dated May 16, the MDH withdrew its request for an environmental impact statement. The letter was written by Patricia Bloomgren, director of the MDH’s Environmental Health Division, and addressed to Kevin Kain, a planner with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency who has worked on the Reiland proposal. The letter stated that the MDH was still concerned about the "potential for catastrophic failure of waste storage facilities...in the karst regions... ," but was withdrawing its EIS request based on "your clarification and greater description of the facility’s engineering and other controls... ."

Some Fillmore County residents, and at least two MPCA Citizens Board members, have expressed concern at what role political pressure played in the MDH’s two-paragraph retraction of a nine-page report. The March 29 meeting was called by Sen. Kenric Scheevel of Preston, which lies in Fillmore County. It was attended by, among others, Sen. Dallas Sams of Staples, Sen. Steve Dille of Dassel, Sen. Dan Stevens of Mora and Sen. Donald Ziegler of Blue Earth, according to Rep. Gregory Davids of Preston, who also attended the meeting. The meeting was also attended by Minnesota Agriculture Commissioner Gene Hugoson and Harold Stanislawski, Dairy Development Specialist for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. As a former lawmaker and currently as ag commissioner, Hugoson has supported weakening factory farm regulations.

LSP member Duke Hust told the Citizens Board he was quite concerned at the short retraction the DOH issued.

"I read the Department of Health memo saying we should have an EIS and then two days later I get [two paragraphs] saying ‘oops,’ ’’ said Hust, who is also chair of Minnesota Trout Unlimited. "I know there’s a lot of political pressure on you guys and that has me concerned."

Bloomgren was out of the country during the Citizens Board hearing and was unable to address concerns about the March 29 meeting. MDH and MPCA officials have only said that the meeting had no influence on the retraction.

The MPCA’s decision runs counter to the wishes of residents in Forestville Township, several of whom testified against building the lagoon. LSP member and township resident Dave Aplen came to the May 23 Citizens Board hearing holding a jar containing water from his well.

"This water is clear and clean looking, but looks can be deceiving," he told the board members. He explained that the water tests so high in nitrates that his family cannot drink from their own well, which, at 90-feet, is relatively deep. The high nitrates readings are a sign that contamination from the surface is making its way through the fractured limestone into groundwater, he said.

Other residents described how quickly and easily sinkholes can develop, even in areas that are not considered high probability areas for such formations. Concerns were also raised about feedlot regulation loopholes that will allow the Reiland facility to be expanded to a certain extent without further environmental study. The plans for the dairy allow for the addition of several hundred cows in the future.

Those testifying in opposition to an EIS included representatives from Ag Star Financial Services, which promotes increasing farm size through its lending practices, and Land O’ Lakes, one of the biggest milk processing cooperatives in the country. Land O’ Lakes has helped finance several factory dairies in recent years, despite concerns from its farmer-members that such facilities are putting them out of business. In addition, the Agriculture Department’s Stanislawski testified that his department is not in favor of an EIS.

Board members voting against requiring the environmental impact statement were Bob Esse, Jackie Duncanson, Sid Mason, Chet Wilander and MPCA Commissioner Karen Studders. Dan Foley and James Dunlop voted in favor of the EIS.

Lawsuit filed
The group of 29 citizens who filed the lawsuit are represented by Peters and Peters PLC. In the past, this law firm has successfully forced the MPCA to do an EIS. In that case, which involved a factory hog operation, the court found that the MPCA had exercised its "will" and not its "judgment" when deciding not to do an EIS.

On June 5, more than a dozen southeast Minnesota residents tried to present a statement to MPCA Commissioner Studders at her offices in St. Paul. The citizens were accompanied by karst expert Alexander, as well as state Representatives Ted Winter of Fulda and Mary Ellen Otremba of Long Prairie. The statement was attached to a sample of the kind of polyethylene liner the agency is saying will prevent leakage from the Reiland Dairy lagoon. In a tense standoff in the agency’s lobby, MPCA staffers initially prevented the citizens from presenting their complaint. Later, some of the citizens were allowed to place it in Studders’ office.

The Fillmore County citizen’s group has established a defense fund to help cover the legal costs of the lawsuit. Anyone who wants to contribute can send money to Fillmore County Residents Concerned for Health, in care of Jan Poldervaard, Rt. 1, Box 122, Spring Valley, MN 55975. For more information, contact Bobby King at 507-523-3366.

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The Barn at the End of the World
The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd
By Mary Rose O’Reilley
2000
317 pages
$22.95
Milkweed Editions
1011 Washington Ave. S.
Suite 300
Minneapolis, MN 55415-1246

Reviewed by Beth Slocum

As I write this, it’s lambing season on our farm, and local writer Mary Rose O’Reilley’s recently published The Barn at the End of the World, has been a welcome companion on long evenings spent waiting until it’s time again to check on ewes in the barn. It’s an easy book to read this way—in little snatches before falling asleep for the next few hours. The bits and pieces of quiet time at this busy season on a sheep farm readily match the quick essays, the short narratives, the descriptions that are like prose poems, of O’Reilley’s spiritual and commonplace travels.

Subtitled The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd, O’Reilley’s work brings us along on her journey from a Catholic childhood and two-year stint in convent, to undergraduate and graduate study of music and English, to her training as a spiritual mentor in the Quaker tradition—all before she steps into the St. Paul campus sheep barn of the University of Minnesota. Though O’Reilley is not a farmer or shepherd by trade—she teaches English at the University of St. Thomas—something drew her to profess more than English, to examine her intellectual, spiritual and everyday life in relation to the lives of sheep and the people who tend them.

From chapter to chapter (which feel more like journal entries or a conversation with an old friend), sometimes even from sentence to sentence, O’Reilley leaps lightly from her serious and lifelong search for divinity to the ordinary work of vaccinating sheep, stacking wood or singing shape note hymns—with wonderful humor, often at her own expense. She is unabashedly honest, neither stoic nor idealistic, and she tells the truth of her temperament— irritable and loving, confused and devoted, feisty and patient—of her history, and of her pursuits.

This book is an "exercise in perspective" as she says. Yet it is not hard to adjust one’s vantage point and join her as she retraces a path that led, in the middle of her life, to the sheep barn in St. Paul, to a Sacred Harp convention in England, to the Zen monastery of master Thich N’hat Hanh in the south of France, to a pastoral interim at a Quaker meeting in Maine, to finally leave us on a path in the woods—following the "notes" she has left behind on the trail.

This is not a preachy book. Instead, O’Reilley lets us into her personal dilemmas—a temperament ill-suited for self-abnegation yet with a deep desire for spiritual centeredness, a feisty soul who questions Catholic theology, Buddhist dharma teachings, and the factory production of embryos from high quality registered ewes. She sets questions in motion and refrains from answering them. This allows us to explore the issues with her, whether it’s how to keep the Buddhist precept to protect all life as you send market lambs to slaughter, or how to be satisfied with communal rice and vegetables when what you really want is your own cream tart, or how to be free from desire when you really love the world. She quotes Augustine, "Love calls us to the things of the world," and for O’Reilley, enlightenment or heavenly bliss would not be to transcend the world or being merely "of" it, but to be deeply and intensely present in it.

So where does her journey take us? O’Reilley’s thoughtful pace, like walking meditation, reminds us to slow down, in the quiet of a Quaker meeting or Buddhist meditation, or in the barn, so that we can be present for our animals and ourselves. She gives us ideas and insights from her own experience; she quotes writers, philosophers, theologians; she shares her own puzzlement and makes us curious. She bears the mark of a faithful seeker, not settled on a fixed theology, a bit like most of us, whose spiritual search may be no more exotic than the congregations in our small town or neighborhood church, whose choices to serve are guided by a desire for neighborliness, fairness and community.

The questions O’Reilley leaves with us are of mindfulness—how in our daily lives of farming or working off the farm do we stay absolutely present for the work? How do we walk, not run, and remain deft and sure and efficient, but not automatic in our thought and action?

"The barn demands above all that precious combination of attention and relaxation," she writes. "We have to drop our outside cares and hunker down to the simple—or sometimes complicated—gestures of animal husbandry."

Too many family farmers whose farms can no longer support them, and whose days are spent providing paid labor to another employer, must rush through their farm work at either end of the other job. This fragmentation of hours and days, of labor for others that squeezes our own labor, undermines the quality of our lives and our families. This is the pressure to grow beyond the family farm to the factory farm, where rather than work with our children, we must hire employees. Rather than do chores, we must perform repetitive mechanized and manual tasks that transform farm animals into consumer products and us into…?

O’Reilley captures this disrupting process: "Logical or illogical, I know when...balance has been disrupted. A certain level of mechanization disrupts it, a certain level of pesticide, a certain kind of manipulation. Why? Perhaps not even because of what happens to the animals; it may be that their level of consciousness is not at issue here. Perhaps because of what happens to the farmer…"

"Traditional farming, by its nature, allows space to rest, if only because heavy manual work forces you to lean on a shovel now and then and stare into space, or because lambs take awhile to get born. Farmers make good companions because their spirits are rooted in these stillnesses... . It is a struggle to maintain human scale, an environment in which men and women can know their own beasts, talk to their children, and at the end of the day have a good long stare across the top of a stall."

Her aspirations? Her desires? O’Reilley makes them clear in language that is grounded in animal husbandry, but inspired by spiritual wholeness: "In my work as a shepherd, I resolve to be calm and present to my sheep and accurate in observation of their hooves and eyes, wool and breath, so that they may not suffer. I aspire to make my farm a refuge for all beings, a place where people can work, get hungry, be fed, and feel the deep peace of animal creation, the completeness we long for." At the end of this spiritual and practical journeying, her profession of faith has become a vision of "plain work shared with others, the calming presence of animals, a lot of silence and a clear vista."

That’s a vision that could sustain us all.

Land Stewardship Project member Beth Slocum raises sheep in Vasa, Minn., teaches English at Mounds Park Academy and writes in her spare time.

Finding the Forest
By Peter B. Bundy
1999
157 pages
$12.95
Masconomo Forestry
101 West Main Street
Crosby, MN 56441

Reviewed by Tom McMillin

There is a school of American writing in which an individual takes to the woods, builds or restores a cabin and attempts to reach an understanding of themselves and their newly adopted world. Thoreau’s Walden and Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac are two that stand out. Peter Bundy’s Finding the Forest is the latest, Minnesota-based addition to the tradition.

Finding the Forest is a collection of essays based on Bundy’s experiences of the last 15 years; from his arrival as an urban refugee at his future home site, receiving a forestry degree and working as a consulting forester. Bundy developed a personal philosophy regarding the forest at the same time he was receiving his professional education. The core of the book is an attempt to blend the personal and the professional to create a sustainable means of managing the forest.

Bundy’s work provides a stress-free introduction to trees, forestry and surrounding issues. A short history of Minnesota’s forests is given and possibilities for the future suggested. Planting, natural regeneration, harvest and the peculiarities of various tree species are touched upon in the essays. Readers will not be overwhelmed by terminology and will generally be presented several views on controversial forest issues.

At times you may wish that Bundy had addressed some subjects in more detail. In a discussion on genetically altered hybrid poplars, Bundy explains the excitement industrial foresters and paper companies have for these trees that can grow 10 feet a year and be grown like a corn crop with fertilizers and herbicides. Equal time is given to the unanswered questions concerning genetically altered hybrids, disease, nutrient depletion and sustainable yields. In reality, the topic of genetically altered trees is far past the discussion stage. In Minnesota’s Todd County, Champion Paper is buying thousands of acres of farmland to convert to poplar plantations. If all goes according to Champion’s plans, dozens of family farmers will disappear to make room for genetically altered corporate forestry.

In comments on the forestry of the future, Bundy finds fault with preservationists who would set aside forests from commercial harvests and those in the forest-products industry who yearn for cheap resources to feed their mills. I believe Bundy has overlooked a greater threat to the long-term biological diversity of our forests and even the industries they support. The suburbanization of our woods is well underway.

Large lot, urban style development which is taking place in the Brainerd Lakes area and other parts of Minnesota may pose the greatest threat to the integrity of our woodlands. Second homes, golf courses and the roads and infrastructure needed to serve them are chewing up and fragmenting thousands of acres of forest yearly. Small rural woodlots near any small town or city are being developed. Wildlife habitat, natural diversity and timber resources are being lost. These losses will be permanent. Like Bundy, more and more of us want that cabin in the woods or on a lake and few are ready to sacrifice life-style in return for it.

The strongest sections of Finding the Forest deal with the acceptance of the forces of nature anyone working with trees must acquire. If one grows to love a tree, a grove of trees or a forest, one must also acknowledge drought, ice, wind, fire, disease and the chaos they bring. Trees must share the earth with the forces of nature for decades. After wind destroyed his woodlands in 1991, Bundy surveyed the damage and reflected, "I step back into my driveway, my shirt wringing with sweat, my pants plastered with burrs. There is a lesson here, a lesson for the future. I am a romantic no more."

In closing, Bundy states that we, "need more foresters who are trained to communicate as well as count board feet." Well, put, but possibly we should go even further and redefine what we think of as "forestry." A healthy tree or woodland is the fruit of the interaction of the sun, air, water, soils and an untold number of organisms. To enter the forest with humility and to acknowledge the fundamentals of life taking place may be the essential requirement of anyone working with trees. Finding the Forest leads us in that direction and suggests some questions to consider along the way.

Tom McMillin grows nursery stock, Christmas trees and hardwoods on his family’s farm near Kellogg, in Minnesota’s Wabasha County.

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The Dairy Diagnostic Team Project of the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota is designed to help farmers who are interested in adopting sustainable methods such as management intensive grazing.

The foundation of this project is a team of consultants that provide guidance on how to make a transition into more sustainable methods. Farmers who have extensive experience with management intensive grazing are key members of this team.

To request a list of resources and an application form, contact: DeEtta Bilek, SFA, 20415 CO RD 2, Aldrich, MN 56434; phone: 218-445-5475; fax: 218-445-5673; e-mail: deebilek@wcta.net

Factory farm fighter

The GRACE Factory Farm Project’s Grassroots Campaign helps rural communities around the country that are fighting the spread of mega-scale livestock operations. At the core of the GRACE (it stands for Global Resource Action Center for the Environment) Project is a team consisting of farmers and an economist who have many years of experience battling factory farm operations.

This initiative offers an "Action Kit" which contains information on how to organize a grassroots group in your area and offers tips and suggestions on how to fight the encroachment of factory farms.

For more information, check out the Web site at www.gracelinks.org. You can also learn more by contacting: Families Against Rural Messes, P.O. Box 615, Elmwood, IL 61529; phone: 309-742-8895; e-mail: info@farmweb.org; Web site: www.farmweb.org

Marketing together

Collaborative Marketing: A Roadmap and Resource Guide for Farmers is a 96-page publication for farmers interested in teaming up with others to market their products. This Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture guide explains the benefits and successes to be gained from working together and provides resources to help get started. Included are profiles of 10 marketing groups that sell everything from apples, vegetables and buckwheat to lamb, pork and dairy products.

To order a copy, send a check for $4.75 payable to the University of Minnesota to: U of M Extension Service, Distribution Center, 405 Coffey Hall, 1420 Eckles Ave., St. Paul, MN 55108-6068. Add $2 for shipping; Minnesota residents must add 6.5 percent for sales tax. To order via credit card, or for more information, call 1-800-876-8636.

Farm opportunity

Broom Tree Farm, an ecumenical, Christian-based farm, is looking for an innovative farmer-manager to carry on its founding values of caring for people and the land.

Easily accessible, Broom Tree Farm is a certified organic 160-acre farm located in the gently rolling hills of eastern South Dakota. Located 1.25 miles off of Highway 46, it is within convenient driving distance of Sioux Falls, Yankton and Sioux City. Broom Tree Farm provides a peaceful retreat facility for individuals, couples and families, as well as a conference room for up to 50 people.

Facilities also include a restored 1900 Victorian home, along with a barn and hog raising facilities. There is also a wood shop, machine shop and shed.

For more information, call Audrey Arner at the Land Stewardship Project’s western Minnesota office at 320-269-2105, or e-mail her at aarner@landstewardshipproject.org

WWW marketing opportunity for LSP farmers

The Land Stewardship Project has recently been approached by a group that has launched a new Web site called Local Harvest. The site has been designed to help direct-marketing farmers reach local consumers. Local Harvest will allow consumers all over the country to search in their area for local CSA farms, farmers’ markets, U-pick farms, and other farmers marketing their products directly, and to view an extensive listing for each farm that matches their search criteria. To get a free, full-page listing for your farm, you simply need to go to the site and sign up.

LSP has agreed to partner with Local Harvest and to let our members know about this opportunity because we believe it provides several beneficial features for farmers. As a participant in Local Harvest you can:

•Publicize the Internet address ("URL") for your farm listing.
•Update your listing any time.
•Receive and respond to consumer comments regarding your farm.
•Monitor the number of monthly visits to your farm’s listing.
•Participate in bulletin board discussions with other farmers.

Ocean Group is creating Local Harvest as a service to the sustainable agriculture community. Its financial interest in the project is simply to cover the costs of maintaining the site once it is operational. They are waiving the membership fee for the first year for farms that create a profile in 2000. Next year, the fee will be only $20 for members of organizations like the Land Stewardship Project ($40 for others).

How it works
First take a look at how the home page works www.localharvest.org It’s very simple—you just enter a zip code and then browse through the farm profiles that match. Because the site is just starting, there aren’t very many farm profiles in the database yet. Try searching with the zip code 95006 to see a sample farm profile.

To complete your profile, first go to the "Farmers Only" area and register to create your own user name and password. Then you are free to create a profile for your farm, including uploading a photo if you wish.

After you have filled out your profile, you can preview how it will look to the public by clicking "Listing." When you’re satisfied, please browse through the other areas of the "Farmers Only" section of the site. Ocean Group also encourages you to provide them with feedback. Post comments in the "Discussion" area, or send an e-mail to erinb@oceangroup.com

If you have any questions about Local Harvest and LSP’s involvement, please feel free to Call Cathy Eberhart at 651-653-0618, or e-mail her at cathye@landstewardshipproject.org

Local Foods Banquet
Mark your calendars now for the Local Foods Banquet to be held in Minneapolis on October 7. This fun evening will feature food produced by local Land Stewardship Project farmer-members and good conversation about creating a regional food system that protects the land and provides economic opportunities for farmers.

We are looking for a Food Coordinator to contact LSP farmers to purchase food for the banquet and arrange for transportation or delivery. This person will work with the chef for the banquet who will determine the menu and prepare the meal. A small stipend is available.

Contact Cathy Eberhart if you are interested in this position or if you’d like to help in some other way with the Twin Cities banquet. She can be reached at 651-653-0618, or cathye@landstewardshipproject.org

•JULY 15 — Bus trip to Seed Savers Exchange & Heritage Farm, Decorah, Iowa; Contact: LSP, 507-523-3366
•JULY 20 —Field day on reducing chemical usage by using soy oil on corn & soybeans, Donald Wheeler farm, Balaton, Minn.; Contact: 507-734-5433
•JULY 22 — Minnesota River Valley Audubon Chapter garden tour , featuring how to attract birds, butterflies & other wildlife to backyards; Twin Cities; Contact: Mary Brown, 952-885-0913
•JULY 25 — Field day on organic dairying & direct marketing of broilers & eggs, Jon Peterson farm, Rushford, Minn.; Contact: LSP, 507-523-3366
•JULY 26 — Seventh Annual Cedar Meadow Farm Field Day, Holtwood, Penn.; Contact: Steve Groff www.cedarmeadowfarm.com
•JULY 27 —Field day on bio-based weed control in strawberries using sheep wool mulch, canola mulch & canola green manure, West Central Minnesota Research & Outreach Center, Morris, Minn.; Contact: 320-589-1711
•JULY 28-29 — Land Conservation Summit 2000: Advancing the Debate in the New Millennium, St. Paul, Minn.; Contact: http://www.geog.umn.edu/summit 2000
•JULY 29 — Closer to Home Fair: A Celebration of Wholesome, Local, Food, Fiber & Art, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Plainview Public Library, Plainview, Minn.; Contact: Peggy Thomas, 507-767-3202
•Field days on living snow fences for improved pasture production, increased forage production through control of water runoff & using black medic as a protein source in grazing corn, Mike Hansen farm, James Sovell farm & Joe Rolling farm, Lincoln County, Minn.; Contact: 507-487-5742
• AUG. 4-5 — Midwest Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (MSAWG) summer meeting, East Troy, Wis.; Contact: Mark Schultz, 612-722-6377
•AUG. 12 — Local, Sustainable Food, Gardening & Farm Festival, Mike & Jennifer Rupprecht farm, Lewiston, Minn.; Contact: LSP, 507-523-3366
•Field day on grazing alfalfa & innovative watering systems, Dan & Don Struxness farm, Milan, Minn.; Contact: Terry or Audrey, LSP, 320-269-2105
•AUG. 19 — Field day on organic vegetable production, as well as prairie, timber & pond management, Sandy & Lonnie Dietz farm, Altura, Minn.; Contact: LSP, 507-523-3366
• AUG. 29..— Second Annual Alternative Ag Expo, featuring Sally Fallon speaking on the nutritional benefits of natural foods, Sioux City, Iowa; Contact: 712-943-7882; darrell.geib@ia.usda.gov
• AUG. 29-31 — Carbon: Exploring the Benefits to Farmers & Society, Des Moines, Iowa; Contact:515-225-1051; www.cvrcd.org
•AUG. 30..— Nourishing Traditions Conference, featuring Sally Fallon speaking on the nutritional benefits of natural foods, Decorah, Iowa; Contact: David Burn, 319-238-3795
•SEPT. 9 — Deadline for making a donation to LSP that is matched by the McKnight Foundation
•MID-SEPT. — Riparian Grazing Schools, southeast Minnesota/southwest Wisconsin; Contact: Caroline van Schaik, LSP, 651-653-0618; e-mail: caroline@landstewardshipproject.org
•OCT. 7 — LSP’s Twin Cities Local Foods Banquet, Minneapolis; Contact: Cathy Eberhart, LSP, 651-653-0618; e-mail: cathye@landstewardshipproject.org
•OCT. 13 — Application deadline for 2000-2001 Farm Beginnings class; Contact: Karen Stettler, LSP, 507-523-3366; stettler@landstewardshipproject.org
•NOV. 5-9 — LSP’s Caroline van Schaik will give a presentation on effective collaboration between researchers & farmers or other community participants, Annual Meeting of the American Society of Agronomy, Minneapolis, Minn.
•DEC. 7-9 — Acres USA Conference, Minneapolis, Minn.; Contact: 1-800-355-5313; info@acresusa.com

Check the Calendar for the latest on upcoming LSP events.

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