Central Minnesota Political

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Our farm is trying to adapt to climate disruption. Can you help?

It’s been a fairly dry spring. The only signifiant rain that has fallen came pretty much all at once early in April. Over four days nearly four inches fell. During that time the Long Prairie River almost reached flood stage and then went back to normal. It seems that heavy rainfall over short periods, followed by flooding that quickly recedes, is becoming normal. In the last few years more and more rainfall has come to us in big storms of two, three, and four inches at a time. Rainfall like that hardly ever happened when we were kids. Of course kids aren’t going to believe old-timers when we say that it rains a lot harder than it used to. But, it turns out, there’s plenty of data to back up old timers claims about more intense rainfall. In fact, extreme precipitation has increased in nearly every region of the United States since the start of the 20th century, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment. Those extreme precipitation events have increased more in Minnesota, ...

These Minnesota farmers no longer till the soil

This was published in The Land this week. -- Tim By Tim King Garvin, MN The Land correspondent Pastured chickens and turkeys are part of the big regenerative picture at Heartland Heritage Farms, a multi-generation crop and livestock farm near this southwestern Minnesota town. “We’ve taken all tillage out of our practices,” Chris Schmidt, who farms with his son and his father Dale, said. “We stopped doing tillage in 2012 and are doing no-till and incorporating cover crops at that time.” Chris says that his father, who had always farmed with conventional tillage practices, was open to change but when he saw the initial results of those early no-till experiments he was doubtful. “We twisted his arm a little bit and he finally said you guys can take that ten acres and see how it turns out,” Chris, who had no land at the time, said. “We took the tillage out of the equation and added cover crops immediately. That first year we did some cereal rye - maybe some radishes and turnips. Pa...

Impossible burger thoughts and comments

Last week I sent out a query to MN350 members eating and cooking Impossible Meat products. I got a wide range of responses from about a dozen people. Some people talked about Beyond Meat products which are Impossible’s competitor. The responses are below. I’ve edited some for brevity and kept out peoples names because I didn’t have permission to publish them. They are sort of in the order I received them. “I personally would not recommend eating or selling such as GMOs are not food but amalgamated mutant crops that defile the land and harm the environment not improve it.” ———— “I LOVE the taste and texture of Impossible ground beef, which I've been using at home and impossible sausage which I ate at the Duluth Grill.” (This person later realized the product in her home freezer was Beyond Meat.) ——————- “Glad to offer my 2c on this subject, as we are frequent and happy consumers of meat alternatives, especially Beyond Meats products. They are made from pea protein material; a...

Let us all walk in the foot steps of John Lewis

By John King In Selma, Alabama, on Sunday, March 7, 1965, John Lewis, standing in the lead of a long line of marchers, looked down from the crest of The Edmund Pettus Bridge at the line of police armed with clubs, whips and truncheons and said, “I am going to die here.” Lewis intended to lead the marchers from Selma to the capital Montgomery, to demand access to voting for Black people in Alabama. Sheriff Jim Clark lowered his gas mask and led the deputies, some on horseback and some on foot, into the line of marchers. Under swinging clubs and hooves trampling, Lewis was the first to go down. Women and children were not spared. Choking and blinded by tear gas, they were struck by clubs and truncheons wrapped with barbed wire. Lewis, with a fractured skull and a severe concussion, almost did die. The nearby Good Samaritan Hospital did not have enough beds to care for the injured marchers. A nation watched in horror as news footage of that bloody day appeared on T...

Are we farmers, producers, or growers?

I was glancing at an analysis of a livestock market report recently. The author wrote that livestock markets were improving because demand for product was increasing. Now we’ve all been weaned on the milk of capitalist eonomics so in less than a heart beat I knew that increased demand for beef product units by consumers translated into better prices for beef producers. I was reading a piece of proposed legislation this morning that referred to the people who grow food as producers. Producers presumably grow products or product units, also known as food. There is a trade magazine called the Vegetable Grower. Please note; it is not called the Vegetable Farmer or the Vegetable Gardener. Recently a restaurant in Singapore had a couple of items on its menu with food names and food appearance but the material on the plate was a protein created in a laboratory. If these lab proteins catch on their production will be scaled up and industrialized and mass produced. So many hundreds of thousa...

Step aside Republicans; Minnesotans want electric vehicles

Late last month Senator Paul Gazelka, the Republican leader of the Senate, told the Minnesota Reformer that the Republican controlled Senate would likely fire the acting Commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Laura Bishop, if the Agency, at the behest of the Governor, went ahead with the Clean Car Rule. The rule would require automakers to increase the number of electric vehicles they deliver to Minnesota auto dealers. Gazelka told The Reformer that he’d had “a conversation” with Bishop about the rule. Bishop has not been confirmed by the Senate. Gazelka, and his Republican colleagues, claim that electric vehicles are too expensive and that the rule would be a burden to Minnesotans. Gazelka, and the rest of his Party are wrong. They aren’t paying attention to the economics of EV ownership and they are not paying attention to consumer preferences. Way back in September 2019, Consumer Reports reported on a study of Minnesotans they had done in collaboration with the...