Central Minnesota Political

Minnesota’s premier business association, the 2,300 member Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, spends nearly two and a half million dollars annually, to lobby Minnesota Legislators and decision makers, according to The Power Behind Climate Denial in Minnesota, a report issued recently by MN350 and other Minnesota environmental organizations. Much of that money, which comes from its large and small members aross Minnesota, is directed toward fostering climate science denial and opposing even modest, and previously bipartisan, proposals to protect the climate and the environment. For example, in 2020 more than twenty-five groups representing utilities, energy companies, unions, major corporations, scientists, and environmental activists testified in the Minnesota House of Representatives in favor of the ECO Act. Only lobbyists for the Chamber of Commere and the Minnesota Propane Association opposed it. The irony of the testimony from the Chamber of Commerce lobbyists was that it was in o

  By Tim King The Land Correspondent Ames, Iowa, The North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station at Iowa State University is one of twenty USDA facilities across the country responsible for conserving seeds and plant genetic resources for posterity. Curators at the Station, often referred to as a seed bank or genebank, care for nearly 52,000 varieties of agricultural, ornamental, and medicinal varieties of plants including mints, amaranths, spinach, parsnips, sunflowers, flax, and legumes. But the heart of the collection is corn which is referred to at the Station by its more widely known name of maize. “Maize and maize relatives make up about forty per cent of the collection,” Candice Gardener, a Research Leader and self described corn person, said. Gardner refers to the Ames Station, which was founded in 1948, as an “active genebank site” among the twenty genebanks in the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System.  Active sites are responsible for developing the collection as w