Environment

Minnesota is around the ninth windiest state in the country. While there is more to wind power than just the wind, our state can boast a number of favorable conditions. MORE »

First it was the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) that Congresswoman Michele Bachmann claimed was the “most perfect place on the planet to drill” for oil. Now, the overnight energy expert has declared that she would “welcome” another nuclear power plant in the 6th Congressional District—and specifically in her own backyard. MORE »

Late last Tuesday afternoon I and around a dozen crop farmers emerged from the air-conditioned confines of the “Biofuture” trailer. Like abductees departing an alien mothership, we blinked in the bright hot light of a southwest Minnesota August. I looked around to get reacquainted with my surroundings: big tires, bigger iron, seed plots, debating politicians, a helicopter buzzing overhead. Oh, that’s right, I’m in the midst of the 2008 Farmfest, the state’s largest agricultural gathering. I’d just spent 20 minutes or so in front of a flat screen monitor being bombarded with messages about the future of farming as Channel Bio Corporation sees it. I was more than a little discombobulated. I wondered to the back of the show grounds to a shady spot where a one-man polka band was competing with the putt-putt of antique engines—after being inundated with so much of the “future,” I needed a little dose of the past to clear my head. I thought back to another Farmfest presentation I had seen earlier in the day. It consisted of representatives of sustainable agriculture talking about another kind of future. Being exposed to two such profoundly different takes on agriculture in the span of a few hours was a bit like shock therapy. But while sitting in front of the bandstand, something struck me: the difference between sustainable agriculture has little to do with technology, which is often used as the gauge—industrial ag embraces technology; sustainable ag shuns it, goes the conventional wisdom. No, it has to do with relationships—relationships between humans and technology, sure, but also relationships between farmers and the people they feed. MORE »

Some farmers see a tractor as they are. Others see tractors as they wish them to be. In the blue, brackish diesel exhaust of a 1970s-era row crop Hefty-G, Laura Frerichs and Adam Cullip heard silence and made it so. MORE »