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Agribusiness

Saving the farm

LAKE BENTON — With traces of winter’s unusually heavy snow still lingering, farmers were out dawn to dusk in early May, planting corn and soybeans across southwestern Minnesota fields many have owned for generations. The threat of losing beloved family farms is a growing worry, affecting many farmers’ mental health and raising concerns of another uptick in suicides like during the 1980s farm crisis. Much of the stress stems from being dependent on factors largely outside their control – from the increasingly unpredictable weather to growing costs of equipment to global market ...

Biden plan to sell land leases for conservation gets pushback

BILLINGS, Mont. — Biden administration officials on Monday sought to dispel worries they want to exclude oil drilling, livestock grazing and other activities from vast government-owned lands, as they faced pushback from Republicans and ranchers and over a contentious proposal to put conservation on equal footing with industry. The proposal would allow conservationists and others to lease federally owned land to restore it, much the same way oil companies buy leases to drill and ranchers pay to graze cattle. Leases also could be bought on behalf of companies such as oil drillers who ...

Incredible shrinking lakes

WASHINGTON — Climate change ‘s hotter temperatures and society’s diversion of water have been shrinking the world’s lakes by trillions of gallons of water a year since the early 1990s, a new study finds. A close examination of nearly 2,000 of the world’s largest lakes found they are losing about 5.7 trillion gallons a year. That means from 1992 to 2020, the world lost the equivalent of 17 Lake Meads, America’s largest reservoir, in Nevada. It’s also roughly equal to how much water the United States used in an entire year in 2015. Even lakes in areas getting more ...

Sleepy Eye FFA excels at State FFA Convention

Seventy-one Sleepy Eye FFA Members traveled to the University of Minnesota Campuses and State Fairgrounds, where they participated in the Annual Minnesota FFA State Convention. More than 5,000 FFA members, advisors and guests from throughout the state gathered for the convention from Sunday, ...

Deadline extended for Minnesota hemp growers and processors to apply for 2023 license

ST. PAUL — Those wanting to grow and process hemp in Minnesota in 2023 have additional time to apply for a license with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA). The deadline to apply has been extended to May 31 to accommodate all potential applicants that are waiting on legislative action on cannabis. To date, over 230 people have applied for an MDA hemp license. The online application for growers and processors will only be available until April 30 at www.mda.state.mn.us/industrialhemp. Those interested in applying for a license after April 30 will need to complete a paper ...

Low tech makes cleaner water in Iowa; so what’s stopping it?

SLATER, Iowa — Nick Helland’s central Iowa farm looks much like every other nearby farm on this chilly March day, with corn stubble stretching from a gravel road up over a low hill to the northern horizon. But look closely, and you can see patches of muddy ground where a few months ago crews buried low-tech systems called bioreactors and streamside buffers that filter fertilizer-borne nitrates from water as it drains from Helland’s field into nearby Big Creek and eventually the Des Moines River. The underground devices work. The question is whether one Iowa county’s promising ...