agriculture

Earlier this week the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources announced it was removing 640 stream miles from the public waters inventory. Actually, that was done about three months ago, but it became news this week when some environmental groups filed an appeal with the DNR...

The phrase always read and follow directions is well known to farmers when applying herbicides to our crops. That phrase also applies to homeowners applying herbicides to their lawn! I do not think the owner in the picture intended to kill all the grass in his front yard...

Loren Dahle of Morristown explains the different uses and unique features of the walking plows in the Rice County Historical Society’s collection. Some are breaking plows, used for breaking up the sod and others are more general purpose. They all would have been pulled by oxen or horses...

The Minnesota Soybean and Research Council has funded a study at the University of Minnesota to look at the relationship between buckthorn density and soybean aphid populations. The long-term goal is to look at treatment and control of buckthorn to see if that will reduce soybean aphid populations...

How do you get everything done in a short amount of time? That is what farmers face in a spring like this. There were many days when we should have been in the field but the weather did not cooperate. Many farmers really got going planting corn last weekend and this week...

Dandelions are an amazing flower, plant, weed, or whatever you want to call it. They produce a lot of seed that can be spread by the wind, grow year after year and produce so much seed that they can take over a lawn or an alfalfa field. One sign of an alfalfa field that is marginal because of age or winter kill is a lot of dandelions in it...

The Minnesota Pork Producers Association has been supporting the Ag Nuisance Lawsuit provision in the omnibus Ag Policy bill at the Minnesota Legislature. In a nutshell, the Ag Nuisance provision would protect a pork producer from lawsuits if it had been in operation for two years and was in compliance with all its permits...

Triton FFA member Sam Moening received one of the Minnesota FFA Association's highest awards, the 2017 Minnesota FFA Star in Production Placement. The awards ceremony was held Monday evening at the 88th annual Minnesota State FFA Convention...

With the decline in bee populations there is a lot of attention on the importance of bees pollinating a lot of fruit and vegetable crops. Many farmers are planting pollinator seed in some of their CRP acres to try and provide more habitat for the bees...

The 2017 Minnesota Grown Directory contains more than 1,000 listings, making it the largest directory ever. Issued by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, the directory lists local growers and farmers markets. Minnesota products include fruits, vegetables, meats, poultry, wines, nurseries, decor, Christmas trees, berries and more...