outdoors

I always find it bitterly ironic when the biggest farmers in the area and the guy who owns the tiling business show up at the DU banquet every year. I guess they are hoping to win a shotgun, because they certainly aren't interested in the ducks given that they keep draining the county.

Nice article--especially after spending all season watching the non-existent 'plenty of waterfowl' to hunt fly by. Nice thing is they recognize me and honk--hi there you!! time to head south time to head north--depending. Friendly little critters. I have a question -- have the greedy developers and land grabbers that are SO important in our communities ever thought of doing their 'land grabbing' somewhere else like mars? I understand the 'government' has lots of 'free' tax money to spend--it usually goes for 'land development'--well why not use it for 'space ships' and ship the developers off to 'mars'?

It's all well and good for everyone to pontificate on what the landowners should to do preserve the wetlands, forests, and wildlife etc, but why should it be falling on them? They own the land and, if the public wants a say in the management in it, the public is going to have to pony up the money for that privilege. Are the city liberals and weekend hunters willing to compensate the farmers and other landowners completely for not exploiting their lands to pay the bills? Taxes and mortgage payments on the land require income from the land, it's that simple.

The single most effective legislation that could be passed to stop the draining of land for farm fields would be to repeal the requirement for ethanol in our gasoline. This single factor has driven the price of farmland up to levels never seen before, because the price of corn has tripled. Not only are idled lands being brought back into production, but raw land is being cleared at a record rate to meet demand. With the vast increase in domestic and Canadian oil production there is no need to subsidize and mandate an industry that produces and inefficient product at such a high ecological and financial cost. If Anderson wants to most effectively address the problem of additional acres being drained he should look to the cause and source of the revenue that is paying for those acres to re-purposed. Repeal would result in cheaper fuel, lower food prices, and less acres farmed.

Maybe we could also start bulldozing those metro area suburban homes in cul-de-sacs and plant native grasses in their place. Feel free to buy your own swamp land with your own money and manage it in the way you see fit. I find it bitterly ironic that the same metro area people who love their strip malls, googolplexes, and parking garages have no problem using government to force rural Minnesotans to forgo their property rights and turn their land into nature preserves for the benefit of metro area residents. Some of you people must think that the state's non-metro areas are nothing more than a weekend retreat managed exclusively for your outdoors hunting experience.

Good luck w/ that. For as long as the US keeps going for the scam that is ethonal, this will never reverse. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Its always interesting to hear those involved in agriculture complain about those that want to conserve certain parts of the ecosystem. They usually bring up private land rights and want those who bring up these issues to pony up for the costs, and I get that. Now here's my wish list for the Ag industry. Lets go back to the Freedom to farm act with the eventual end of any federal farm subsidies. Lets drop all ethanol economic support and mandates. Lets tax farm property at the same rate as any industrial commercial property. Lets place environmental regulations the same as local industry on all run off from their land.Lets let them pay sales tax on everything but seed and farm equipment. Make them obey all road mandates. Lets do what they ask and just leave them alone. We will see how much land gets set aside when corn is back to a buck sixty three.

model31, you haven't a clue how that would affect the price or quality of your food. do you actually think the government will let the law of supply and demand work in agriculture. only the wealthy would be able to afford food during a crop disaster.

littlenutz : Yes that's always the threat. Don't worry about us. We can already see what the ethanol program has done to the price of meat, and how concerned the Ag community was about that. Once we stop the Fed economic supports we will see who has troubled paying for their food.

Same old Schara/Anderson doctrine. “NO ONE SHALL LIVE OR WORK IN RURAL MN. RURAL MN SHALL EXIST ONLY FOR THE RECREATION OF THE PEOPLE LIVING IN THE METRO AREA.” Why doesn’t Mr. Anderson ever write that the Twin Cities Metro area has to remove 50% of it’s paved surfaces for the environment? I doubt that he ever will because he only writes what Metro MN wants to hear. Metro MN wants their paved driveways, paved streets, paved highways, paved interstates and paved parking lots and they will not give them up. But,,, they want to say that they care about the environment so what can they do? They point their fingers at rural MN and say that rural MN has to not only carry their fair share of the burdens that a good environment requires but also the burdens that the Metro area should bear but refuses to. That way they can stand on their soapbox in the middle of a paved surface and proudly proclaim, WE CARE ABOUT THE ENVIROMENT!!!! At least in rural MN the rain gets to touch the soil.