outdoors

Every time I goto the store or purchase a lotto ticket I contribute to the cause? or do I? The Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund was established following voter approval of a constitutional amendment in 1988. The money in the Trust Fund is generated by the Minnesota State Lottery. The Trust Fund holds assets that can be appropriated, "for the public purpose of protection, conservation, preservation, and enhancement of the state's air, water, land, fish, wildlife, and other natural resources." Between 1991 and 2010, the legislature appropriated nearly $310 million from the Trust Fund to 746 projects around the state.

Wow....you mean....life is complicated? Great article by Dennis. Shows that simplistic so-called political views just do not do it when it comes to outdoors/environmental issues. Farmers; land use, $$$$ subsidies: all offer no simple solution. throw AIS into the mix and Minnesota faces big challenges ahead. Bumper sticker quick fixes are not the answer. Time to keep talking and finding solutions. Keep prompting us, Dennis.

Why no mention of climate change as a threat? (My apologies if I missed it in the article.)

As always, follow the money. Corn and soybeans have been at historic highs for several years, driving up profits. In order to save on taxes, farm operations plow it back into the business which results in more tile, more competition for land, and bigger equipment. This means higher land values (which need to be cropped to pay off the investment) fewer temporary wetlands, less grassland, and an end to abandoned tree groves, windbreaks, and any other "odd" pockets that might be left. The money also leads us to Collin "Pander to the Sportsmen" Peterson who is beholden to the agribusiness companies that help fund his campaigns. It's Collin who's dead wrong on tile drainage, and makes sure the Swampbuster provisions in the FarmBill, that deny payments to farmers who drain wetlands, lack teeth. To wit he wants to maintain the disconnect between government subsidized crop insurance and Swampbuster compliance in the next Farmbill, despite the fact the two were linked into the mid 1990's. Any shmoe can mug for a camera with a dead pheasant, shotgun, and dog, but it doesn't make someone a conservationist. Three things that will make a difference now would be an environmental impact fee (thanks for the term Timmy) on drainage tile installation, with the funds going to wetland restoration via permanent conservation easements, and making sure eligibility for ALL FarmBill goodies, including subsidized insurance, are tied to Swampbuster compliance. Oh, yeah and keep the best environmental program this nation has ever had, the Conservation Reserve Program, a viable program with competitive rates and a large acreage cap. We can work at killing the corn ethanol mandate later.

Why should tax payers pay 80% of the crop insurance premium for these rich farm opperations. Tax payers do not pay for the insurance for main street businesses. The insurance provision encourages operations to do high risk farming practices because the tax payer is taking all the risk.

Every year at the DU banquet it's the same. The area's largest landowners show up to support WF, but on my way in, I drive past their fields where rigs are putting in new tile.

dorson – is buying a lottery ticket and paying sales tax (a small portion thereof) enough? Anderson’s position seems to me to be that it isn’t and I agree with him. Trust Fund and Legacy Amendment money is typically spent reactively, attempting to repair or fend off damage that in many ways is tied to the market altering signals sent by crop subsidies and crop insurance subsidies. Funny thing, on the family farms that I hunt the farmers don’t purchase crop insurance (doesn’t make financial sense on a 1000-2000 acre farm); drain tiles don’t run into straight ditches but instead feed in to wetlands on the farm – not what I see on corporate farms where the drain water runs straight into the nearest creek or river; Collin Peterson is bought and paid for by Big Ag. The financial distortions introduced in to the market by the Farm Program subsidies actively lobbied for by Big Ag do what any Econ 101 student can readily call out, they induce the marketplace to behave differently than it would if left alone. Those lobbying for the subsidies achieve a massive redistribution of wealth to themselves gbrauer – climate change is certainly another facet of the analysis but cut Dennis some slack, he only had 800 words in the column. Maybe another day?

Are any of Minnesota's conservation groups lobbying our state government to end its wasteful and inefficient ethanol mandate? I believe that would be agreeable to both liberals and conservatives.

Once again I wish that the people who write these kind of articles would get their facts straight on both sides of the issue. I am the 4th generation on our family farm in central SD. We like to hunt, but here is a little history on our government subsidized hunting (CRP). In the late 80's or early 90's, CRP was introduced paying rental rates double of what we were renting our tillable farm land for at the time. And when that contract expired and came up again, the Government doubled or in some cases tripled the previous contract rate to renew that contract, once again double at the time that we were paying to our landlords who live in cities like Minneapolis and other urban areas for crop land acres. Up until the last thee years, our biggest competition for land was Minnesota hunters coming into our state buying grasslands, breaking it and farming it for a year or two and planting back to CRP grass and collecting their annual CRP payment from you the tax payer to subsidize your hunting because they could get more for a CRP payment than renting the land for grazing for cattle. It is insulting to read articles like this that portray farmers as getting filthy rich on government subsides when it is the conservationists that enroll their land in CRP that are getting rich at the tax expense. I see people from Minneapolis (I use Minneapolis because your newspaper always seems to be the one writing articles like this) that own hunting lodges in my area that receive their lucrative three figure CRP payment per acre and then run a pay to hunt hunting business. Who is the ones getting rich on government subsidies you ask, maybe the conservationists and the big talk urban hunters who want everything in life for nothing should step back and take a little look at what is really going on. We have been tiling for five years now and we and everyone in our area get wetland determinations done by the NRCS so we do not drain a certified wetland before we start a tiling project. And by the way ethanol has not been subsidized for two years now. Corn used for ethanol is a small percentage of our annual corn usage. For every bushel of corn that gets used for ethanol, 2.8 gallons of ethanol is produced and one third of that bushel (distillers grains) is purchased by cattle and hog feeders and fed as a 1.25:1 protein source. So if I can make a green source of energy and use the by product at a more efficient use as the original bushel of corn, then I guess I wonder who the true environmentalists are. Just a thought....

rjbrueggy, Ethanol producers may not receive federal blending credits any longer but the Renewable fuels standard mandates that were championed by ag lobbyists require that almost 9 billion gallons ethanol be produced requiring nearly 37% of our nations corn production. Your ethanol inputs/outputs calculations are off as well. They don't include fuel costs associated with planting, spraying, harvesting and transportation. Just because some people receive government welfare via the CRP program doesn't justify you and your lobbyists from forcing us to indirectly purchase your inferior ag products against our will.