By Aaron Vehling

The Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation issued on Nov. 22 a report featuring a list of priority issues for 2005, which include promoting animal agriculture, no net loss of private property, water quality, renewable fuels, forestry, transportation, animal identification, methamphetamines, the reduction of county support for the UM Extension service and the next farm bill.

ìPromoting animal agricultureî refers primarily to dealing with public perception that livestock on farms is harmful to the environment.

ìNo net loss of private propertyî is a stance that Farm Bureau delegates took regarding the state of Minnesotaís purchasing of private land. They are concerned that this takes land off the tax base and in turn takes money out of the communities, the report says.
The delegates, according to the report, opposed further acquisition of land by the state of Minnesota without the state selling a corresponding amount of public land back to private ownership.

ìWater qualityî refers to two things: the Bureauís opposition of farmers being held responsible for water impairments and it also refers to the support of scientific study of water impairments.
Those three were listed as top priority with the remaining seven also of importance.

But the issues of the statewide Farm Bureau may not always mirror those of local farmers.
Harold Eklund has been a dairy farmer for 51 years.
He worries that family farms like the 400-acre one outside of Stanchfield he operates with his son, Steve, will be eliminated by corporate farming.

ìFamily farms are the structure that built this country and keep this country going,î he said.

Eklund said he sees the Farm Bureau as more representative of corporate farms.

Kathy Lindo, who along with her husband, has a 320-acre dairy farm between Almelund and Center City.
She said that she agrees with the Farm Bureauís concern regarding the UM Extension. She sees the Extension as offering valuable services to an increasing population of first-time farmers who move to the area to dabble on smaller farms
.
ìThere is an even greater need for the Extension, but it has not been set as high of a priority level as it has in the past,î she said.

One issue that may be of importance to local farmers is methamphetamine. The Farm Bureau, in their report, said that they oppose innocent landowners being held financially responsible for the clean-up costs of meth labs and dump sites.

This is important because an individual could set up a meth lab on an obscure part of a farmerís land and dump the hazardous waste products on that land without the farmer ever knowing that site exists.

Another issue the Farm Bureau deemed important was animal identification.
Delegates support a national system to help protect the nationís livestock industry from disease outbreaks. According to the report they would support the system only if it were cost-effective, confidential, if it protected farmers from financial liability and if it were locally administered by the Minnesota Board of Animal Health.

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