Via Swing State Project's analysis, Representative Walz's FEC April Quarterly Report is now available. Walz's campaign has $155, 619.72 on hand after raising $187, 052.36. [Update] Minnesota Campaign Report's Joe Bodell takes a look at Walz's contributors [/end update].
Another way of looking at the Farm Bill
For those whose eyes glaze over with Farm Bill talk of LDPs and other such things, there are a couple of articles in the district's morning papers that demonstrate some of the benefits to everyone from a strong Farm Bill. Representative Walz's listening sessions ended for now on Saturday, as Congress re-convenes this week in Washington D.C.
The Mankato Free Press reports The Minnesota is getting cleaner:
After more than a decade of cleanup efforts, the Minnesota River is showing encouraging signs of health with lower pollution and sediment levels.
No one group can take all the credit.
Cities are increasingly treating their discharge into the river. Mankato has been singled out by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency as a model of phosphorus cleanup.
Farmers have turned over more than 100,000 acres of formerly cropped floodplain to grassland as part of a government program that compensates farmers for letting cropland lie fallow.
When cropland floods, the water leeches harmful nutrients and pesticides out of the soil. But that doesn’t happen when the Minnesota floods on native grassland, which also acts as a buffer between the river and farmland by absorbing farm runoff.
Scott Sparlin, executive director of the nonprofit Coalition for a Clean Minnesota River, said that this grassland effort, called the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program [CREP], has had a “profound effect” on the Minnesota River.
Even without the advent of cellulosic ethanol, a bluestem prairie is a useful thing.
CREP and another conservation measure, the Conservative Reserve Program, are part of the Farm Bill, and thus up for re-authorization this year. House Ag committee chair Collin Peterson and Representative Walz favor keeping conservation measures in the Farm Bill.
After Saturday's Farm Bill listening session in St. James, a couple of farmers talked to us about another tangible sign of conservation working in the Minnesota River watershed: pheasants. They knew the programs were working when the pheasants returned.
Driving around Watonwan, Cottonwood and Brown Counties later in the day, we couldn't help but recall their observations. Between the mild winters and habitat improvement, the birds were everywhere. We haven't seen that many pheasants since we were a kid.
One species we didn't see much of when we were little were Bald Eagles. Now, courtesy of the Endangered Species Act, species restoration work by state and federal agencies, and yes, habitat improvement measures like CREP, Bald Eagles are an increasingly common sight. We haven't gone without a sighting in the past few years when we bird the Minnesota River Valley.
Minnesota now plays host to at least 1,100 nesting pairs. The Winona Daily News reports that Bald eagles to soar off endangered list, one of several articles in today's paper about the national bird in the Upper Mississippi River.
On the other hand, some folks still hold a grudge against the eagle for edging out the Wild Turkey for national bird. This great bird, too, is now more common in Minnesota than during the white settlement period; the DNR web site notes:
Within 25 years the state's wild turkey population has grown from a few birds to more than 30,000. Harvest has followed suit. In the state's first wild turkey season in 1978, hunters bagged 94 birds. These days, hunters are harvesting more than 5,000 wild turkeys each spring.
The spring turkey season starts April 18 in some parts of the state. A turkey hunter's view here in the Mankato Free Press.
Comments