In an Agri-News story, Pawlenty's meeting with producers dominated by budget talk, we find Governor "Cheatin' Heart" Pawlenty pointinf a finger at the Land Stewardship Project:
Pawlenty said farmers are dealing with issues of modernization, competition, price and hostile planning and land use issues in some parts of the state. The state should be in the business of trying to expand the livestock industry, which is the original value-added agriculture, Pawlenty said.
He doesn't take a position as to size, but says livestock agriculture needs to be competitive and that Minnesota should be in the business of expanding its share of the market.
Local officials' decisions on land use are inconsistent, Pawlenty said. Some counties and townships do a great job, but there's not a lot of consistency to the decisions made. Decisions need to be based on sound science, he said.
The Land Stewardship Project pummeled the state when it tried to make changes to the decision-making process, Pawlenty said.
He went on to advise dairy farmers that they need enough legislators to stare down the LSP to make changes, saying the LSP isn't going to help them modernize.
Agri News reporter Janet Kubat Willete does the remarkable in this age of little dilgience. She contacted the Land Stewardship Project for a repsonse to the governor's attack:
"The governor doesn't have any accomplishments to
point to, so he's pointing his fingers at us," said Bobby King, a Land
Stewardship Project policy organizer, contacted later for his response
to the governor's comments.
The governor hasn't moved any policies forward that support family
farmers on the land, King said. Instead, the governor has tried to
weaken the corporate farm law and local control.
Meanwhile, the LSP has worked with Reps. Collin Peterson and Tim
Walz, both Minnesota Democrats, to include the beginning farmer act in
the 2008 farm bill, he said. The LSP has also reached more than 300
people with its Farm Beginnings program, King said.
The program provides participants with first-hand information about
low-cost, sustainable farming. More than 60 percent of graduates are
farming and more than 6,000 aces of land is owned, rented or otherwise
farmed by program graduates.
"We are working for livestock farmers," King said. "All he's trying
to do is increase the number of livestock. We care about who owns the
livestock. It needs to be independent family farmers."
Meanwhile, away from the political realm, the Caledonia Argus reports that cows and robotic milkers are teaming up in Houston County. Don't tell your friends who fear cows. Or robots.
Image: Robot cow from Popular Mechanics, May, 1933. This image of a robot produced for the World's Fair doesn't really have anything to do with the story above, not even the robotic milker part; we just want to give the Political Muse the willies.
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