Five or six years ago, Bluestem posted about Hot Potato Politics as the Offutt family's agribusiness giant south to convert pinelands into commercial, "Toxic Tater" potato fields that require heavy irrigation and pesticide application.
Flash forward to now.
At the Star Tribune, Greg Stanley has turned in superlative reporting in Fighting drought, potato farmers in northern Minnesota overdrew their water permits by tens of millions of gallons. He reports:
During the 2021 drought, nearly 800 Minnesota farmers with high-capacity wells pumped 6.5 billion more gallons of water than their permits allowed, state records show.
Farms on land owned or operated by R.D. Offutt Co., a potato-growing giant that has become one of the biggest water users in the state, were responsible for 23% of the excessive pumping.
"That's quite a bit of overuse," said Randall Doneen, a section manager for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. "We're trying to get people back into compliance."
The overpumping in 2021 put more stress on already depleted aquifers, lakes and streams and raised the risk that neighboring wells would run dry.
A Star Tribune review of water permit data reported each year to the DNR found more than three of four water users who violated their permits were agricultural irrigators. But they are unlikely to face fines or other consequences because of laws that the DNR says are too lenient. Many irrigators may not even have to pay for the extra water they used, based on the tiered fee system the state charges heavy users.
In some cases, farmers needed to go over their permits to keep their crops alive, said Jake Wildman, president of the Irrigators Association of Minnesota.
"Nobody wants to have to pump as much we did," Wildman said. "We all understand rules and regulations are there for a reason. We all want to follow them. I truly believe we did the best we could with the tools we had and climate we were given."
The permit violations on R.D. Offutt farms is particularly concerning to neighbors and water quality advocates because many of them are in the Pineland Sands region of central Minnesota. The same sandy porous soil that makes the land attractive for growing potatoes also makes it vulnerable to pollution.
When too much water is drawn from the ground for crops, it allows pollutants to seep into the soil, potentially contaminating drinking water.
Based in Fargo and founded 60 years ago, R.D. Offutt is one of the largest potato growing operations in the world. Much of their produce is cut into French fries, and the company is a major supplier to McDonalds restaurants.
It rapidly expanded in Minnesota in the past two decades. Many forests and timberlands in the Pineland Sands area, which covers parts of Hubbard, Wadena, Cass and Becker counties, were cleared and turned into irrigated cropland.
By 2018, the company's growth concerned DNR officials to the point that the agency stopped approving its well permit applications. The DNR said a comprehensive study was needed to find out whether increased water use was drying up lakes and streams or hurting water quality in wells in the region. R.D. Offutt had dozens of pending well applications at the time.
Rather than fund the study, the company reached a deal with the DNR that withdrew all but five permit applications. The DNR asked lawmakers to fund the study. They did not, and it was never done.
By 2021, R.D. Offutt was the registered landowner or agent of more than 650 high-capacity well permits in the state. Together, those farms pumped 22 billion gallons of water — about 2.5 billion more than was used by the entire city of Minneapolis' water treatment plant, which serves about 500,000 people. . . .
Read the rest at the Star Tribune.
Environmental Criticism of Northern Minnesota Potato Industry
It's not just exceeding water permits that's an issue for RDO.
Stanley's article mentions that "The same sandy porous soil that makes the land attractive for growing potatoes also makes it vulnerable to pollution."
In 2020, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) published commentary by Evelyn Bellanger, of Pine Point, Minn., a member of the Ojibwe nation, Giant Potato Grower Threatens What’s Left of Our Land, in which she notes:
. . .After the lumber companies and loggers came in the late 1800s, the reservation landscape became dotted with family farms. Starting with the farm crisis in the 1980s, smaller farms began failing. When they did, the R.D. Offutt Company, or RDO, swooped in, bought them up, planted vast potato fields and started spraying chemicals everywhere. The Pineland Sands aquifer is particularly vulnerable to agricultural pollution because of its shallow depth and the area’s porous soils.
RDO is the nation’s largest potato grower and a major supplier of McDonald’s fries, farming 190,000 acres across several states. It also has annual profits projected at $2.5 billion. For the past 30 years, RDO’s expansion of industrial-scale potato cultivation in the Pineland Sands area has relentlessly damaged our quality of life.
The conversion of land to farming, industrial growth and degraded water quality has affected our way of life, especially our food source [wild rice]. Now our physical health is threatened, as we are faced with contamination of our water and air by chemical poisons on what little land we have left.
Another good starting point to learn what that pollution might be is to visit Toxic Taters, which states on its front page, circa 2017:
Potato fields cover the landscape in central and northern Minnesota, stretching for miles in all directions. Nearly 50,000 acres of potatoes are planted in our state every year. Conventional potato production relies on pesticides that put the health of our communities at risk, and the people of Minnesota are calling for change.
MCDONALD’S: NO MORE TOXIC TATERS!
Almost all of the potatoes grown in our area are produced by a company called RDO. RDO is the largest potato producer in the world, and one the major suppliers of the potatoes used for McDonald’s french fries. McDonald’s claims that they foster sustainable agriculture. But we live near their potatoes, and we know that their practices aren’t sustainable. Read our stories to learn more about how these potatoes are impacting our community.
The action organization describes itself on its About page:
Offutt family political giving
To gain an understanding of the political clout of R.D. Offutt Co. in Minnesota, it's useful to look at individual family members' contributions using the "Contributor Search" feature. The database isn't searchable by employer, but Ron, Ronald, and Ronald D. gave 22 contributions to the House Republican Campaign Committee and individual Republican candidates between 2010 and 2022 for a total of $42,950.
R.D.'s son-in-law and RDO leader Keith McGovern President, R.D. Offutt Company? Seventeen donations totaling $6500 to Republican candidates between 2014 and 2018.
But the giving isn't entirely to Republican candidates. Ron's daughter, Christi, company Chair gave 15 contributions to Democrats totaling $8,975 between 2014 and 2022.
There may be more from the RDO managerial class--or maybe it doesn't take much.
Related posts
- Offutt threatens to take spuds out of state after local pinelands citizens stand up for clean water
- After MN DNR requires EAW for Offutt potato field expansion, toxic tater giant drops plans
- RD Offutt potato company peels back plans to convert pinelands to farmland, DNR mashes EAW
- Toxic Taters Coalition fried over public grease in amendment for RDO Pineland Sands study
- With one stupid trick, Denny McNamara got plenty of business and industry leaders' cash
- Hot potato politics: Offutt family members gave Representative Denny McNamara campaign cash
- Hot Potato Politics: Strib editorial raises even more questions about pine woods deforestation
- DNR rejects review for irrigation wells, but locals pressure RDO to scale back well permit requests
Photo: A potato field. Via Park Rapids Enterprise.
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