In amicus brief, five ag groups ask to weigh in on ruling that blocked Daley dairy’s expansion plans

From MinnPost, coverage of the latest wrinkle in the Daley Dairy fight, a tale of scale and nitrate pollution in Southeastern Minnesota's karst region. Republished with permission.

BTW: While Land Stewardship Project's headquarters is in Minneapolis, as the article states, it maintains offices in Montevideo (Chippewa County, west central Minnesota) and Lewiston itself. Moreover, its Board of Directors isn't particularly metrocentric:

Executive Committee:

• Chair: Beth Slocum, farmer, Welch, Minn.
• Vice-Chair: Laura Frerichs Cullip, farmer, Hutchinson, Minn.
• Secretary-Treasurer: Laurie Driessen, farmer, Canby, Minn.

Members at Large:

• Jody Lenz, farmer, Star Prairie, Wis.
• Deborah Allan, retired professor, Saint Paul, Minn.
• Aleta Borrud, retired physician, Rochester, Minn.
• Josh Bryceson, farmer, Clear Lake, Wis.
• Kristin Tombers, business owner, Minneapolis, Minn.
• Jon Jovaag, farmer, Austin, Minn.
• Dan McGrath, organizer/consultant, Saint Paul, Minn.
• Darrel Mosel, farmer, Gaylord, Minn.
• Les Macare, farmer, Colfax, Wis.
• Sara Morrison, food co-op manager, Osceola, Wis.
• Paula Williams, life coach, Barnum, Minn.

But what would they know? 

I'm not using MinnPost's Getty stock photo either, because those sure don't look like any breed of dairy cattle to me. The cattle pictured on the Daley Farm of Lewiston website are "Holstein cows, with some crossbreeds. . ."

Agricultural groups, in court filing, ask to weigh in on ruling that blocked Lewiston dairy’s expansion plans
By Ava Kian, MinnPost

Five agricultural groups have thrown their support behind a southeastern Minnesota dairy farm that has been blocked by a local board and in state court in its efforts to expand the size of its operation.

The groups filed a request for a “friend of the court” motion on behalf of Daley Farms, which has asked the Court of Appeals to overturn a district court ruling that upheld a Winona County decision that blocked the expansion.

The appeals court granted the request, which allows a third-party in a case to offer insight and expertise in the form of a written brief. In the filing, the groups wrote that the brief would give the court a “comprehensive presentation of the public policy consequences of upholding the District Court’s ruling.”

It’s just the latest legal action in a years-long battle that has pitted the family owned Daley Farms against the county and environmental groups.

Daley Farms, which has been operating for over 160 years, needs permission from the Winona County Board of Adjustment to increase the size of its herd.

In 2018, the business applied for an exemption from the county’s animal unit cap so that it could expand its farm to around 6,000 animal units — the equivalent of adding around 3,000 cows — which the BOA denied in 2019 and more recently in 2021.

In November, the Winona County District Court affirmed that decision, writing that the board’s decision to deny Daley’s variance request was “reasonable, and based on legally sufficient criteria.”

Daley Farms has appealed.

A limit on feedlot size

In 1998, Winona County introduced an animal unit cap of 1,500, or a little over 1,000 cows per feedlot. The limit was enacted to mitigate the risks of industrial agriculture, such as nitrate contamination in groundwater, which greatly affects the region because of its porous karst geology.

“Basically, what that means is that there’s a ton of caves and sinkholes,” said Martin Moore, a policy organizer with the Land Stewardship Project, a Minneapolis-based environmental and sustainable agriculture group that has been involved in the legal dispute with Daley Farms. “The upshot of it is that our groundwater in this part of the state, and our surface water and our drinking water, are all pretty much one in the same.”

Karst geology allows more agricultural runoff to get into groundwater, which can have severe health and environmental consequences in areas like Winona County that rely heavily on wells for drinking water.

Moore said that because of that geology, rainwater that hits the earth becomes drinking water more quickly than in other areas that don’t have those same conditions.

“These time frames are way shorter and what that means is that we’re just way more susceptible to pollution in this part of the state,” he said. “When you pair that with an increasingly large-scale system of agriculture and corporate-dominated agriculture, you run the risk of a pretty environmentally degraded landscape.”

According to a Minnesota Department of Agriculture groundwater study, between 10% and 55% of households across about 10 townships in western Winona County and eastern Olmsted County had water with nitrate levels above health-risk limits. As of 2017, an estimated 1,324 people in Winona County had drinking water with unhealthy nitrate levels, according to an MDA study that examined many private wells in the county.

When the county adopted an animal unit cap, Daley Farms was allowed to maintain its pre-existing capacity, which was higher than the cap. The farm currently has a capacity of around 1,600 cows and 120 calves — about 2,275 animal units.

Several farmers in the area have criticized the cap, saying the limit hurts businesses in the county and has been driving away farming.

But from LSP’s perspective, the current system isn’t working for farmers. Moore said that allowing expansions for one farm won’t solve the problem of farms going out of business.

(At the end of 2023, Minnesota had 146 fewer dairy farm permits than it did at the beginning of the year, according to the Department of Agriculture.)

“What kind of system are we having where the only way to survive is to continually keep on expanding? That system is not a sustainable one,” Moore said. “If we follow that to its natural conclusion, we’re going to end up with one dairy farm in all of Winona County.”

The “friend of the court” filing refers to the influence of “anti-agricultural groups” in decisions about livestock farming. When asked about that, Moore said, “to say that we’re anti-agriculture is not based in a whole lot of evidence. It begs the question of, ‘How is the current system working for farmers?’”

Back and forth in court

In 2019, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency approved an environmental assessment worksheet for the proposed Daley Farms expansion, ruling that special conditions on Daley’s state permit would protect local water quality, that the expansion would not risk significant environmental harm, and that the Daleys were legally entitled to get a state permit.

LSP sued the MPCA, arguing that the agency ignored the project’s environmental risks. The Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the MPCA’s determination that an environmental impact statement was not necessary for the proposed expansion of a dairy farm concentrated animal feeding operation, concluding that the MPCA should have considered greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite the MPCA’s support for the expansion, Daley Farms still needs the Winona County Board of Adjustment’s approval.

In 2022, Daley Farms sued three county commissioners and some LSP members, claiming that they conspired to appoint biased individuals to the BOA. A judge ruled that the County Board did appoint some members to the BOA with the goal of blocking the variance.

The judge ordered a redo of the variance decision, but Daley Farms was unsuccessful as the BOA reached a 2-2 split vote in November.

A response to concerns

In their Jan. 11 filing, the five groups — the Minnesota Milk Producers Association, Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation, Minnesota Pork Producers Association, Minnesota State Cattlemen’s Association and Winona County Farm Bureau — asked that the court allow their brief to respond to the public policy concerns that may result from the November ruling.

The groups hope the brief will allow the court to look at Daley Farms’ application for an ordinance variance through a different lens.

Lucas Sjostrom, executive director of the Minnesota Milk Producers Association, one of the groups on the filing, thinks the court’s findings are unfair, especially since the court voted similarly each time.

“Is that the right way to do this? Could the court have done a different process and just issued the permit?” he asked.

The agricultural groups contend in the filing that some of the members of LSP who were in decision-making positions in the matter were “actively working against the Daleys.” The document also stated that the groups believe the district court “erred by finding that the process was not tainted following the district court’s remand because LSP’s activism against the Daleys occurred throughout the entire process.”

Moore, of the Land Stewardship Project, says that he doesn’t think the brief will change the outcome of the case — and that the appellate court is going to uphold the district court’s decision.

Sjostrom, meanwhile, said the groups behind the filing are also hoping to get some certainty around the timeline for agricultural permits — with worries that if members of their groups are ever in similar situations, their hands might be tied for as long as the legal proceedings continue.

“When you’re thinking about a project that might not start building until months after you’re lining things up on the animal side, it’s important that we kind of know, ‘Where is this process? Is it 60 days? Is it going to be a year? Is it going to be two years?’” he said. “That assurance is very helpful and, of course, wasn’t volunteered due to all those cases that have been involved.”

This MinnPost article is reposted under a Creative Commons License.

Photo: Holstein cattle at the Daley Farms. Photo rustled from the Daley Farm of Lewiston website.

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