Minnesota Pollution Control Agency

Contacts: Molly MacGregor, 218-846-0494 Dan Olson, 218-846-7390 Moorhead, Minn. - Agriculture is the dominant land use in the Red River Valley. Runoff from fields can impair streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands. That's why the Red River Basin Water Quality Team will be talking about the northwest Minnesota farm economy in Moorhead on Monday, Sept. 25. The meeting runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will be held at American Crystal Sugar's corporate headquarters located at 101 N. 3rd Street in Moorhead. The public is invited to attend the meeting. Lunch is provided for $5. At Monday's meeting, Ken Meter, president of Crossroads Resource Center in Minneapolis, will present his research on the farm economy in the region and other parts of the country. He covered the farm crisis of the 1980s as an independent journalist. This work took Meter to 11 foreign nations, where farmers passed on some hard-won insights into the nature of the rural economy. His regional studies are online at Crossroads Resource Center Web site at http://www.crcworks.org/rural.html. Meter reports that northwestern Minnesota is home to nearly one-third of the state's largest farms, those of more than 1,000 acres. It produces three-quarters of the state's wheat, barley, and sugar beets and 90 percent of its sunflowers. The region produces beef cattle and organic foods, too. Based on data from 2002, farmers in the region produce $851 million of food per year, but spend $1,092 million to raise it. That means farmers lose $200 million in production costs annually. Developing a market for local foods is one way to support the region's farms. A local foods partnership was created by White Earth Tribal College and the Northwest Partnership located at University of Minnesota Crookston. The goals of this project are to build partnerships with local producers and other advocates of local foods, and increase the production, marketing and sales of locally grown foods in the region. The Red River Basin Water Quality Team is an informal group representing government, industry, academe and special interest groups involved in water quality issues. The team has been advising the MPCA on a study of 25 stream or river locations in the Red River Valley that are considered impaired because of high turbidity levels. The studies identify sources of turbidity, which can be associated with soil erosion, and defines an acceptable level of the pollutant.