from Graze

Everyone, this was originally published in the January issue of Graze.  I am putting it here because it looks like the issue is heating up now.
Jim
 

We have here on the western Minnesota prairie what should be a minor political kerfuffle which has the potential to develop into a full blown Cliven Bundy style entitlement rant and political standoff. Our governor Mark Dayton made a statement about the need for filter and border strips along our open drainage ways and finished by reminding listeners that while farmers and rural landowners may own the land, the citizens as a whole and those that come after own the water. Dayton wants the strips to do double duty as wildlife habitat and proposes assign enforcement to the state's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) or “Damn Near Russia” in farmer talk. Loose talk circulates about Dayton acting like a king or dictator.

A little context is in order. When we started our farming here in 1977, the judicial ditch that cuts through the corner of the farm had just been cleaned and deepened. My first farming task was picking the rocks and pulling out the roots and branches left by the bulldozer. After that was done, we seeded brome grass from the breakover twenty five feet back into the field on both sides. This we planned to mow regularly for hay, and did do that despite the pocket gopher piles, until we turned the fields adjacent into permanent pastures in the early nineties. So they have been since. We placed a single wire at nose height about two feet toward the field from the breakover and subdivided into paddocks. The cattle do a nice job of weed control there reaching under the wire with their business end pointed away from the drainage. We are happy with the results. This was done because it needed to be and without cost share on the seed.

Ditch law in our county, and I think this is state wide, is that the original easement for the ditch construction includes one rod (16.5 ft) on each side for a buffer which is the farmer's responsibility to install and maintain. This is the case for all constructed ditches which route water to the natural system. Our ditch feeds Shakopee creek which flows to the Chippewa river, thence to the Minnesota in Montevideo and so to the Mississippi at the Twin Cites and down to the Gulf of Mexico. Our part of that drainage is thought to contribute very significant amounts of sediment and nutrients to the algal bloom in the gulf. Now there are some filter strips on the system today. They are few, but they can be found. Mostly they are sponsored by the Conservation Reserve and have that required width. But by far, most of the many miles of our ditch system are tilled right to the breakover. The one rod requirement is not enforced because the authority in charge is local and under the sway of large crop farmers. This lack of enforcement is for me a thirty year irritation.

Dayton's talk is not without precedent. Arne Carlson, Republican governor just before the wrestler, wanted to make the Minnesota River swimmable and fishable in 10 years. Sixteen plus years later, no progress has come of that pronouncement, which was mainly an educational effort. The river still runs dark brown. It is not unreasonable to point out that if there were anything left of the idea of agriculture farmers may well have taken the lead from Carlson and applied it to what they knew very well the land needed. Now we face larger strips and enforcement by a hated agency. And, even harder to understand, we will press our losing argument against the people who eat our food and who are potentially our strong allies. It would do wonders for our understanding if every farmer produced something, no matter how little, that he sold directly to customers.

Dayton's language, like Carlson's before him, is temperate and reasonable. One difference would be that Dayton plans to get the legislature to regularize enforcement of mostly already existing laws. But a more important one is that the population hearing Dayton is different from the one Arne Carlson spoke to a few years ago. In Carlson's time, farmers would have mostly been at least a bit embarrassed to be reminded they were farming land that was not theirs to farm. Today, there will almost certainly be at least a few tempted to take the Cliven Bundy approach of “What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too.” The toxic brew of right wing entitlement and resentment in the country, combined with easy access to guns and no respect in farm country for the enforcing agency does not bode well for domestic peace and tranquility. We will see. Dayton's ag commissioner has not spoken yet.

If the legislation moves ahead, I am sure to be asked by several of my organizations to close ranks on the issue, that it is important that farmers speak with one voice and that that includes me, even if I don't farm quite right. As a practical matter, if the legislation becomes law and the DNR is put in charge of enforcement, the adversarial relationship sure to follow is going to make it difficult for me to reason with any DNR official that the mouth and saliva and front feet of my cattle are beneficial to the land at the breakover in a way that chisel plow points are not. One more opportunity for communication will have been lost.

If we listened to each other more, and especially if we farmers tried to listen to our fellow citizens, we might eventually get to an understanding of what the land and water need, also giving these essential parts of the natural world their full place and agency in the conversation. I tend to take issue with both ends of Dayton's statement. The idea that anyone can “own” water is wrong, but I think he states it this way to point out a difference between that “ownership” and land ownership. Our idea of land ownership is wrong too, including as it does a sort of blanket permission to do anything with the property that we wish, to include destroying it. For a clear view of this attitude at work, buy a river property, sit on your porch, and watch the land float by.

We would not be floundering about in the matter of land and water use so if we had more of a functioning religion. Wendell Berry wrote an excellent exposition on Revelations 4, verse 11 in an essay called “God and Country” published already twenty five years ago. We formerly thought God owned things such as water and land, but we have since enthroned each individual human as top dog with “property rights” as the core of the law and this older understanding has gotten to be a relic. We will see if we really can do without it.