In addition to finding workers, many challenges continue to perplex small dairy farmers in Minnesota: an unusually wet growing season, competition from large-scale dairy operations, changing consumer habits and, perhaps most significantly, volatile milk prices.
From PolyMet to presidential politics, a look at the top environmental issues in Minnesota heading into 2020.
“We have gotten the message that the answer (to fewer foster care cases) is prevention,” said Nikki Farago, the assistant commissioner of Children and Family Services at the Minnesota Department of Human Services.
Unions are split on the Green New Deal — a broad set of climate, energy and economic proposals — if not on the need to address climate change.
Several measures to compensate farmers for buffer land were proposed at the Legislature this year, including a $50-an-acre tax credit endorsed by Gov. Tim Walz. None of the proposals passed.
The total might reflect some pent-up demand for project spending; requests from state and local agencies in 2018 was $2 billion less than the current amount.
Amid the debate over copper-nickel mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, we asked people at Ely’s annual Blueberry/Arts Festival whether they believe a Twin Metals mine should be built.
Five years ago, after renovating a horse barn, adding a kitchen to it, clearing a pasture in back and building a music stage, Emily Knudsen and Bill Bartz opened Pleasant Grove Pizza Farm.
Jay Inslee is the second Democratic presidential candidate to take a stance on Enbridge’s Line 3, a $2.6 billion project that would travel 337 miles across Minnesota.
In a major shift, Twin Metals says it plans to store much of the waste from its proposed mine using the “dry stack” method, an emerging technology that some argue is a better strategy for preventing water pollution.
During the 2016-2017 school year, about 25,000 students open-enrolled into “rural” districts, a recent study found, while about 15,000 students open-enrolled into “regional centers.”
Land values in Fargo-Moorhead rose 74 percent from 2012 to 2017, from $138,000 per acre to $241,000 per acre.
New osteopathic schools, or branches of existing ones, have opened in 16 states in the past five years, according to the American Osteopathic Association.
Minnesota counties are required to cover arrangements for those who expire without enough assets to pay for the costs associated with death. And many of those counties are seeing those expenses rise substantially.
International Falls will get an increase of $153,000, which it uses it for essential services like paying police officers and funding the public works department. In Mower County, an increase of about $255,000 will go into the county’s general fund.
Chavez-Cruz, a first-generation American, left the Twin Cities for the College of St. Scholastica. As a Latino, he felt different in Duluth and missed his extended family, but soon five of his siblings and cousins took the leap as well.
As the overall number of abortions performed in Minnesota has gone down, the share of nonresidents receiving abortions in the state has risen.
Willmar and other Minnesota towns want to attract professionals, young families and others who might be looking for an alternative to the suburbs.
First an Obama Foundation Fellow and now a Bush Fellow, Hanson produces plays in rural communities; she is currently working with Granite Falls to find an artist in residence.
Rochester’s Intercultural Mutual Assistance Association is a 35-year-old nonprofit dedicated to helping newcomers find stability, self-sufficiency, independence and community in a new country.
