I want to start my comments with something one of our young Future Farmer leaders from my district said to me when they visited the Capitol. He said, There is good and bad in everything.

Many of the changes in Agriculture over the last few years have been praised as advances and improvements but when we look at the big picture we see the shadow of those changes. Industrial agriculture has pushed many small and medium sized farmers out of farming, last year 400 small farms were lost, our streams, lakes and water ways are filling up with poisons and sediment, people are leaving the land and farming isbecoming more and more dangerous. We hear more and more about letting our policy be guided by science but science is multifaceted and dependent on asking the right questions with the right perspective.

I am willing to accept that my ideas can have a downside to the things I support and I think the best side of the democratic process helps us with this concern. We must work together to get it right. But although there have been overtures and theres been talk about reaching out to our side and an effort to try to show that we want it all I have not seen much actual inclusion and Im going to talk about my concerns some of which Ive mentioned and about what was left out of this bill and why I think that might have been the case. I dont want to fault chair Hamilton as for the most part he has been encouraging all sides to put their bills forward. However, as I have experienced in the past many of my ideas for advancing what I would call the big picture in agriculture dont get a hearing. I have introduced bills that would eliminate certain chemicals that are harmful to pollinators we know without pollinators there are many plants we depend on that cant produce the food we rely on. Caring for pollinators provides a context for the big picture recognizing the need for diversity and the role nature plays in making the systems of nature work.

I have introduced bills to educate young and beginning farmers in new ways and provide them with financial assistance, also bills to give

training to college students interested in learning about organic and sustainable farming. It seems to me that for some reason bills promoting organic and sustainable practices are a threat to conventional Ag and it would seem my proposals are undermined or pushed aside.

I have introduced bills promoting organics and organic production, to meet the growing demand for organic products. We are now, having to import organic corn from places like Romania to meet the demand for organic chickens.

The last few sessions I have introduced bills that would establish a food council for talking about Health, Food production and the environment all at once so we could look at the big picture. The commissioner of Public Health released a study explaining that our health and the cost of health care are related to the environment we live in and the hazards around us. From cancer to obesity and diabetes to asthma and autism we are making ourselves sick. But it seems that is a discussion that we dontreally want to have.

I do want to acknowledge that there are a few things in this bill, which do show Chair Hamiltons willingness to hear and include some of our ideas, although without funding them. You will find mention of Forever Green an initiative I introduced several years ago that funds Uof MN research on perennials and cover crops that can be money-makersfor farmers at the same time protecting the soil and water. We heard excellent testimony from brilliant young researchers who described theirwork to use plants instead of chemicals to protect the soil and increase yields. There is a bio-fuels bill, which looks to encourage cellulosic ethanol production from non-corn organic material in addition to corn stover.

Before the start of the 2015 session I attended an Outstate legislators forum in Mankato. The Land, magazine covered the forum but made no mention of my being there. Other legislators talked about the need for focus on greater Minnesota and attracting farming ventures to Minnesota

the conversation moved quickly to the MPCA and citizen board decisionand the 9,000-cow dairy. Several complained about the long process of approving startups including a mining operation in Northern MN. But Rep. Clark Johnson said, we need to get it right even if it takes awhile and commented how important it was to protect our water we cant rush through the questions about practices that cast a dark shadow on our environment. Sen. Rosen was insistent that the loss of the huge dairy would cost thousands of jobs and in earlier press statements had alleged that the farmers who requested the EIS on the proposed big dairy and manage a 300 cow diversified dairy could not be called real Ag.

I wrote a letter indicating my surprise at this allegation and stood up on behalf of small and middle-sized family farms. My letter resulted in a good number of those farmers calling my office thanking me and wanting to tell their stories. One farmer talked about how difficult it wasto compete with the huge farms but sad to see what they did to the landscape. He wanted me to know how what was efficient for the corporations was not necessarily efficient for the farmer. Another wanted to talk about buffers and how to make them work and the problems tiling caused because the landscape wasnt suited for corn and soy. He said farmers needed to know how to work with their land and each landscape was different. Another said he wished wed never gotten started with all these chemicals, theres really no need for it. I can get just as good a yield with my organic corn as any of them and their killing their soil. I remembered a farmer showing me the difference between chemically treated soil and organic soil. The nitrated soil blew away like dust, the organic soil was loose but moist and clumped with organic material. These farmers dont like the Farm bill because it incentivizes conventional corn, soy and cotton, and offers no protection to farmers who farm organically or intersperse their crops with cover crops. Another farmer in his 80s said he made a good living on a small diversified farm with 40 hogs. Put his kids through college. A small livestock producer can make it because they dont have all the debt and

can take care of the land more responsibly. These giant farms lock you into debt and allow others to take your freedom away from you. It was amistake for the government to encourage them and to let corporations own farms and own seeds. Another farmer said the reason North American farmers avoided troubles of political turmoil of South America is because we have had smaller farmer owned operations as opposed to big plantations, which were another ages factory farm.

My first teaching job was in western Minnesota in farm country and farmers were eager to show off their land and were proud of the work they did and quick to learn from each other. Not all were happy with theways they were being encouraged to change their farms many liked a mix of things but were willing to try different things. Sugar beets were becoming popular and a new farmer-owned processing plant had come in. But other farmers were not so quick to change.

Years later I found myself walking on the organic dairy owned by Dave Minar. Dave explained how the birds, the bugs, the manure, the soil and the grasses and the cows all interacted and worked together improving the pasture. Dave said, he used to be a conventional farmer using chemicals on his farm but the chemicals made him sick so he quit and has learned a lot about how nature and its delicate balances can take careof so many problems. Most of us have no knowledge of how the delicatebalance of micro-organisms works all around us. Without them we couldnt digest our food, babies are born with healthy microbes that theirmothers shared with them. Scientists who study these things speculate that although we may have ten trillion cells we are home to one hundred trillion microbes. We have 20,000 genes and 2 to 20 million microbial genes. Most helpful some potentially could turn on us.

This is what makes chemicals, antibiotics and pesticides so dangerous we dont know what they are destroying; we dont know the long term effects. Not only does the big machinery combined with chemicals allow one farmer to farm more acres but it kills microbes and bugs in the

soil they are clearing the Landscape, and as these farm practices and farm work are changed by industrial agriculture but also how farm life and the enjoyment of farm life has changed. Fewer and fewer people means, shrinking towns and closing schools and the loss of a creative society that supported that way of life. Farming is no longer safe for young people. We need sustainable farms and sustainable farming - farming that does not spoil the water or deplete the soil or deplete humanbeings.

Several bills before the Minnesota House this year have a certain bent to them, which to an onlooker may well have the result of further clearing the landscape of family farmers. Efforts to protect industrial agriculture from having to adjust to the needs of their neighbors; removing of protections for pollinators because they implicated chemical companies;

Civilization started with agriculture but as we look at many of the first civilizations they were ravaged not by invading forces but by over use and misuse of the soil, a lack of understanding of how to repair and regenerate the soil. Soil scientists warn us that we have about 60 years left of good top soil if we dont do something about soil loss through erosion.

Starting in the 70s farmers have been encouraged to grow as much as they could - ignore surpluses and focus on selling in the world market. Then they were encouraged to specialize and get bigger. They were encouraged more and more to give control of their farms to the chemicaland equipment dealers signing up with big distributers and committing themselves to overwhelming debt, which in a time of falling prices and an economic downturn becomes unsustainable.

Reducing chemical use across the board means reducing the impact of big money on agriculture much of Federal Ag policy is heavily influenced by corporate interests and not in the interests of farmers. Prior to World War 2 there were few farmers that farmed with chemicalsand they could be successful. However after World War 2 and the

banning of chemical weapons, chemical companies needed to find new uses for their chemicals. They looked to agriculture as a new market for their products. It wasnt until Rachel Carson described what was happening to birds that things began to change. Every step of the way the rich chemical companies fight at every turn to undo or weaken government controls claiming that these are industry-tested chemicals that do not harm people. Government agencies and government policiesthat should protect us are constantly undermined by the powerful chemical industries.

I recently read a book Poison Spring, by former EPA official, E.G. Vallianatos, explaining how powerful the chemical industries are blocking the EPA at every turn from enforcing or investigating violations of our environmental laws. Departments in the 70s did little more than defend industry even more blatantly than they do today . . . President Nixon responded in 1970, the great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, our land, our water? Clean air, clean water open spaces these should once again be the birthright of every American. Today, although progress has been made we remain under the control of the chemical and corporate lobbies that control government policy and hold farmers hostage. The chemical industry has wined and dined farmers over the years convincing them of easier management and greater yields,and being able to patent seeds to further restrict the independence of individual farmers.

We are however learning from independent science more and more about how nature works. The genome project and the epi-genome project teach us that nature interacts and communicates in ways that if we learn to listen and observe we can make peace with nature and put away our destructive chemical weapons and learn to grow all the food we need to survive and at the same time preserve our soil and clean our air and water.

Science when separated from the big picture gives us false answers oftenshaped by influence of moneyed interests. But science that is integrated with the way nature evolves and the cycles it observes can be used to provide us with the food we need and maintain our environment.

Supporting farmers in Minnesota is a bipartisan issue. We often hear how we should support all kinds of agriculture and I agree. Whether Republicans or Democrats controlled the Ag committees, weve been united in our goal to make sure farmers in Minnesota thrive. However, just like you cant fit everything you might want to eat on your plate, sometimes you have to make choices about what you put on your plate or what kind of farming we support on the land.

We have seen policies at both state and federal levels that try to address concerns about making sure farmers can continue to provide us food we need. Im concerned about what appears to be a disturbing trend dividing farmers and legislators alike. Were told, that in order to help farmers succeed, we should support real farmers and real farmers are farmers that operate bigger and bigger farms.

Over the history of farming weve seen times when farms get big and getsmall depending on conditions. But getting bigger is frequently described as a trend that makes economic sense. But economic sense forwhom? Thats a question that rarely gets asked. Farmers of all sizes I talk to have different opinions, its my sense those who manage to remain small have fewer risks and are more likely to weather, like the wheat stalks that bend with the winds of change. They also appear to me to be able to be closer to the land and more sensitive to how it is used and how use affects their neighbors and the environment. Processors of farm products tend to like dealing with bigger farms and influence policies to make it harder for smaller operations to survive. But we see this trend means fewer people on the land and fewer customers supporting rural economies. It makes me concerned about how we best grow economic development in greater Minnesota.

The recent pattern weve seen in the agriculture committees has been unsettling. Were encouraging the creation of ever larger industrial scaleoperations that may offend their neighbors and arent going to have the added public benefits of clean and healthy air, water and soil we see when we encourage smaller farming practices.

The future of farming in Minnesota shouldnt be one where we have fewer and fewer farmers acting as stewards of the land. Its a simple notion, but encouraging more farmers is better for everyone by improving our economy and our environment.

I have no allusions that my statement here will change our current practices though it concerns me that more attention is not given to risks we take by continuing them. It is my intent here to give voice to farmers who rarely have a voice yet contribute to agriculture and our well being as a state and a nation.

Finally, I am concerned that we not hold up the Avian Flu provisions in the omnibus bill and would like to see them move in a stand-alone bill.