Agriculture has been an integral part of Minnesota’s land and water for a thousand years. While crops have changed, the spirit of farming has remained constant. MPR Archive presents a selection of stories that reflect the diversity of what has been harvested, such as corn, soybeans, wild rice, and even tree fiber. This collection is also about the many hands that toil in, and care for, the soil and water…from the migrant farm worker in Red River Valley’s sugar beet fields, the Hmong immigrant planting near Homer, the Chanarambie Township farmer amidst the 1980s farm crisis, and Ojibwe members following ancient harvesting traditions.
June 28, 1980 - Dr. Frances Hill, professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, speaking at the second annual Farm Women's Forum in Rochester, Minnesota. Hill’s address was about the changes in the roles and lives of farm women, based on her interviews with over one hundred Midwestern farm women. These changes include the demise of the family farm, and secondly, a change in women's personal rights.
May 23, 1982 - A discussion of the trouble facing the farm economy, such as government subsidies, record high interest rates and the world food situation. Midday guest G. Edward Schuh, professor of Agriculture at the University of Minnesota, answers listener questions.
April 29, 1983 - MPR’s Jim Ragsdale reports on ten Hmong men selected for a farm training project with the hope that they would settle with their families on a plot of farmland near Homer, Minnesota.
January 28, 1985 - On this Midday call-in program, a discussion with Jim Nichols, Minnesota's Agriculture Commissioner about the impact of farm crisis. Nichol's office has been a very busy one lately coordinating efforts of farmers and legislators to ease the farm debt crisis. Farmers have been organizing in 1985 to a greater degree than at any time since the Great Depression.
February 18, 1985 - MPR’s Mark Heistad presents an MPR documentary, titled "When Farmers Took a Holiday." Little more than a half century ago Midwestern farmers staged a revolt against the Depression era farm crisis. This documentary reexamines the Farmer's Holiday Association movement through stories of farmers, political figures, bankers, and others.
November 28, 1985 - A special Thanksgiving presentation of “Blessing of the Fields,” a documentary program about how farming has changed over the years in our region especially the change from horse power to tractor power. That transition was one of the most important factors leading to the Midwest's amazingly productive agricultural system. But it had other affects - not all of them as highly thought of.
May 1, 1986 - Poet, author and farmer Wendell Berry speaks at the College of Saint Benedict in Saint Joseph. The speech is entitled, "In Defense of the Family Farm."
May 31, 1986 - MPR’s Mark Steil presents "Chanarambie Township: Sections 17, 18, 19, and 20," a documentary that explores how farmers in a four-square mile area of Murray County view the farm crisis...where land prices dropped, interest rates went up, and farmers were caught in the middle.
August 8, 1986 - MPR’s Mark Steil reports on massive hailstorm that pounded farmland in Lincoln County. Steil interviews famers about the damage from softball-sized hail.
December 10, 1986 - On this Midday call-in program, a discussion of life on the farm in Minnesota, featuring a live satellite feed from the Curt & Shirley Pietz hog/grain farm near Lakefield, and from a cafe in town. Program also includes a farm report from MPR’s Mark Steil.