Archives: RMJ Articles

By Teresa Spaeth Minnesota’s economic future may well be rooted in its historic leadership in agricultural production, a new report shows. Agbioscience as a Development Driver: Minnesota Agbioscience Strategy, was done by the world-renowned Battelle Technology Partnership Practice. Ag bioscience is a term that refers to agriculture and the related biosciences. From food safety to ...

  Who Lives in Rural Minnesota: A Region in Transition Table of Contents Visit the Table of Contents to read individual articles. Who lives in rural Minnesota? When the editorial committee settled on this for a theme this year, the answer seemed obvious. But as soon as the discussion even began to scratch the surface, ...

Managing Minnesota’s Forests Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources is the state’s largest land manager. Its Forestry Division manages 4.5 million acres of land, including 58 state forests that cover 3.1 million acres. Another 720,000 acres of forest land is also administered by the DNR. In addition, the DNR helps private forest land owners create and ...

The question of who owns Minnesota’s forests requires a diversity of answers. And that’s good, says Kathryn Fernholz, executive director of the nonprofit Dovetail Partners, a natural resources think tank. “I think what’s unique about Minnesota is that we have a fairly even split of public and private ownership,” Fernholz says. Within the broad category ...

Minnesota Minerals: Not Just for Minnesotans In the 1890s, Louis W. Hill, the son of Great Northern Railroad Company founder James J. Hill, began buying mineral rights on the Mesabi Range. For numerous legal and regulatory reasons, the mineral rights owned by the Hills and related companies were put into trust in 1906. Today, Great ...

Who owns rural Minnesota? On the surface, this seems like a fairly straightforward question. Farmers. Businesses. Some people who live in towns. The state owns a lot of parks, and the counties do, too. But scratch the surface, and it turns out the answer is more complicated. Yes, farmers and people in towns and some ...

In the rolling farmland south of Rochester, Tom Rowekamp drives truck and works construction. In 2011, Rowekamp asked Dave Nisbit, a friend and farmer, about opening a sand mine on Nisbit’s land. Rowekamp would operate the mine and sell the sand for livestock bedding. Nisbit said, “Yes.” Winona County said, “Slow down.” “If I had ...

By LaRhae Knatterud Aging Baby Boomers may be the greatest demographic shift Minnesota and the United States have ever seen.  They also have tastes in living choices that are quite different from their parents. Will Minnesota communities  be prepared? Click here to read or download.

By Kyle Uphoff How are changing demographics affecting the economic heart of Greater Minnesota, its workforce? Click here to read or download.