‘Tis the Season For Annual Agriculture Meetings

Last weekend I attended the annual meetings of the Minnesota Farmers Union and Minnesota Farm Bureau. It was convenient because one was in Bloomington and the other in Minneapolis. It was nice that harvest and fall tillage was pretty well done this year. That is not the case some years, and it is hard for farmers to park the equipment and go to an annual meeting. Even though they are two different farm organizations, many of the issues discussed were the same.

There was the usual talk about regulations, property taxes, profitability, roads, bridges and education. A new issue this year was buffer strips. This was in response to Gov. Mark Dayton's buffer law that passed in the last legislative session. Land owners are confused as to where and what is required and how it works with federal programs like continuous CRP. One point I had not thought about is real estate taxes. If I have to take land along a drainage ditch that was producing corn and soybeans and now it is growing grass as a buffer strip, why should I still have to pay real estate taxes as if it were productive land?