Rice County Buffer Update

The Rice County Farm Bureau will be hosting a buffer update meeting on Tuesday, February 16, at the Family Diner, 2519 Lyndale Ave., Faribault. The informational meeting will begin at 9:30AM and everyone is welcome. Speakers include Randy Hanson, president of the Rice County Farm Bureau; Doug Busselman, legislative director for the Minnesota Farm Bureau; Steve Pahs, Rice County SWCD; and Warren Formo with the Minnesota Agricultural Water Resource Center.

Gov. Mark Dayton's buffer law, as it is often called, has been quite controversial as it is being implemented. Pahs was my guest on Tuesday's AM Minnesota program and we were talking about the buffer law. Pahs said there was a clarification and the law did not cover private drainage ditches, just public ditches and public waters. There seems to be a lot of details to be worked out yet. One major concern that never occurred to me until I was at the annual meetings of the Minnesota Farm Bureau and Minnesota Farmers Union was the real estate taxes on the land that had to be put into a buffer strip. Land owners lose the productive value of that land but they still have to pay real estate taxes on it as if it was producing corn and soybeans. Many land owners are paying $50 to $60 an acre in real estate taxes.