Urban agriculturists gather in St. Paul to talk solutions, future
The Minnesota Farm Bureau held its inaugural Urban Ag Conference at the University of Minnesota on Jan. 13.
By Noah Fish
West Central Tribune
January 23, 2024
Excerpt:
“We realized this was a great area of opportunity for the Minnesota Farm Bureau,” Reisig said. “Today was a culmination of over 30 meetings I had with urban ag groups across the metro area, and surfacing the issues that were most important to them, and then trying to connect them to resources that can help start the conversations around those issues.”
Reisig said the urban agriculture avenue is a new direction for Farm Bureau.
“We represent 30,000 members statewide, and urban agriculture isn’t a big chunk of that, but we’re hoping that these groups can see us, and how we can work with them and work alongside them to raise the work that they’ve been doing for decades,” Reisig said.
Kajsa Beatty is the executive director at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Urban Service Center, which is one of 17 pilot urban agriculture USDA Service Center s across the country. She said the service centers provide the same type of assistance as ones in rural areas.
“Application for farm programs, application for farm loans — we do all the same things that are happening at other FSA locations around Minnesota,” Beatty said.
