Minnesota's future: Rugged togetherness has always been state's secret

Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. (To contribute, click here.) This commentary is included among a collection of articles that were submitted in response to, or are otherwise applicable to, Star Tribune Opinion's June 4 call for submissions on the question: "Where does Minnesota go from here?" Read the full collection of responses here.

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When my ancestors left what is now the Czech Republic with a group of other immigrants in the mid-1800s, they helped start the town of New Prague, Minn. While most of the immigrants farmed, my relatives opened the general store. Farmers needed the store to provide whatever they couldn't grow or make; the Rybaks and others on Main Street needed farmers for food and as customers.

Farm and Main Street were interdependent, a story that played out in developing towns across the state. Towns, in turn, became interdependent with one another as railroads and rivers brought lumber and grain into the growing cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, where James J. Hill's railroad empire and forerunners of General Mills and Pillsbury built national and global markets lifting the whole state's economy.

Interdependence on this land didn't start with Europeans. Native peoples thrived for centuries in one of the planet's most extreme climates with social structures that valued kinship and trading relationships with other tribes.

Minnesota became what it is today because so many of us eventually realized no one of us could do it alone. So how did we get so divided as we are today — economically and politically — and how do we find common purpose?

Ironically, the success that my predecessors and many of their contemporaries found through interdependence eventually led to an economy in which we no longer need each other. Understanding this gives us clues on how to fix it:

The national and global markets for our food meant the farms got bigger, meaning fewer farmers depended on Main Street businesses. The companies that grew because of the bounty of our farms diversified and outgrew dependence on Minnesota goods and customers. Today, historic main streets crumble across the state and young people leave smaller towns for better opportunities in big cities.

Local communities may grow soybeans or sugar beets for the rest of the world but you can't find fresh, local foods in local groceries.

I don't argue that we should go back to the 1800s, but we should remember the role that interdependence played in our state's past as we work to create a stronger future. Here are four big opportunities that none of us can do alone, and all of us should embrace to rediscover our common ground.

Cultivate food independence: Should our state, with some of the world's richest farmland, be dependent on mega-farms in the West — which are running out of water? This doesn't mean slowing work like Greater MSP's MBOLD, a partnership of the state's global food producers. But we do need a companion project focused on Minnesotans feeding Minnesotans, which would not only make the state more resilient during the growing climate emergencies, but also lift a new wave of family farms and food related entrepreneurs in the parts of the state losing population.

Save the Water in Minnesota (SWIM): Abundant water has always been at the heart of our state's identity, and it's still a major reason many live here. Minnesota's name itself derives from a Dakota phrase describing "water that reflects the sky." But today an alarming number of our lakes actually reflect the green of our lawns, as overdoses of phosphorus and other chemicals from yards and farms jeopardize our greatest asset.

We need a bolder effort to restore the damage we have done and put in place the safeguards necessary to protect our waters as an increasingly thirsty planet jealously eyes the liquid assets of the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

Make Minnesota the best state to raise a family: This inspired statement by Gov. Tim Walz recognizes that, while Minnesotans may live somewhere else for a time, like salmon swimming upstream, we come home to spawn. Retaining talent is critical, but worry less about trying to convince 20-year-olds we have better bars and bands than Denver or Austin, Texas (although we do!). Focus more on convincing young families to stay or move here because our state is investing billions in better schools with universal free lunch and more counselors, expanded early childhood services, targeted family tax credits and more. Our challenge now is to make these historic investments ongoing.

Support our Main Streets: Minnesota's historic downtowns — from New Prague to Nicollet Mall — are about more than commerce. They built relationships, inspired civic pride and incubated entrepreneurs, which you don't get from a strip mall or Amazon delivery truck. Today our Main Streets need and deserve our help.

State government began to do that with its Main Street Economic Revitalization Program funding two years ago and similar investments this year. Now philanthropy and the business sector must lean in. Together, we can support a new wave of entrepreneurs in not only filling those vacant Main Street storefronts, but also renovating the second stories to create affordable housing for young people coming back to their hometowns and seniors who want to stay in the communities they helped build.

Much of the history we are taught perpetuates the myth that "rugged individualism" built our state. In truth, Minnesotans never did it alone. By unifying around big common challenges like these, we can show the world, and ourselves, how embracing the kind of interdependence that shaped our past can be the key to our future.

R.T. Rybak is president and CEO of the Minneapolis Foundation.