State Senate passes $445 million ag bill to support measures like grain farmer safety net

With wide bipartisan support, the Minnesota state Senate agreed Thursday to spend roughly $445 million on programs covering agricultural and rural development provisions for the next two years.

The bill's gamut — similar in scope, if not size, to the federal farm bill — earmarks investments into a wide array of areas, from dairy farmer assistance to land access for minority farmers to a fund for ranchers who lose cattle to wolf attacks.

But the most pivotal investment might be in a safety net for farmers who sell grain to elevators that subsequently go bankrupt. Called a grain indemnity fund, the state would spend $14 million to kick start the fund and collect fees on farmers at grain sales, should the fund dip below $9 million.

"No issue resounded more profoundly than the issue of the grain indemnity fund," said Sen. Aric Putnam, DFL-St. Cloud, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee and attended listening sessions with farmers in rural Minnesota this session. "People are going bankrupt [in the current system]."

If the House of Representatives and Gov. Tim Walz approve the measure, Minnesota would become the 15th state to establish such a rainy day fund, which supporters say would prevent farmers from losing tens, sometimes hundreds, of thousands of dollars when a grain elevator financially collapses.

While the bill's final passage — on a 58-7 vote — drew Republicans and Democrats alike, the body just narrowly defeated a series of amendments Republicans posed. One would've allowed farmers to opt into the grain indemnity fund. Currently the language requires farmers who don't want to participate to opt out by filing a rebate request with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.

Another dust-up emerged about funding on wild rice cultivation. While a University of Minnesota research station in Grand Rapids has studied growing wild rice, the Senate's bill would place $900,000 for projects under the helm of a partnership with tribal governments.

"There's been a lot of concern about that," said Sen. Gary Dahms, R-Redwood Falls. "We're going to start losing [the] impact of that research."

But Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-Vadnais Heights, said the measure draws support from tribal entities, including those concerned with housing and researching a grain sacred to many tribal nations within an academic institution that lacks trust with some native communities.

Kunesh said the proposed funding identifies wild rice not "just as a domesticated commodity in Minnesota but also as [a grain with] value and cultural significance to our American Indian — Anishinaabe, especially — community members here in Minnesota."

The bill also aims to spend $125 million on the state's border-to-border broadband grants, $150,000 to Central Lakes College to continue building out a meat-cutting and butchery program and $1 million to develop marketing for Kernza, a climate-friendly perennial wheatgrass.

The state's surplus has allowed legislators to also target corners of state government that rarely garner funding. The ag omnibus bill would also direct $2 million in grants to the state's dozens upon dozens of county fairs and more than $700,000 to local governments to fight noxious weeds.

"We're going to give them a little money," said Sen. Rob Kupec, DFL-Moorhead, calling county weed supervisors "unsung heroes." "It's always been a bit of an unfunded mandate."