News

Minnesota Ag Commissioner looks for “tweaks” during Legislative Session

Minnesota’s Commissioner of Agriculture is looking at tweaks to the budget, aid for dairy farmers, and water quality as top issues this legislative session.

Thom Petersen tells Brownfield there probably won’t be a lot of new money to spend.

“But rather tweaking (some) issues. We’ll also be looking at some of the potential dairy programs that we have and making some tweaks to those as dairy continues to struggle a little bit in Minnesota. And then I’d say water quality issues.”

In November, EPA requested coordinated efforts to reduce nitrate contamination of drinking water in eight southeast Minnesota counties.

“We’ll surely have a lot of discussion (on that), and the Department is ready to talk about steps that we’ve taken and steps that we want to work on. So I anticipate a lot of talk around that as well.”

The 2024 Minnesota Legislative Session began last week and is scheduled to adjourn May 20^th.