News

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Comments by the IAM President Jake Wildman

Greetings IAM Members,

I hope everybody is having a great summer and welcome to the summer/fall edition
of the IAM newsletter.

I’m guessing you all notice that our newsletter has a new look to it. Our long-time publisher,
Crow River Press, decided to close their doors and is no longer in business. The IAM
board felt it was important to continue to provide a newsletter to our members and we decided to go out and look a hire somebody. Fortunately, we were able to bring on Jim Palmer and his staff at Palmer Creations to publish the newsletter moving forward. Palmer Creations is a print, design
and publishing company. I have known Jim for many years and him and his staff do great work. We look forward to working with them now and into the future and I just want to say thank you to Jim and his staff for putting this all together.

What an interesting summer it has been and how blessed are we to be receiving the rains
that we have? Since I have been in this role as president of IAM, this has been by far the most
unique summer that I have experienced in regards to irrigation. To give a little perspective of what
I mean by this. I was having a conversation with few other irrigators in the area right after the
4th of July weekend and I asked the question, when was the last time there wasn’t a single irrigator running in the Bonanza Valley during the week of July 4th? We all threw out a couple different years, but the answer I received from an irrigation dealer in the area was the one that stuck with me. This was the first 4th July holiday he and his staff didn’t work since 2001. I found that answer to be very interesting and it just shows how different this summer has been compared to many of the prior years.

Even though overall it’s been a fairly quiet summer, IAM is still continuing to monitor and work on different issues affecting irrigators in a couple different areas of the state. One of those areas is the Little Rock Creek. The DNR has been involved in that area since I could dedicate an entire portion of the newsletter to describe the different issues these irrigators are facing and unfortunately, they have been left with more questions than answers and have had to deal with a lot of unknowns especially over the last year or two. IAM will continue support these growers with
any resources that we are able to provide and we will obviously continue to monitor the situation
moving forward.

The second area we are continuing to monitor very closely are issues affecting irrigators
and agriculture as a whole, in and around the White Earth Indian Reservation and Straight River region. I’m guessing a lot of you have seen the different news articles describing the unfortunate situation occurring in that area. If you are unfamiliar with the situation, I encourage you to check out the articles, specifically the ones written by AgWeek. You can find them on their website, AgWeek.com. There was also an article at the end of May that was published in the Star Tribune titled “Potato grower asks court to stop Minnesota tribe from regulating its water use”. This article resulted in IAM organizing and leading a coalition of 9 different ag groups in successfully submitting an op-ed letter to the Star Tribune in response to the article. The title of the
op-ed was “Farmers deserve clarity on regulatory authority”. It was great to see a coalition of ag
groups and we really appreciate each and every one of them for signing on to the letter. Unfortunately, the issues for these growers are not going away anytime soon and IAM will look continue to support their efforts in dealing the issues.

The last thing I will mention about these two areas specifically. As you know, IAM tries to
organize a legislative farm tour every year. This year we actually decided not to organize an event
and put some of our time and resources towards other things. But recently within the last month
or so, we were informed that the Subcommittee on Minnesota Water policy, which is a bi-partisan committee made up of Senators and Representatives, were interested in planning their annual summer field tour in the Little Rock Creek and Straight River area. It was asked if anybody in those areas would be willing to host the group for the day. We saw this an excellent opportunity
to get legislator’s out to these areas and provide education and have a discussion around the specific issues unique to each area. The event will take place on August 19th and I want to personally thank IAM’s Vice President Anna Breiger for hosting the group while they are in the Little Rock Creek area and R.D. Offutt Farms while they are up in the Park Rapids/Straight
River area.

One last thing I will mention before I wrap up. This year’s annual meeting in February will be IAM’s 50th anniversary. Since it is the 50th, we are looking to expand on the event somewhat. If anybody
has any ideas of ways we can celebrate the history of the association, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We are in the very early stages of planning so I don’t have a lot of details yet, but it
will look a little different, specifically the location. Once we start finalizing more details, we
will make sure to put them up on the website and we will for sure have them in the next newsletter so keep an eye out for that.

As always, thank you for your membership and support of IAM. We appreciate each and every one of you. Enjoy the rest of your summer and I hope everybody has a safe and bountiful harvest.