Ground Level Blog

Farming and pollution: join a conversation Friday noon

If you think farming is contributing to water pollution from western Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico -- and there's a lot of evidence that it is -- what would you do about it?

We're going to build on the reporting we've done for our Ground Level project -- "Cleaning Minnesota's Water" -- by holding a conversation with Bruce Tiffany and Kris Sigford and inviting you to join in.

MPR NEWS LIVE: Farming and pollution

Friday, September 30

12:00p.m.

Online

Anyone can join the conversation by signing up here.

Tiffany is a corn and soybeans farmer near Redwood Falls in western Minnesota. He has instituted a number of practices to slow runoff and improve the quality of the water that leaves his land on its way toward the Minnesota River. But he also thinks some criticism of farmers has been heavy-handed, misdirected and counterproductive.

Sigford is the water quality director for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, a 35-year-old organization pushing to strengthen the state's environmental laws. She has long worked for the state's rivers and lakes to achieve the goals of being "swimmable" and "fishable" and she thinks it's time agricultural interests took more responsibility in addressing the problem.

We'll be chatting here at noon Friday. Please join us. You can register and add your comments as the conversation rolls along.