Advocacy Efforts Go Deeper than Congress or the State Legislature
by Amanda Bilek
Senior Public Policy Director
When most people hear the word advocacy, they probably associate images of the halls of Congress in Washington D.C. or the corridors of the State Legislature in St. Paul. Although grassroots and direct lobbying efforts are fundamental to our advocacy efforts, the various efforts our public policy team and farmer-leaders are engaged with on a daily basis extend far beyond the hallowed halls of D.C. or St. Paul. A lot of our advocacy efforts, especially at the state or federal agency level might not be the most glamorous and moored in dry comment letters on regulatory actions, but these regulatory decisions can have just as big of an impact—or sometimes greater—on the long-term profitability of Minnesota corn farmers as legislative proposals enacted into law. It is also these technical comment letters that utilize key insights from research funded by the Minnesota Corn Research & Promotion Council to bring to bear the real-world impact of a regulatory decision on individual corn farming operations.
A recent example of our regulatory advocacy approach is contained in extensive organizational comments to the MN Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) on an updated draft to the Nutrient Reduction Strategy (NRS). MN Corn’s take home message is the updated draft NRS needs additional fine-tuning to meet the state’s 2024 nutrient reduction goals while ensuring the viability of corn farmers.
Our comments covered several areas but perhaps the most significant comment related to the baseline assumptions. The updated NRS includes baseline assumptions on the effectiveness of nitrogen removal practices— which underpin MPCA’s modeling for reaching 2040 goals—that have limited application to Minnesota’s corn farmers. Many of the suggested practices are based on data gathered from research conducted outside of Minnesota. Given the state’s unique soils, climate, and cropping system, the effectiveness of nitrogen removal practices are different in Minnesota than in other states. Instead, more research should be done to quantify the effectiveness of nitrogen removal practices in Minnesota and to leverage the research work at the University of Minnesota, which Minnesota corn farmers have invested in through the Minnesota Corn Checkoff. A final draft NRS is due in early 2026 where we will be able to assess if our regulatory advocacy efforts made an impact in the final document.
Another tool in our advocacy toolbox is litigation-related efforts. These efforts are entirely funded and supported by the Minnesota Corn Growers Association (MCGA) since checkoff funds are not permitted for litigation activities. If you are a member of MCGA, thank you! In the past several months your membership has enabled us to defend corn farmers’ freedom to operate by intervening on two separate lawsuits brought by environmental activists against Minnesota agencies seeking to increase regulation on feedlots, commercial fertilizer, and pesticide-treated seed.
The activist groups started these lawsuits to try to insert the courts into the normal administrative rulemaking process to influence administrative agencies to adopt rules that the activist groups promote. The primary reason we are intervening is to fight back against efforts to weaponize the courts in the rulemaking process and to ensure that the rulemaking process is left to the administrative agencies where it belongs. If you are not an MCGA member, now is a great time to join because we expect litigation pressure to increase.
Look for future articles and stories that dive a little deeper into our advocacy efforts and how the MCGA and the MCR&PC work together to identify and promote opportunities for corn growers while enhancing quality of life.
