19-04-2025
EDITORIAL: A positive step to help promote small, family-owned farms
Apr. 19—Some pictures really are worth 1,000 words.
For example, we'd point to a photograph taken April 7 by former Post Bulletin reporter Noah Fish, who now works for Agweek. The photo (you can it find online easily enough) shows Tony Lent and Allie Kuppenbender on their farm in Mazeppa. Also in the photo are the couple's children, Otto, 4, and Aurora, 6 months.
If you want to believe that family farming has a future in Minnesota, then this photo gives you reason for hope — but this family, like a lot of other young farmers, needs some help.
Lent and Kuppenbender don't plant hundreds of acres of corn and soybeans. They don't milk 500 cows. They don't have containment buildings filled with hogs or feedlots packed with steers. Their farm, Bleed Heart Floral Farm & Design, operates on just 14 acres. They derive the bulk of their family's income from just 2 acres, on which they grow a variety of flowers. They sell cut flowers wholesale, provide arrangements for weddings and other social events, and also offer a subscription-based service of fresh, seasonal bouquets.
These young farmers battle many of the same elements that crop farmers face, including unpredictable weather, weeds, insects and other pests, but they lack some of the built-in advantages that bigger, more conventional agricultural operations enjoy.
Sen. Steve Drazkowski, a Republican from Mazeppa, and Sen. Aric Putnam, a DFLer from St. Cloud, are teaming up to help level the playing field for farmers like Lent and Kuppenbender. They have co-authored a bill that would qualify flower farms for agricultural classification.
Why is such a change needed? Currently, Minnesota's tax code doesn't consider cut flowers as an agricultural product along the lines of soybeans, poultry or even tree seedlings. This means Lent and Kuppenbender pay property taxes on their farmland at the much-higher residential rate, and the process of erecting even basic farm buildings is more permit-burdened and costly than it would be for a turkey farmer who needs a new pole shed.
The mere fact that a Republican and a DFLer have united in an effort to update the tax code is strong proof that this change is needed. Bipartisanship in St. Paul is only slightly more common than an orchid blooming outdoors at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in January, so Drazkowski and Putnam deserve full credit for reaching across the partisan divide in an effort to help flower farmers. We urge other legislators in our region to join this effort.
Would this classification change have a profound, immediate impact on Minnesota's economy? Probably not. Fewer than 300 floriculture farms operate in Minnesota right now, including 10 in Olmsted County, seven in Goodhue County and 19 in Wabasha County. About 80 percent of the cut flowers sold in the U.S. are imported from other nations, and those imports include the relatively few flower varieties that are easily grown, ship well and have a comparatively long shelf life.
But just as the "know your food" movement has gained steam, so too has the market for locally produced flowers. More acres in the U.S. are converted to flower production every year, and local growers can offer more delicate, seasonal, region-specific flowers. They can create bouquets and centerpieces that simply can't be found at a supermarket or a major floral chain.
Such flowers might be more expensive than blooms harvested in Mexico (tariffs could change that), but the ever-increasing popularity of farmers markets is ample proof that plenty of people are willing to pay a premium for locally-produced agricultural products.
We see this trend as an opportunity for young Minnesotans who want to get their hands dirty.
Between 2017 and 2022, Minnesota lost 3,300 farm operations. The land involved didn't vanish, of course — it came under new ownership and/or operators. In that same time, the number of farm operations that worked at least 2,000 acres grew by 21 percent.
When agricultural acres change hands, newcomers to farming are largely shut out of the market by the high price of land and equipment. Even renting farmland is difficult, because large operations can pay rates that aspiring newcomers can't match. So, if a young couple doesn't inherit 500 acres and a tractor, they face a difficult path to become conventional crop-and-livestock farmers.
But there is another path, and that's the one being followed at Bleeding Heart Farm. Lent and Kuppender are living proof that small operations, even less than 10 acres, can survive and potentially thrive by growing labor-intensive, high-value products that they market and sell locally. Young people who want to create careers in farming will have a tough time buying 500 acres — but five acres is doable. Minnesota should do everything possible to encourage such farms.
That's not to say we oppose what's happening on Minnesota's vast agricultural landscape. Large farm operations are very adept and efficient producers of meat, livestock feed and the ethanol that fuels our vehicles. Although we look back with some nostalgia at the days when a 160-acre crop-and-livestock farm could support a family of four, those days are gone — and our state's farmland has never been as productive as it is today.
But we like the idea that many of the parcels now considered "hobby farms" or "rural acreages" could soon become viable micro-farms that produce organic vegetables, specialty meats and Minnesota-grown flowers that will make beautiful centerpieces for Easter feasts.
And if kids like Otto and Aurora grow up on the farm and decide to follow in Mom's and Dad's footsteps, so much the better.
