The Upper Mississippi River, the shining necklace of the Midwest, reflects what is happening in its 189,000 square mile watershed, spread over 305 counties in five states. Our settlement of this river land over the last 150 years was a great economic boon, transforming the wild into farmland. We became a producer of grains for the world, and we built an extensive multi-modal transportation system to move products to international markets. Now the river and the world are changing. As a result, we need to make some important choices for the future.
The Lands of the Upper Mississippi Yesterday and Today
 One of the greatest changes in river country took place over the last century. There aren’t many of us farmers left. When my father started farming in the 1940s, there were more than 420,000 farms on the lands in the five states of the Upper Mississippi River Basin. Those farms supported a population of more than three million farmers and their families. Today, my farm is one of less than 250,000 farms in the basin. Less than one million people now live and farm on the land in the Upper Mississippi River Basin.
If you drive across the countryside today you will see larger farms, fewer farmers, increased use of pesticides and fossil fuels, less crop and livestock diversity, more farm field runoff, polluted groundwater and unhealthy streams, and less natural habitat for birds, fish, and wildlife. Farmers, once proud of their self-sufficiency, now sometimes depend on the federal government for more than half of their annual farm income.  Rural communities that once thrived because local businesses provided goods and services to our farmers now have vacant main street storefronts, and some are losing populations and closing schools.
The consolidation of financial resources leaves all of us more vulnerable to economic downturns. As communities increasingly become "the place we leave every morning to go to work" we lose our connection to our neighbors and the places we live. But there is some hope. We are slowly seeing a diversification of agricultural production once again, including organic farms and community-supported agriculture. We are seeing a renewed interest in re-establishing wildlife habitat and wetlands on marginal lands. There is even a renewed interest in moving back to small towns, if only we could provide employment close to where people live. We need to support these kinds of choices and changes.
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• Keeping our existing farmers on the land.
