The legislature’s first month was a busy one—even if conversations about the next biannual budget are just now taking shape. The House ended their historic stalemate and brokered a power sharing agreement, the Senate stopped power sharing when DFLers won a race for the tiebreaking Senate seat, and over 70 MFU members from across the state joined lawmakers at the Capitol to talk about a stable agriculture budget, affordable healthcare and childcare, land access, Right to Repair, and building new local and regional markets for Minnesota farm products.

Again in 2025, we held our annual Lobby Day early in session on Feb. 4. While the House had not yet convened and despite logistical challenges created by construction of the new House Office Building, the day was a success. If the overall goal of our day the Capitol is to make sure that state policies work well for family farmers and rural communities, then we do that through building—or building on—relationships and demonstrating the power of our organization.

On relationships, the impact of conversations members had with individual legislators was clear. For example, after his conversation with MFU Swift County Leaders Jim and Karen Falk House Agriculture Chair Paul Anderson, R-Starbuck, agreed to lead legislation to ease new and burdensome audit requirements on very small gain buyers, like feed mills and independent seed dealers. Rep. Kaohly Her, DFL-St. Paul, agreed to author a fix for small farmers and others who are cut out of the Ag Homestead Tax Credit, because they don’t cultivate enough acres contiguous with their home. This will be one of her first bills this biennium and she agreed to lead only after a conversation with Kelsey Zaavedra pf Chisago County and others at MFU’s legislative reception. A bipartisan group signed on to House Right to Repair legislation and many more echoed our calls for a strong, stable agriculture budget.

And that’s just a report from some conversations less than a week out from Lobby Day.

On demonstrating our power as an organization, we did that just by showing up. The day after we met at the Capitol another lobbyist stopped me to ask “how many members did you have here on Tuesday? Every time I turned a corner, I felt like I was being trampled by people with blue stickers!”

This is important because now whenever MFU President Gary Wertish, Vice President Anne Schwagerl, legislative staff, or members come to the Capitol to testify, legislators will understand that they’re speaking for more than just themselves. They’re speaking for a powerful and engaged group of farmers from across the state. And we show up!

To give a brief recap, we started Lobby Day with a brief orientation at the MFU Office before heading over to the Capitol and fanning out for nearly 40 meetings with individual legislators from across the state. We met with Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Aric Putnam, DFL-St. Cloud, Senate Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Torrey Westrom, R-Elbow Lake, Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, House Assistant Leader Paul Torkelson, R-Hanska, House Agriculture Chair Paul Anderson, R-Starbuck, and many others.

After most legislator meetings, members gathered in the governor’s reception room to speak with him about priorities and the upcoming budget. MFU Morrison County President Brenda Rudolf spoke about the need to make childcare more affordable, describing how they live in a “childcare desert” and how she gets called on at least weekly to fill in for another mother who’s struggling to find childcare.

Surely planned prior, but of note, on Thursday of that week the governor announced $6.1 million in grants to expand childcare across the state, expanding capacity by 1,400 slots statewide. His team was quick to note that the large majority ($5.1 million) of these grants will go toward increasing childcare availability in Greater Minnesota.

MFU Rice County President Tessa Parks talked about land access and the importance of programs like Minnesota’s Beginning Farmer Tax Credit. With urging from MFU, the legislature reauthorized and expanded that credit in 2023. However, unfortunately and as part of final budget maneuvers, lawmakers lowered the cap for the total amount of money available for credits each year. Then in 2024, this resulted in many farmers being turned away from the program. This year, we’re working to remove that overall cap so that no beginning farmer is turned away from utilizing this nation leading credit to help them secure land or otherwise build their farm business.

In addition to the governor, members met with fellow constitutional officers, Attorney General Keith Ellison and Secretary of State Steve Simon. And from there, members made the trek over to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture to meet not just with Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen, but also Revenue Commissioner Paul Marquart and Natural Resources Assistant Commissioner Bob Meier.

Then finally, members gathered at MFU’s restaurant, Farmers Kitchen + Bar, for our annual legislative reception. This might have been the highlight of day with a large, bipartisan group of both House members and Senators joining for good food and conversation. Some who joined us were longtime allies and others were newer to MFU and agriculture issues, but everyone enjoyed their time.

During our Lobby Day, Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, had to cancel a meeting with our group because she got called into negotiations. Other members of Republican leadership had to leave meetings early for the same reason. We all agreed that was a good sign and it turns out we were right.

The day after our Lobby Day, House leadership for Republicans and DFLers announced a power-sharing agreement that allowed the House to officially convene after nearly a months-long impasse. While we can’t say that the deal was due to the bipartisan cheer sparked at our legislative reception, it couldn’t have hurt.

“It was great to see so many members turn out to take part in the legislative process,” said MFU President Gary Wertish. “We had a great mix of first-time and experienced members come to Lobby Day. MFU looks forward to continuing to advocate for family farmers throughout the legislative session.”

In short, the House power sharing agreement, offered as a resolution by House Majority Leader Harry Niska, R-Ramsey, outlines a plan whereby Republicans will take the Speaker spot for the biennium and will lead committees for the next five weeks. That’s until a rescheduled special election fills the safely DFL Roseville area House seat, returning the body to a 67-67 tie. DFLers earned assurances that a tie would result in even partisan split and co-chairs for all committees except one. The new House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee will continue to be chaired by a Republican with a 5-3 Republican majority.

Significant for the weeks leading up to the March 11 Special election for the Roseville area House seat, even with partisan advantages on committees, Republicans will need at least one DFL vote to pass any legislation off the floor.

So, for the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Anderson will chair the committee for the next five weeks before he shares that gavel with Rep. Rick Hansen, DFL-South St. Paul.

On the other side, Sen. Doron Clark, DFL-Minneapolis, won his tie-breaking special election, ending power sharing in that body. Sen. Putnam, will now chair the Agriculture Committee and with Sen. Westrom, serving as Ranking Member.

Now that both the bodies are organized, the legislature will begin the hard work of crafting a new two-year budget for state government. And I say ‘hard work,’ not only because difficult decisions will need to be made about state spending, but also due to new uncertainty about state funding that comes from the federal government.

Uncertain federal funding

We’re continuing to collect stories from members who are affected by the federal funding freeze and relay them to our congressional delegation and others. If you’ve been impacted, please do take 2 minutes to fill out this short form or send us a quick email! This will help us best inform our Congressional delegation and others about the impact of this move.

Also causing angst among members we’re hearing from is President Trump’s 10 percent across the board tariffs on China and currently delayed 25 percent tariff on goods imported from Canada and Mexico.

“The trade actions announced by the president will almost certainly trigger significant retaliation against U.S. agricultural products,” NFU President Rob Larew was quick to respond. “This comes at a time of deep uncertainty for farmers—commodity prices are volatile, input costs remain high, and we still lack an updated farm bill.”

On Feb. 7, Senate Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., joined President Wertish at MFU’s office for a press conference drawing attention to the harmful effects of across-the-board tariffs.

“The farmer doesn’t have the ability — if he’s going to have to pay a 25 percent tax on the potash that he puts on his land — we don’t have the ability to put a 25 percent tax on the commodities that we sell,” said Wertish as quoted in the Star Tribune.

Wertish also authored a letter to Minnesota’s congressional delegation highlighting support for the Food for Peace program, a flagship international food aid program authorized by Title II of the Farm Bill and implemented by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“MFU members take pride in ensuring that families are well-fed not just in their own communities but around the world and Food for Peace helps meet that goal,” Wertish said. “Elimination of the program or significant changes would also undermine our diplomatic goals as feeding people is critical to maintaining stability around the world.”