August 4, 1999 - As congress debates the farm crisis, the major agriculture organizations are showing a surprising degree of unity on what lawmakers should do. On the first day of Farmfest near Redwood Falls, the presidents of three major farm groups made a rare joint public appearance. While they all said emergency farm aid is a good short term solution, there were deep divisions on the more difficult question of a long term fix.
July 5, 1999 - In their annual battle against weeds, some Minnesota farmers are looking to the past. Organic farmers don't use chemical weed control, so they plow, plow and plow some more to hold back legions of unwanted plants. But there is another way, and it's spreading like wildfire.
June 21, 1999 - Wheat, corn and other grains may be the staff of life at the world's dinner table but when it comes to international trade they're more often the stuff of strife. U.S. farmers struggling to stay afloat financially see exports as the answer to their problems. But they're locked out of some of the worlds most lucrative markets. Trade barriers are one reason Minnesota farmers say they're in a crisis, and many have used government aid and creative financing to balance the books.
May 26, 1999 - A Mainstreet Radio special broadcast from Lake Benton. Rachel Reabe hosts a discussion about Minnesota's wind farm on Buffalo Ridge and the greater wind-power industry with guests Marlin Thompson, Lake Benton mayor; Jim Nichols, a former agriculture commissioner who now heads economic development efforts for the area; and Audrey Zibelman, director of Energy Marketing for Northern States Power.
May 21, 1999 - The upper midwest has been hit by the worst nature can dish out the past few years with floods, tornadoes and blizzards. But apparently it has the leaders to handle those disasters. For the second year in a row President Clinton will present the Phoenix leadership award to a midwest mayor. Last year it went to Grand Forks North Dakota's Pat Owens for her work following the city's devastating 1997 flood and fire. Next week the Phoenix award will be given to a small town southern Minnesota mayor who's leadership helped energize a community left for dead by a tornado.
May 20, 1999 - A farm in southwest Minnesota probably is not the first place you'd expect a professional mezzo soprano to call home, but that is exactly what MPR’s Mark Steil found when talking with Gary Overgaard, a farmer, and his wife Emily Lodine, an opera singer.
April 13, 1999 - Midwest farmers have had a decades long love affair with two crops: corn and soybeans. But rising chemical and fertilizer costs coupled with sinking grain prices have soured the attraction. As the corn/soybean profit engine runs out of gas farmers are scrambling for alternatives. As they get ready for another year of economic uncertainty, the battle cry "get big or get out" is being stood on its head by a third alternative, "get small".
March 29, 1999 - A Mainstreet Radio special broadcast from lobby of Nicollet Hotel in St Peter. Rachel Reabe hosts a discussion on efforts to re-build and preserve historic buildings with guests Judy Bell, of the St. Peter Heritage Preservation Commission; Charlie Nelson of the Minnesota Historical Society; and local residents.
March 25, 1999 - It will be a year ago Monday when a tornado cut a nearly 70 mile long path of destruction through southern Minnesota. The storm practically destroyed the town of Comfrey, and the destructive winds hit hundreds of farms, knocking down houses, barns and silos. The economic hardship caused by the storm arrived just as agriculture was sinking into a financial crisis. The worst farm damage was in Brown County, where the physical and emotional rebuilding continues today.
March 17, 1999 - Governor Ventura told economically distressed farmers in southwest Minnesota today he'll try to help them but could not offer any guarantees. Ventura and the farmers meet at the Jim Joens farm near the town of Wilmont.