GRANITE FALLS, Minnesota, April 15, 2024 – The sixth and final episode of “Minnesota’s Alt-Meat Revolution” explores the impact of the food that we eat on soil quality. The episode will be available to stream starting Friday, April 19 at www.pioneer.org/altmeat and on YouTube, a release date to coincide with Earth Day.
Luke Peterson of A-Frame Farm is an organic regenerative farmer outside of Dawson, MN. He runs a highly diversified farm rotation and has recently introduced a small grass-fed beef herd into his production. “We use the cattle as a composter where they eat up all of that material and then recycle it and put it back into the soil as manure. So it's like a soil building phase.” By taking the land out of crop production, the land has time to rebuild nutrients.
Meanwhile, in Goodhue, MN – about 200 miles east of Dawson – Jared Luhman and his dad John Luhman are running a very similar operation at Grass Fed Cattle Co. Jared Luhman is now the third generation to farm this land. “On a crop field, the goal is essentially to raise one crop, and when you have a goal of growing one thing, anything else is looked at as competition,” Jared said.
Both Peterson and the Luhmans grow and market monocultures. Additionally, yellow field peas grown for PURIS, North America’s largest processor of pea protein used in plant-based proteins, are grown in monoculture farming operations. So Peterson and the Luhmans have developed a rotation system that allows land to be taken out of crop production to grow a variety of forage pasture grasses that cattle graze, building up the soil quality and health.
“That's just what I love about this perennial diversified system is that we encourage diversity,” explained Jared. “Diversity is one of the best things that we can do for the land.”
“Minnesota’s Alt-Meat Revolution” is a year-long video and print journalism collaboration project, looking into the roots and impact of the plant-protein phenomenon that’s exploding across the globe. The project is a partnership between Pioneer PBS, West Central Tribune and WORLD, with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Each video story will be accompanied by a newspaper article by reporter Tom Cherveny of West Central Tribune. The videos and articles are available at www.pioneer.org/altmeat and www.wctrib.com/news/local/altmeat.
“Minnesota’s Alt-Meat Revolution,” together with WHRO’s “Against the Current,” a multiplatform series that will tell the story of rural residents’ lives as they live with, and adapt to, the effects of climate change in Virginia’s Eastern Shore, will be broadcast nationally and streamed under WORLD’s Local, USA series under the initiative “My Home is Here: Stories of Rural America.”
About Compass
Compass is an award-winning, solutions journalism-centered Pioneer PBS series that features current topics relevant to communities in Pioneer PBS's viewing area. Funding for Compass is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Shalom Hill Farms and members of Pioneer PBS. Learn more at www.pioneer.org/compass.
About Pioneer PBS
Established in 1966, Pioneer PBS is an award-winning, viewer-supported television station dedicated to sharing stories from rural Minnesota with the world. Pioneer PBS is headquartered in Granite Falls, Minnesota, with towers in Appleton, Worthington and Fergus Falls. Pioneer PBS reaches more than a million people in rural areas and small towns in western Minnesota, the eastern Dakotas and northern Iowa. Pioneer PBS is honored to be your television station—the only station in western Minnesota telling your stories and raising your voices into the media landscape. For more information visit pioneer.org or call 800-726-3178.
About West Central Tribune
The West Central Tribune is a multimedia company providing news and information to our print and digital readers across west central Minnesota and beyond. Since 1895, the West Central Tribune has been driven by creating and sharing information, ideas and insight. Learn more at www.wctrib.com.
About Forum Communications Compane
Forum Communications Company is rooted in harnessing the power of communication to connect and inform people in the communities we serve. Since 1917, everything Forum Communications Company has done has been driven by creating and sharing information, ideas and insights. Learn more at www.forumcomm.com.
About WORLD
WORLD shares the best of public media in news, documentaries and programming. WORLD’s original series examine the issues and amplify the voices of those often ignored by mainstream media. The multiplatform channel helps audiences understand conflicts, movements and cultures from around the globe. Its original work has won a Peabody Award, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award, an International Documentary Association Award, a National News and Documentary Emmy Award, two Webby Awards and many others honoring diversity of content and makers. WORLD is carried by 194 member stations in markets representing 77% of US TV households. Funding for WORLD is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Wyncote Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. WORLD is produced by GBH in partnership with WNET and is distributed by American Public Television (APT). Find out more at WORLDChannel.org.