Carbon markets (either voluntary or mandatory through government regulation) have emerged in recent years as a practical means to use free-market economic principles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate global climate change. In carbon markets, businesses or individuals who reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester carbon in the soil can sell “credits” to other...

The Minnesota Court Supreme Court recently issued a decision concerning which watercourses in the state could be treated as “public waters” under various state statutes and regulations. The case arose out of a petition to improve Renville County Ditch 77 by cleaning the outlet into a stretch of Limbo Creek. Historically this section of Limbo...

In 2022, Dean Zimmerli represented a landowner in Kandiyohi County whose agricultural drainage was wrongfully blocked by a downstream neighbor on the shared private ditch. When no negotiated resolution could be reached, he presented his client’s case to a jury, demonstrating that the client’s crop losses were caused by the neighbor’s obstruction of the ditch...

Following the completion of a drainage improvement project, the drainage authority reallocated the costs of the project in a manner that added significant additional expense for his client and violated a prior agreement between his client and the drainage authority. Dean Zimmerli appealed the decision to the district court and immediately moved for summary judgment....

The success of cash crop farming in Minnesota is due in large part to the work our ancestors in this state did to convert wet and even flooded property into dry farmland. Through systems of open ditches and buried pipe, land was made farmable by quickly draining water from the landscape allowing it to be...

DIRT Magazine is a publication by Gislason & Hunter LLP that includes vital information for the Agriculture and Agribusiness industry that work to feed the world. In this issue: Understanding the Past in Order to Build the Future of Agriculture MN Pork will Continue to Look to its Strategic Plan to Focus its Priorities under...

Anumber of recent economic developments will likely impact the negotiation of farmland leases following the 2022 crop year. For example, landlords may want to increase rent because commodity prices are generally rising, and farmland values are going up across the Midwest. On the other hand, tenants may be reluctant to pay more rent because many...