Corporate potato farming is replacing small farmers and degrading White Earth land and water.

Evidence

Over a third of the reservation is under increasing industrialized and chemically intensive agricultural development, with devastating consequences. Since 1858, some 50 percent of the reservation’s wetlands have been lost, largely due to ill-founded agricultural practices. Between 1955 and 1975, Mahnomen County lost more than 30,000 acres of wetlands, or over 60 percent. Between 1987 and 1992, over 1,800 tons of fertilizer and over 110,000 gallons of pesticides and herbicides were applied to White Earth lands every year. Over 12,000 acres of reservation land are held by RDO Offutt, the largest potato grower in the world, which has contaminated the groundwater with herbicides and fungicides. As more and more small farmers leave the reservation lands or fall into economic hardship, corporate interests such as this one are increasingly dominant. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations, 675

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Health advisories restrict fish consumption most burdensome to Indigenous diet staples. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 672; Market purchase by a land trust is restoring endangered maple sugarbush at White Earth. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 655

Broader Connections

• Market purchase by a land trust is restoring endangered maple sugarbush at White Earth. #complicates (0.75) — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations, 655