I’m a fifth-generation farmer from Watonwan County Minnesota. I come from a long line of farmers and small business owners. My husband Jim and I own a feed mill and we raise dairy goats, Berkshire hogs, chickens and crops.

I first became involved in politics when I was about 10 years old when I attended my first caucus meeting and boy was I hooked! Since then, I’ve served as the Watonwan County DFL chair, been elected to three state conventions and served on numerous senate and district committees.

Every year since 2016 Minnesota has lost 500 family farms. We haven’t lost acreage, but we have lost those farmers. 500 farmers very year move out of farming. We all know that small towns revolve around farming. When they move away we lose our schools, hardware stores, grocery stores and our community. Minnesota prides itself on producing quality food for the nation and the world. We need a mix of large and small farmers.

In 2023 Minnesota House passed an agriculture budget of 60 million dollars. The Republican Senate cut it down to 7.5 Million and our current House Representative, Jeremy Munson still didn’t vote for it. There is a good safety net for crop farmers but not for livestock farmers. When farmers lost everything to Avian Flu there was no safely net for them. It was mostly, “gee that’s too bad, hope it goes well with your bankruptcy”. Hog farmers are constantly dealing with PRRS getting into their herds. There’s no safety net for that either. So when you roast your turkey this fall, realize that those farmers who raised the turkeys worked 7 days a week to provide you with that turkey without a safety net.

The Democratic Rural Voice hasn’t been heard in a long time. We need a government for ALL of us. We need a strong voice for other rural interests too. Education, including trade schools, entrepreneurship, economic development, health care, climate, food deserts… the list goes on. Rural Minnesota’s communities need a voice.

I want to be that voice. I want to be the conduit for greater Minnesota to the Metro area. We can’t expect government to know what we need if we don’t tell them.