LITCHFIELD -- Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak received an inside look Friday at the dairy industry in Meeker County as part of a tour arranged by Rep. Dean Urdahl, R-Grove City.
Rybak and a group of staffers toured the First District Association cheese plant in Litchfield and the 80-cow dairy farm of Dave and Joel Urdahl south of Litchfield.
Urdahl set up the tour to foster the connection between urban consumers and rural Minnesota farmers and food production and to stress the importance of the dairy industry and agriculture to all of Minnesota. One in five jobs statewide and two in five jobs regionally are related to agriculture.
"I want to use this opportunity to build bridges with urban politicians so that we might be more sensitive to each other's concerns," Urdahl said before the tour.
Urdahl expects to introduce legislation again in the 2007 Legislature to provide tax credits of up to $50,000 for modernizing dairy operations in the state. The legislation will be similar to a bill he introduced during the last session.
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Rybak commented that many of the people he represents in Minneapolis are one or two generations away from the farm and that the history of the city is built on the connection to rural farms, which produced the wheat milled into flour and sold to the world by General Mills, Pillsbury and their predecessors, like the Washburn-Crosby Company. He added that urban consumers are striving to know more about where their food comes from and to eat locally produced foods.
"The economy of this part of the state would be stronger if the people I represent think more about their food and where it comes from," he said.
Rybak recognized Mindy Desens, of Sleeping Cat Farms near Litchfield. Desens sells organic meats at the Minneapolis Farmers Market. Desens presented Rybak with a copy of the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan.
The tour of the First District cheese plant was Rybak's first visit to a cheese production facility. He noted that he wants to learn more about emerging rural issues, like wind power.
"We have a great opportunity to reach out to each other," he said.
The First District plant uses milk from 1,300 dairy farms to produce 350,000 pounds of cheese from 3.3 million pounds of milk per day. The cheese is packaged in 500-pound barrels for further processing.
Both Urdahl and Rep. Al Juhnke, DFL-Willmar, who accompanied the tour, stressed that their legislative districts and Minneapolis face similar challenges in education, with declining enrollments and integrating minority and bilingual students.
Juhnke noted that in grades kindergarten to three, Willmar's schools have more than 50 percent bilingual students. "We are not that much different than Minneapolis schools," he said.
