Deb Weigel is 71 years old, and she said lately, she’s been feeling like a young newlywed again.

But not in a good way.

“We’re back to trying to make ends meet, like we're just starting out right now,” she said.

She’s the manager of Corner Parcel in Pembina, a town of 500 in the northeast corner of North Dakota, right on the border with Minnesota and Canada.

The shop caters exclusively to Canadians, helping them avoid international shipping costs by acting as their U.S. address. It’s one of many in Pembina.

The business model depends on Canadians crossing the border, but fewer of them are. Many say they’re feeling cold about America because of President Trump’s tariffs and rhetoric about annexing Canada.

The number of passengers crossing the Pembina border was down by nearly 35 percent in 2025 compared to 2024, according to data from the Bureau of Transportation.

Weigel’s shop has been hit hard. She said they're getting less than half of the packages they used to and have cut their staff significantly, down from at least six workers a shift to just one.

For Weigel, the drop in business means no bonuses or raises, which is particularly tough because her husband’s income also relies on Canadian traffic — or rather, as a Canadian truck driver, he’s part of it.

“He [works] as much as he can, but there's a lot of … sit and wait, because there's no loads,” she said. “It’s hard. We're having a very hard time making ends meet, and I'm too old for that.”

She’s unable to retire, she said. It would be too much of a strain on her husband.

“It makes me glad that my kids are all grown and gone in that aspect, because I don't know how these young parents can raise children anymore,” she said. “We don't go anywhere, and we don't do anything, we just do what we have to, day to day, so I don't know how people are surviving.”

Border business blues

The parcel business has been particularly affected, but other border town businesses said they’re feeling it too.. Pembina’s grocery store, D & K Grocery, has been owned by Deanna Hager and her husband for more than 20 years.

Canadians would frequently cross the border to buy food that’s expensive or hard to get back home. But now, business is down by 15 percent because of a decline in Canadian customers, she said.

“We used to have our regulars that would come two, three times a week from Canada, and now they don't,” she said.

Like Weigel, Hager said the downturn has started to have an impact on her finances.

“There's things we don't do that we used to do, you know,” she said. “Just travel here or there, you just got to mind your Ps and Qs till things start picking up again.”

The story is similar in Lancaster, Minn., a small town just 25 miles east of Pembina. The border crossing there gets much less traffic, but still, local businesses said they’re feeling the cold shoulder from their northern neighbors.

“A lot of people are not coming down anymore,” said Shannon Langerud, who has owned the town’s grocery store, J & S Foods, with her husband since 2019.

The decline in Lancaster seems to be multi-faceted. Lake Bronson is nearby and is usually a tourist attraction for Canadians, but it’s been closed since 2024 as the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources replaces its dam.

Some Canadians also said the weakening of the Canadian dollar makes it too expensive to travel.

“I just wish that we would get it just figured out (and) go back to the way it used to be,” Langerud said. “Our small town communities are hurting a lot right now with everything that's going on in the world.”

In every county with a rural point of entry, jobs in the retail sector and the leisure and hospitality sector were down last year, according to data from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

It's impossible to determine how much of the decline in tourism-dependent jobs is tied to fewer international travelers, said Anthony Schaffhauser, the department's regional analyst for northwest Minnesota. But, he added, "I think it's fair to say that it didn't help."

It could also be due to factors that make people spend less generally, including high inflation.

“People drop off their spending if they're strapped for cash,” he said. “We don't have any way to separate out just how much of that would be from U.S. consumers cutting back, and how much of that is from fewer international travelers,” he said.

Downstream damage

While some Canadians may stop in border towns for snacks or a parcel, many keep driving south to spend time and money in other parts of the region, and those areas may be getting caught in the crossfire too.

“There’s a lot of Canadian visitors that come to shop in the US,” Schaffhauser said. “Some of the more urban areas and centers — that would affect the retail trade in those areas”

For example, many Canadians travel to shop in the Grand Forks metro area. It’s about 80 miles south of the border.

Pat Boppre owns the Blue Moose Cafe in East Grand Forks, Minn. He said the restaurant used to attract about 400 Canadians every weekend.

“The last two years are probably down about six to 10 percent of traffic, just from Canadian traffic,” he said.

He said it’s a relatively small portion of the business, but still, the decline means they’ve had to cut hours.

“With the downturn in business, obviously, the money isn't coming in, so you do have to cut some certain things,” he said.

But the data is a bit brighter heading into summer, which is typically when border crossings peak. The number of personal vehicle passengers driving into Minnesota from Canada in March, April and May was higher than last year, but still below what they were in 2024. Boppre said he’s feeling it.

“It's kind of starting to turn around at this point,” he added. “We're starting to see this summer, we've probably seen the most Canadians that we've seen in the last two.”

In Pembina, things are slowly turning around too. Border crossings in April and May were higher in 2026 than 2025.

Deb Weigel, the manager of Corner Parcel, is more at the mercy of the border than many. She said she’s encouraged by the uptick in crossings and customers.

“I'm a very firm believer [that] neither country can survive without the other one,” she said.

On a typical Sunday morning in Grand Marais, the line for World’s Best Donuts is out the door and around the corner.

But over the weekend, that line all but disappeared. Kristin Christenson and her family sailed in and out the door.

"We just got here yesterday and we couldn't believe how not busy it was,” said Christenson, who travels here every year from Fergus Falls. “I don't think we've ever come to World’s Best Donuts and not had a line.”

Grand Marais is situated on the shores of Lake Superior and at the gateway to the Gunflint Trail. Every summer, tourists like Christenson flock to the area to canoe and hike, and their spending fuels this community of 1,300.

But a week ago, tourists stopped coming when the U.S. Forest Service closed the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Smoke from fire burning far west of the town has created hazardous air conditions.

The closure comes at the peak summer season for World’s Best Donuts and many other businesses nearby.

“We're open from May to October, so this is like prime time,” said Malorie Brazell, who owns the shop.

Brazell said she’s sent staff home early the last few days.

“Just this weekend, we made a little bit of staff changes. Normally, we have three people helping customers, and we really can get by with one,” she said.

Another closure, another financial hit

Brazell is among small business owners here who are wondering how long the smoke and Boundary Waters closures, which have been extended through at least the end of the week, will linger. Every day they do, business takes another hit.

Angry Trout owner Jessy Goble says this time of year, every seat on her patio would normally be full, the kitchen working to serve seafood to 400 to 500 people a day.

But smoke and poor air quality prompted her to close the restaurant for a few days.

­“We opened yesterday for the first time since the big plume of smoke came down the trail. We'll open it up for inside seating only to help keep our staff feeling comfortable and safe,” she said. “It's kind of depressing to come down here and see nobody sitting on the deck, when it's this time of the year where it's just such a coveted place to eat.”

Indoor businesses are getting hit hard, too, said Abby Tofte. She owns The Big Lake, a gift store in downtown Grand Marais. Foot traffic is way down compared to just a week ago, she said.

“The summer is where we make all of the money, and September. So July through September, that's when you make the hay. That’s why this is pretty scary,” said Tofte.

Tofte said she’s getting calls from vacationers who planned to travel there, asking if the area is safe.

“A lot of people just don't have the information to know where the fires are, and you just kind of clump all of Cook County together, and really, we're very far away from where the actual fire is happening,” she said.

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Tourist Kristin Christenson said her family didn’t consider cancelling their trip.

“We want this town to survive. We love it so much. We want to keep coming back. And in order to survive, they need to be full the third week in July,” she said.

So this year, Christenson said that instead of lots of long hikes in the wilderness, she and her family will stick closer to town so they can support the local businesses they’ve grown to love so much.

Corey Hanson, who grows soybeans in Gary in the Red River Valley, has waged many battles against Iron Deficiency Chlorosis, also known as IDC, in his crops.

“It's always there someplace,” said Hanson. “Just depends on how severe it is, depending on what the spring did, how the [snow] melt happened, and how much rain we've received throughout the spring.”

The condition appears when the soybean plants aren’t able to access the iron they need to grow. Affected soybeans’ leaves turn yellow early in their life cycle. When that happens, the plants aren’t actively photosynthesizing, which stunts their development.

Hanson has been trying multiple different treatments over the last 20 years. Lately, he’s been applying liquid iron to his fields, which he says has helped mitigate the severity of IDC. But that increases his costs.

Those cost increases come at a time when many farmers’ operating expenses are already high. Soybean prices are also lower than they were a few years ago. Hanson said that paying for liquid iron to improve yield, in hopes of higher profit, feels like a gamble.

"We don't know right now what the full price of our soybeans will be next year. We can have an idea, a hope, but we don't know," said Hanson. "All my cards to play to get a better yield in hopes of a profit could be all for naught, but I don't know that now."

Western and central Minnesota are the areas most affected by IDC. That’s because those zones tend to have soils with poor drainage, weather and soil conditions. That makes it harder for plants’ roots to absorb the nutrients they need for growth and development.

Sergio Cabello Leiva, director of research at the Minnesota Soybean Research & Promotion Council, said that affected plants may mature around harvest time. That’s problematic because farmers want to harvest soybeans when they’re ready and dry.

“When they grow out, they're gonna be late, probably two, three weeks [behind] the rest of the field,” said Cabello Leiva. “So, when the crop matures, and the farmers go in mid-September, early October to harvest, the other plants are gonna be dry without leaves, ready to harvest. But these [other] acres are gonna be green because they were late.”

Hanson, the farmer, will often find clusters of green soybeans in his fields around harvest time. He says he has to either harvest around them or take them as is. Those soybeans could have higher moisture content, which makes them of lower quality.

“It becomes very much more of a harvesting nightmare, and then the yield is not even close to [ideal] because they've been delayed so long,” said Hanson.

Cabello Leiva said there is no silver bullet for Iron Deficiency Chlorosis. So he recommends farmers reach out to an ag specialist for a personalized assessment, as each field is different.

Trying to keep a layer facility cool has a distinct sound: 72 fans running nonstop.

“We're in a stretch right now that is very warm, so we're taking measures to prevent any further death loss,” said Allan Baer, co-owner of Highlevel Egg in Lake Park.

Baer said he’s handled hot summers before, but this season he’s seen a higher-than-normal number of days break 90 degrees.

Nighttime heat can be especially disruptive to his chickens, he added.

“At night when the chickens go to sleep, if it cools down, it's a lot more comfortable,” he said. “But when we have temperatures above 70 degrees at night, the chickens are uncomfortable.”

Baer said that heat-stressed chickens lay smaller, less valuable eggs. To try and prevent that, Baer has the fans going constantly, and he’s also changed the chickens’ feeding routine — eating too late can make them overheat at night.

However, all of these changes are costing Baer money at a difficult time. Egg prices have fallen significantly from last year, which is already affecting his bottom line.

“I'm losing money every day, a lot of money every day,” he said. “And I think it'll go on for a year and a half, two years.”

Watching over animals and humans in the heat

Robert Roelofs is also concerned about his animals.

He’s a pork producer in Garden City in southern Minnesota, near Mankato. When the temperature is in the 90s, as it is now, he said his pigs don’t eat much.

“They just eat enough feed to maintain, to make them feel OK and drink a lot of water,” he said.

“It's kind of just like us,” he added. “If we're hot, we're not going to want to eat a whole steak and a full pan of pasta. We're not going to want to do that when we're hot, either.”

And less eating means less growth, which can make them less valuable.

“If the pigs aren't gaining weight for a couple of days because of a slowdown in feed consumption, that can hurt our bottom line,” said Roelofs. “It's not too drastic, but it's there.”

He also expects his costs to go up, not just from the electricity used for running fans, but from labor as well.

Roelofs said he gives his workers flexible breaks so they don’t overheat in the summer. Ultimately, he said that helps reduce lapses in biosecurity measures, such as changing into separate clothes and shoes when going in and out of a facility, which helps keep germs out.

“We want to make sure that everybody who's working with us has got their head on a swivel when it comes to the biosecurity,” said Roelofs. “We don't want to get another bug like the flu onto the farm or something like that just because we were tired because of the heat.”

Roelofs said problems arise if, say, a worker goes outside to get water and then comes back in without changing their boots.

Wildfire smoke may spread

Heat may not be the only issue farmers contend with this week.

Forecasts show that the smoke could reach parts of central Minnesota. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency on Tuesday expanded its air quality alert through Friday morning across much of central Minnesota and into the southeast due to wildfire smoke from northern Minnesota.

Matthew Pfarr, a University of Minnesota Extension educator based in Mankato, said he’s been paying attention to the smoke blowing from the wildfires.

“With the heat and the smoke. There's going to be more respiratory distress, and there's going to be more need for ventilation,” he said.

Pfarr said it will be important for farmers to pay special attention to younger and older livestock “that would tend to be more sensitive to pollutants in the air.”

Beyond caring for their animals, Pfarr said farmers and workers need to take care of themselves, too. That means taking breaks and hydrating often.

Just before 8 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the temperature was already pushing 80 degrees near downtown St. Paul, where Michael New was working on construction at the John Ireland Bridge. He wears long sleeves, a face mask and sunglasses on days like this.

“I would recommend keeping your skin covered so the sun isn’t beating on your skin, wear wicking material, I prefer a face mask just to keep the sun off me,” said New.

New says he plans to drink a lot of water and get in the shade when he can. He and other outdoor workers in farming, forestry, delivery and construction will be outside in extreme heat this week.

Stacy Arnold is director of safety for the Associated General Contractors of Minnesota. She spoked with Minnesota Now host Nina Moini about how she works to help employers in construction adopt safer practices around heat and other hazards.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

Most of the recent attention on the potential for copper and nickel mining in Minnesota has focused on the Boundary Waters region, where the Trump administration in April ended a mining ban south of the wilderness area, breathing new life into the proposed Twin Metals mine outside Ely.

But there’s another proposed mine about 50 miles west of Duluth that's much further along in the process to try to win state approval.

For the past three years, Talon Metals has refined its plan to open an underground nickel mine in the swampy forest just north of the tiny town of Tamarack, responding to more than 1,600 comments as part of the state Department of Natural Resource’s environmental review scoping process.

Talon’s project has flown a bit under the radar compared to more high-profile fights over the proposed Twin Metals mine and the NewRange Copper Nickel project — formerly known as PolyMet — that has been stalled by lawsuits and pulled permits.

But it faces the same question that has dogged those other proposals: Can mining for copper, nickel and other precious metals, which has never been done before in Minnesota and carries more severe pollution risks than iron ore mining, be done safely in a water-rich environment?

“That is always the concern with people,” said Tamarack Mayor John Cyrus. “If the groundwater gets contaminated, then nobody can live here.”

The next step in trying to answer that question begins Tuesday, when the Minnesota DNR is expected to release documents identifying some of the potentially significant impacts of the mine, as well as what needs additional study or analysis and what new data and studies still need to be collected and conducted.

It’s also the first time the general public will be able to file comments and concerns with the state about the proposal as part of the mine’s environmental review process.

“That's part of what makes this really significant,” said Joy Anderson, legal director for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. “This has been going on in the background. Probably a lot of people have forgotten about it. But now is the time when the public can express their thoughts about this.”

Promise and risk

Exploration for valuable minerals hidden under the swamps of Aitkin County started more than a half century ago, when the Minnesota Geological Survey used a low-flying plane to conduct aeromagnetic surveys.

The Kennecott company, a subsidiary of mining giant Rio Tinto, began drilling there in 2002. Six years and 42 holes later, geologists first made the discovery of nickel that Talon now hopes to mine. Like the Duluth Complex farther north where Twin Metals and NewRange Copper Nickel hope to mine, it’s part of the Midcontinent Rift, which formed 1.1 billion years ago when North America split apart, sending lava rich with metals up into the earth’s crust.

Talon, a small Canadian firm, bought into the project over a decade ago and now owns 51 percent of it. Last year, Talon bought the Eagle Mine in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which opened a decade ago and is the nation’s only operating nickel mine.

Between the two operations, Talon employs about 500 people, including 80 in Tamarack — more than the town’s entire population of 62. The company says it’s already invested $186 million into developing the project.

Talon officials say they have worked from the beginning to engage with the public and respond to community feedback. After hearing concerns raised at community meetings over mine waste tailings, the company decided to ship the ore from the mine site on train cars to process elsewhere.

More recently, Talon tweaked the design of the proposed mine’s footprint, shrinking it and consolidating all the operations in one building about the size of a big box store.

Trucks would descend into the 2,000-foot-deep underground mine via a winding tunnel similar to a parking ramp. But when they return to the surface, the ore would stay indoors before it’s transferred to rail cars.

"So that the ore is not exposed to the environment at surface,” explained Talon spokesperson Jessica Johnson. “It's handled inside of a controlled environment, so you can really engineer and manage for dust. You no longer have to worry about rain or snow events contacting your operation."

It’s an example of the company thinking outside the box, Johnson said, “by designing a mine inside the box.”

It’s also an attempt to address one of the biggest environmental concerns with mining for copper and nickel: When the ore interacts with air and water, it can create acid mine drainage, which can leach sulfate and heavy metals into surrounding waterways.

An interconnected spider web of aquifers and surface water surrounding the mine site flows toward Big Sandy Lake and the Mississippi River about eight miles away, an area that the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe considers “the crown jewel of wild rice habitat in the world,” said the Band’s Natural Resources Director Kelly Applegate.

Ojibwe people from around the upper Midwest come to the area to rice, along with non-tribal members, he added. It’s more than a food, Applegate explains. It’s a medicine. And it’s a cultural linchpin, the reason Ojibwe people settled where they did, when they found “the food that grows upon the water.”

“If there were to be a catastrophe, a leak, it can potentially kill off the manoomin [wild rice] beds, and that would not be acceptable to us as a people,” Applegate said.

Mille Lacs Band Chief Executive Virgil Wind said he appreciates the changes Talon has already made to its plan. But he said those changes don’t completely eliminate the risks. "I just don't see how in such a water-rich environment that [mining] can be done safely,” Wind said.

Talon is collecting baseline environmental data to better understand how water flows in the area. Johnson says that will then be incorporated into an environmental impact statement and into the company's plan to manage the pollution risks that come with underground mining.

Tamarack Mayor John Cyrus said he trusts the company.

“I believe what they're saying when they say they can mine it without polluting. And Minnesota has a great history for rules and regulations for mining,” said Cyrus.

Supporters of the proposed mine say Talon has already provided an economic jolt to one of the poorest regions in the state. And if the mine opens, the company plans to add another roughly 150 jobs, Johnson said, in addition to the hundreds of construction jobs needed to build the mine.

“I’d like to see it happen in my lifetime,” said James Onstad, a supervisor for nearby Haugen Township who said he’s watched too many people move away from the area since he was a kid. “Because otherwise, this community’s dead.”

A larger mine?

Talon has attracted some high-profile backers in its bid to open what would be only the second nickel mine in the country. It struck a deal with Tesla four years ago to provide the electric vehicle manufacturer with nickel for its car batteries.

The federal government has also invested in the company. The Department of Energy has pledged about $115 million to Talon to build a minerals processing facility in North Dakota, although the company now says it is also considering shipping its ore to a processing facility in Michigan it acquired when the company purchased the Eagle Mine.

The Defense Department has also invested about $20 million for continued exploration, in Michigan and at Talon’s Tamarack site.

During a visit to the mine site last week, crews operated a drilling rig that bored below the main deposit where Talon is planning its initial mine. Geologists recently discovered an area of rich mineralization there with grades 10 times higher than the main deposit.

“There aren’t really many examples globally of anything like this,” said Brian Goldner, chief exploration officer for Talon.

Talon’s plan calls for mining for seven to 10 years. But the additional exploration could lead to an extended mine life. Talon has cited the potential for a “mining district” over about an 11-mile area in earlier investor reports.

“One of the bigger concerns that we have is that this is just the beginning,” said the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy’s Joy Anderson. “It’s really important to not just look at this mine that they are proposing, but to know that this is setting a blueprint for everything that they want to do in a very large area right around this mine.”

The environmental review process for large and controversial mining projects like this one can stretch for years. Johnson hopes the changes Talon is making at the front end will shorten that process. The company's ambitious timeline aims to start construction of the mine in 2029.

Andrew Cholakian has worked in remote jobs for more than a decade. Even the coffee he drinks is a product of working from home, he said.

During the pandemic, he took a deep dive into making espresso and enjoys the complexities of maintaining his fancy Italian espresso machine.

“It's one of those things that lets you kind of get out of the flow of your workday and just have something extra to do… and put yourself in a different headspace,” he said.

Cholakian lives in Minneapolis, where he works remotely as a technical lead for a software company in Europe. His fancy coffee helps bridge conversations across time zones.

“Frequently I have meetings pretty early in the morning, often with people in Europe, and for those it’s great to be able to work from home because I can just basically roll out of bed and in 10 minutes be in a meeting,” he said.

Despite a number of employers calling employees back into the office, “remote work has nonetheless remained sticky,” writes Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Regional Analyst Haley Chinander in a new report.

Chinander analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau and found that, over the past two years, the share of workers who work from home at least some of the time has stayed steady at about 22 percent.

And the report states that Minnesota ranks 12th in the nation for its share of workers (24 percent) doing their jobs at least part of the time from home.

Chinander, who broke down the data by state and sector, said professional services, finance and healthcare and social services, which have high shares of remote workers, are big employers in Minnesota.

“In Minnesota, in particular, we have a higher concentration of workers in these sectors than in some other states,” she said in an interview.

For example, “healthcare and social assistance” employs the most people of any industry in the state, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

Chinander noted that though healthcare may involve a lot of in-person care, a number of jobs can also be done remotely.

“In the healthcare sector, you…have a lot of administrative positions,” she said. “You also have a lot of telehealth happening and things like medical coding and transcribing that are often remote jobs.”

A few sectors showed a drop in their share of remote workers in Chinander’s analysis. Remote work decreased by six percentage points in the public administration sector from 2024 to 2025. The federal government and some state governments, including Minnesota, have mandated that workers return to the office either fully or some of the time.

Remote work also declined in the information sector, which is a broad category that includes publishing, telecommunications, data processing and more.

Espresso machine or water cooler?

In the past year, Minnesota-based companies like General Mills, Target and Best Buy have increased the amount of time they expect workers to do their jobs in person.

Many employers would prefer that their workers spend their time together near a water cooler instead of connecting virtually, said Minneapolis-based recruiter and career coach Julie Desmond.

“They want people to be face to face,” she said. “They want them to be friends and develop relationships, and to have the one-off conversations that lead to innovation, that lead to camaraderie…and more productivity, too.”

But even as companies ask employees to come back into the office, many workers have gotten used to working from home and have adapted their lifestyles to remote work, said Desmond.

“It’s expensive to work in the office,” she said. “You need new clothes, you need to pay for gas, you need after-school care for your school-age children that you don’t need if you’re working from home.”

For Cholakian, the tech worker, sometimes the excellent coffee at home doesn’t quench his thirst for social interaction, and he will leave the house to work. But with no physical office to go to, he visits coworking spaces, where people from different companies go to work in the same space as each other.

He said that’s a good bridge between the loneliness of remote work and the inconvenience of office work.

But overall, remote work is where he feels most at home.

“I sometimes do miss working in an office for about two and a half seconds,” Cholakian said. “And then I remember all the other stuff I don't miss.”

Chinander, the Minneapolis Fed analyst, noted that remote work policies might change with shifts in the labor market.

“In an economy where there are few workers and more jobs, employers may use remote work as a benefit to attract labor,” she said. “And in the opposite situation where there’s fewer jobs and more workers, they may not feel the need to offer that.”

Business owners in Minneapolis’ Uptown neighborhood are seeking to delay a planned construction project along Lyndale Avenue South, as a deadline to use federal funding for the project approaches.

The Minneapolis City Council is set to vote Thursday on whether to approve a plan for reconstruction of the corridor between Interstate 94 and 32nd Street.

Staff at Hennepin County — which is overseeing the project — say the design will be safer for pedestrians and bring needed utility upgrades to the nearly 100-year-old road, including medians, a bike lane and lighting improvements.

But several business owners say they’re worried that construction will deter customers. Several spoke at a City Council committee meeting last week, and asked for a delay of the project.

Many of them pointed to businesses on nearby Hennepin Avenue, which recently underwent a similar multi-year construction project. Some businesses there are still struggling — and some owners blame a reduction in street parking, and new medians that prevent turns.

Stefani Pennaz is the executive director of the Uptown Association. She asked the council to wait on the Lyndale project and give business owners time to recover from the last round of construction.

“Sales have not rebounded the way they expected, foot traffic has not returned to the levels they hoped for. Many are operating on incredibly thin margins, looking out their windows at neighboring vacant storefronts and wondering whether they’ll be next,” Pennaz said.

But officials on the project said there’s no time to wait. About $9 million — almost half the cost of the project — is coming from federal funding. That will expire if construction doesn’t start by 2028.

Josh Potter is the project manager with Hennepin County.

“There is no time left in this project to keep talking about this and kick the can down the road,” Potter said at the meeting. “We need to keep moving to meet the federal funding deadline.”

The project has already been delayed to do more community engagement — which has been tense. A business group pushed the county to scrap the bike lane and keep more street parking; they clashed with a group of local residents and advocates who wanted a bike lane and more space for public transit.

Julie Johnson advocated for the bike lane. She was one of several residents who urged the council last week to move ahead with the plan.

“Better opportunities for people to bike, walk, roll and spend more time on Lyndale is better for everyone,” Johnson said. “It leads to cleaner air, more affordable cities and a place where people want to spend time.”

The final design keeps about three-quarters of the street parking along that stretch of Lyndale, and includes a bike lane between I-94 and 28th Street. That plan still left some unhappy. Business owners at the council meeting said they’re worried that’s too much of a decrease in parking; some bike advocates said the bike lane should extend further south.

City Council member Soren Stevenson said the plan is the best middle ground.

“The concept plan that we have in front of us is clearly a compromise. No one here is getting everything that they want,” Stevenson said.

Other council members on the committee said they also support the plan — but several said the county should help business owners and residents get through the construction project.

County staff said the county will have an engagement plan to work with people and help connect them to resources.

Potter also said the county will look into ways to shorten the construction timeline. He gave a three-year estimate for the project, but said project leaders would work with contractors to speed it up.

Council member Aurin Chowdhury said she thinks it’s a good plan, and said the city should consider events along the corridor during the construction period to help bring people to the street.

“I really acknowledge the fear that comes with the uncertainty of street reconstruction, especially after the last six years in our city, but I think that there’s a possibility that this can be a moment of growth,” Chowdhury said.

If the plan is approved, construction is set to start in 2028.

A new state report found flaws in a program that rewards Minnesota farmers who protect water quality.

Launched more than a decade ago, the Minnesota Agricultural Water Quality Certification Program offers financial assistance to producers who change their farming practices to prevent water pollution.

They might choose to till less often, which slows erosion and reduces fertilizer runoff into local waterways. Or they might plant cover crops and vegetative buffers to slow runoff.

The report from the Office of the Legislative Auditor released Friday found the Minnesota Department of Agriculture certified some farmers into the program who didn’t meet all the standards but had agreed to do so in the future.

However, sometimes those farmers approved on “contingencies” still didn’t comply years later, the report states. It notes, for example, that one farmer received six years of program benefits but never compiled before his certification was suspended.

The report also says the program's effect on water quality is not clear, because the data the department uses to estimate how much pollution it’s saving has limitations. For example, not all producers are required to adopt new farming practices to get certified.

About 1,500 farmers were actively certified in the program last year, according to the report. The total number of certified acres was a little over 1.1 million, which is about 4 percent of Minnesota’s total farmland.

The ag department touts the environmental benefits of the program, including the amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment its farmers are keeping out of Minnesota’s waters. Nutrient runoff from fertilizers can cause algal blooms in waterways. And sediment can block sunlight essential for aquatic plants.

In a statement, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture said it’s proud of the program, which was the first of its kind in the nation, and “all it has done to further the state’s commitment to water quality and conservation while advancing responsible and innovative agricultural practices.”

Advocates defend the program

Thom Petersen, Minnesota’s agriculture commissioner, said it’s a good time for a review of the program’s performance and how to improve it. But Petersen took issue with the report’s criticism of certifying farmers who aren’t yet in compliance on contingencies.

“We think contingencies are important to bring producers along as they make those changes, because some of those changes take some time,” he said.

Petersen also disputes that farmers in the program are receiving benefits even though they don’t meet the standards.

“A lot of these people are my neighbors. I know the improvements that they've made to their farms. I've seen the investments that they put in,” he said. “The money they get from the state is a small portion of the overall practice and changes that they're voluntarily making to their farm to help improve water quality.”

The program also has supporters among producers and local officials.

Megan Herbst, a conservation planning manager with the Stearns Conservation District, works with farmers who want to get certified in the program.

Herbt said the program has been effective at promoting conservation practices, especially among farmers who might want to improve their farming practices but aren’t ready to jump in all the way.

"On every acre, what little steps can I make to improve water quality and to improve soil health and keep the soil on my farm?’” Herbst said.

Alex Udermann, owner of Meadowbrook Farm near Sartell, said in an email that the program has been “tremendously beneficial” as his farm adopted soil health principles and transitioned toward regenerative agriculture.

Since becoming certified, Udermann’s farm has adopted a range of conservation practices, including transitioning to no-till farming, planting cover crops and improving nutrient management.

“Every certified farm is taking measurable steps to reduce soil erosion, keep nutrients on the field where they belong and improve how water moves through the soil, instead of running off into ditches, streams, rivers and lakes,” he said.

This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.

By Kate Grumke | Harvest Public Media

On the bluffs of the Mississippi River near Alton, Illinois, Crystal Moore-Stevens and her family grow something you won’t find on most farms: serviceberries.

“When we first moved to this property, we invested in dozens and dozens and dozens of serviceberry trees,” said Moore-Stevens, co-owner of Flourish Farm and Folk School. “This is the first year that they're really putting on lots and lots of fruit.”

All those berries meant Moore-Stevens could help a friend in a pinch. Cindy Higgerson owns Larder and Cupboard, an artisanal, small-batch jam company in St. Louis.

Higgerson specializes in local, hard-to-find ingredients, including serviceberries. But this year, her usual foraging spots didn’t work out — so she’s buying her berries from Moore-Stevens.

As she fills containers with the blueberry-sized maroon fruit, she tastes a few.

“They taste like a combination of berries, I think, with the seeds in there tasting sort of like almond,” Higgerson said. “It almost gives it notes of cherry in there.”

Serviceberry enthusiasts like Higgerson and Moore-Stevens are part of a new push to expose more people to this largely unknown berry. Though the native fruit is commercially harvested in Canada, experts say building a U.S. market could be a challenge.

The push to market

Serviceberries, or juneberries, are a native plant that grows throughout North America and goes by a lot of different names, including shadberry and saskatoon. They’re adapted to the Midwest’s extreme weather and local wildlife love them — but the berries aren’t just for the birds.

People all over the region forage and eat them. And in some ways, the berries are having a moment. Last year, botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer released her latest book, The Serviceberry, which sparked new interest in the native fruit.

And there’s also a growing push to get these berries onto farms.

Bill Davison works on commercializing the serviceberry and similar crops at the Savanna Institute, a nonprofit based in Champaign, Illinois, that promotes sustainable agriculture.

“It's a native shrub, it's highly nutritious, it tastes great,” Davison said. “It can support regional food systems and diversified farming. But it would take consumers getting informed and then making decisions based on that information to support that kind of a system, because you can always find some cheaper berry product in the marketplace.”

Davison said there’s already a developed market for serviceberries in Canada, where they’re grown on large orchards and even mechanically harvested.

But he said the berries are rare on U.S. farms, partly because the U.S. agricultural system is designed to support commodity crops, like corn and soybeans.

“That's what [the food system] does well,” Davison said. “What it does not do well is make room for specialty crops. So the infrastructure, the subsidies, the support, the money, energy, all go to the main commodities.”

Madeline Wimmer is a fruit production educator at the University of Minnesota Extension. Though there isn’t much serviceberry production in the state right now, she said a few Minnesota farmers are trying them out.

Most people haven’t heard of serviceberries yet, Wimmer added, and there needs to be more education to popularize them. She said they can be a better choice for the environment because they often don’t travel far to get to people’s plates.

“I'm always kind of pushing for the idea of having native berries in smoothie bowls, because we oftentimes see acai in smoothie bowls,” Wimmer said. ”Acai is great. But if we're thinking about lowering the carbon footprint and kind of celebrating what we have here, we've got a lot of things.”

As an added bonus, Wimmer said, serviceberries are only available for a short time each year, which makes eating them feel like a holiday to celebrate.

Foraging for ingredients

Without many farm or wholesale options, most people are foraging serviceberries, even in cities like Chicago, where people can pick them along the Bloomingdale Trail, a popular running and biking path.

When the trail first opened a decade ago, Ben Helphand and other co-founders of the Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail decided to line it with serviceberries.

“It's beautiful, it's native, it's of the region and of the city, so it's a nice kind of symbol for the trail as well,” Helphand said.

Soon after that, trail regulars added the berries to their diets, including local nature educator Bonnie Tawse.

“Someone will stop and say, ‘Are you sure you can eat those?’” Tawse said. “And so it's a great moment, you know, a teachable moment, as we say, to just say, ‘Yes, you can eat them. They're delicious.’”

As the trail’s foraging community grew, the group began to test and develop recipes. To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the trail, Tawse published those recipes in Berries for Bloomingdale: The Serviceberry Cookbook.

Tawse said this type of foraging forces people to tune into nature’s calendar instead of benefitting from the instant gratification of most modern shopping.

“It sort of flips the script a little bit,” said Tawse, who also leads a citizen science project tracking the bloom times of the trees. “It's on us to slow down to take the time to go check, literally physically, go check on the tree. I think that's really special.”

In North Dakota, one company uses serviceberries for another purpose: to provide meaningful jobs for people with developmental disabilities, traumatic brain injuries and mental health issues.

Thunderbird Ranch Gourmet Foods and Dakota Seasonings are owned and operated by Open Door Center in Valley City, North Dakota. The two brands produce juneberry jams, pie fillings, syrups and other products which they sell at their brick-and-mortar location and online.

Manager Kay Metcalf purchases berries from local foragers, but she has to think ahead to make sure she has enough to meet demand.

“I've got a 10 by 20 [foot] walk-in freezer, so I try to keep two years worth of berries on hand,” Metcalf said. “Because we've gotten caught where there's been a frost in the spring when the trees are blossoming, and you do not get any berries in that year.”

Getting people to try them

Back in St. Louis, jam maker Cindy Higgerson considered herself lucky as she weighed the berries she picked at Flourish Farm, plus the few she was able to forage this year.

Without them, the “sad little pile” of berries she picked in the St. Louis area would have made a single jar, she said.

Higgerson put the berries in a pan on the stove, mashed them, brought them to a simmer and then ladled the chunky maroon jam into 23 small jars that will sell for about $9 each.

Finally, the lids of the jam jars let out staccato pops, meaning they’re airtight and ready to sell.

A few days later, Higgerson arranged them on her stand at St. Louis’ popular Tower Grove Farmers’ Market.

But her supply didn’t last long. Before the market officially opened, one shopper showed up to buy the jam. Soon, a steady stream of curious customers were visiting the tent, excited about the jam – even though many had never heard of serviceberries.

Higgerson sold out in just two hours. She and other serviceberry fans hope even more people will get to taste this early summer delicacy soon.

Rolls-Royce opened a new $24 million logistics operations center in Mankato this week.

It’s built adjacent to an existing power generation manufacturing facility, and the expansion allows Rolls-Royce to double production capacity for its mtu Series 4000 generator sets that are used to provide backup power for large-scale infrastructure, including hospitals, airports, industrial sites and data centers.

This investment increased the local workforce by 20 percent, making Rolls-Royce one of the largest manufacturers in Mankato, and created more than a hundred jobs, said Andy Wilke, executive vice president of Greater Mankato Growth.

“I think that there’s a significant ripple effect amongst all the other partners, their suppliers,” Wilke told MPR News. “Their supplies, there’s logistics [and] there’s other businesses that are going to be able to support Rolls-Royce in their mission to continue to grow their generator business.”

Rolls-Royce made its first investment in Mankato with a $14 million investment in 2020, Wilke said. He added that the city is a major hub for generator production with other companies such as BlueStar Power Systems and NIDEC Kato-Engineering.

This expansion builds on more than $1.5 billion by Rolls-Royce in the U.S over the past decade, with 34 locations in 26 states.

“[Rolls-Royce] continue to see an increase in demand for these emergency generators for mission-critical-type uses,” he said. “Among them would be healthcare, manufacturing and other uses … they’re all significant contributors to the economy.”

The expansion to the already-existent facility was first announced in June 2025, when Rolls-Royce said it expected to increase capacity for backup power systems by more than double by the end of this year.

The company’s backup power systems also support more than 25 percent of U.S. data centers, along with other critical infrastructure. Wilke said there continues to be more demand.

“I think that they have found that there continues to be that need to ensure consistent energy or power backup systems for individuals in different industries,” he added.

Generator sets produced in Mankato use mtu Series 4000 engines built at the Rolls-Royce facility in Aiken, S.C.

“As demand for reliable, independent energy accelerates in the U.S., this investment enables Rolls-Royce to keep pace with the market and provide mission-critical backup power generation at a greater scale than ever before,” said Jörg Stratmann, CEO of Rolls-Royce Power in a news release.

“Mankato plays an essential role in both the future of Rolls-Royce and U.S. manufacturing. …This expansion in Mankato builds on our century-long commitment in America, investing locally to drive national economic growth.”

Have you thought about what will happen to your home, your savings or your treasured family keepsakes after you die?

If you’re leaving it to your loved ones to just figure out, you might be leaving them costly and stressful problems.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks about why estate planning isn’t just for the wealthy, and what simple steps you can take now to reduce expenses and family conflict when you’re gone.

Guests:

• Anisha Murphy is an attorney and founder of Just Law LLC, an asset protection law firm that provides individual, families and businesses with legal tools and resources. It includes a focus on estate, life and legacy planning. She is also an adjunct faculty member at Mitchell Hamline School of Law and the University of Minnesota Law School.

• Nneka Constantino is vice president and senior financial advisor at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management with more than 20 years experience. She also created and hosts a weekly personal finance show on 89.9 FM KMOJ radio.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.    

As medical behemoth Mayo Clinic continues to lead the way in incorporating artificial intelligence into clinical settings, a new lawsuit alleges that staff at the world-renowned hospital system had been skirting AI compliance rules and masking concerning error rates.

The civil action comes from former Mayo Clinic research director and AI compliance lead Traci Tamiko Eto, who sued her employer this week in federal court, saying she was retaliated against and fired after she blew the whistle on how the hospital’s rush to incorporate AI into their operations put patient care and privacy at risk.

Artur Davis, Eto’s attorney and a partner with the national law firm HKM Employment Attorneys LLC, told MPR News that this is a significant case, especially since it concerns the intimate and confidential patient data hospitals like Mayo Clinic have in their possession.

“If [people] care about the notion that AI has to be handled in a responsible manner, with integrity, and there have to be rules and guidelines, this is a case that should matter to you,” Davis said.

Davis said Mayo Clinic has 21 days to respond to the legal filing.

Mayo Clinic told MPR News Wednesday it is committed to the responsible development and deployment of AI and that privacy, security, transparency and compliance are embedded in its processes.

“Our research and clinical innovation are conducted in accordance with applicable laws and regulations and we remain steadfast in upholding the trust patients place in us and respecting their privacy,” said Andrea Kalmanovitz, Mayo’s communications director. “Mayo Clinic does not comment on pending or active litigation.”

Incorporating AI into patient care has been one of Mayo Clinic’s top priorities in recent years. The renowned medical provider has been developing and using AI to reach more patients and find new ways to better diagnose, treat, predict and prevent disease. In 2019, the health care system launched Mayo Clinic Platform, an initiative to drive health care innovation through the use of AI and other digital products, and just last month Mayo Clinic announced it is partnering with Microsoft to develop an advanced AI model dedicated to health care.

But the lawsuit claims Eto "uncover[ed] a disturbing set of flaws in Mayo’s AI compass" that prioritized speed over accuracy and put patient care and privacy at risk while manipulating data critical in the institution’s medical research.

What does the lawsuit allege?

According to the lawsuit, Eto joined Mayo Clinic in 2023 as Director of Research Operations — entrusted by the company to quarterback its AI compliance efforts and ensure the technology is being used in an ethical way that’s respectful of patient privacy and safety.

Eto first raised issues to her supervisors about the Mayo Clinic Platform in early 2024, concerned that certain de-identification processes of patient data had not been properly reviewed by Mayo’s internal review process.

Eto alleged in the lawsuit her supervisor did not challenge the substance of her concerns but “insisted that having the de-identification process revisited by [the review board] would jeopardize the pace on ongoing research projects, which in turn would compromise Mayo’s competitive advantage.”

Over the course of the next year, Eto flagged multiple instances in which her supervisors would bypass review processes, including those outlined by federal regulatory standards. For example, in July 2024, Eto alleges that her colleague authorized approval of a high-risk investigational medical device to perform cardiac surgery, even though the procedure had not undergone review by the Institutional Review Board.

A few months later, Eto voiced concerns about MAYA, Mayo’s digital assistant tool. The lawsuit alleges that the MAYA team mischaracterized its outcomes, deleted unfavorable results and used an “unsanctioned” software device that compromised data security. Ten separate whistleblower reports raised similar concerns, including allegations that study investigators were trying to disguise a 67 percent error rate.

“There's a process, there's a set of rules, there is a set of guidelines, and there are a recognized set of exceptions,” Eto’s attorney Davis said. “What she saw was a willingness to use exceptions that didn't apply, a willingness to cut corners and a willingness to not follow the rules out of a desire to get ahead competitively.”

According to the lawsuit, Eto began to be excluded from executive level meetings in early 2025 after she filed a report outlining alleged violations with Mayo’s legal department. Eto claims an AI engineering director warned her that her supervisor had issued “marching orders … to get rid of [her] ASAP.”

Eto said she was told in March 2025 she was a “poor cultural fit” and could either resign as research director with her supervisor’s “blessing” or face the prospect of consequences in her personnel file “that would render her unemployable at Mayo and would impede her career outside the institution.”

Eto stayed on at Mayo anyway, and, according to the lawsuit, she was put on a formal performance plan with Mayo HR department. She claims she was demoted and told she could no longer manage her team of employees. She also said she was kicked off of some of the AI projects she’d been working on. Eto claims in the lawsuit she then experienced a serious depressive episode and applied for medical leave.

Roughly halfway through her leave, in September 2024, Eto was notified that her position had been eliminated.

Eto has asked for the case to be brought to trial and is requesting back pay, front pay, lost benefits, coverage of litigation fees and other forms of compensation.

“When an individual decides that they are willing to file a lawsuit against a public goliath on matters that are hot button issues in our country, she is literally risking her career,” Davis said. “She is risking being attacked professionally. She is risking her reputation, and for her to do that tells you something about her level of confidence that she's right.”

Correction (July 9, 2026): An earlier version of this story misstated when Eto learned her position had been eliminated. The above story is correct.

The value of commercial spaces, like office buildings, are shrinking in the Twin Cities. That became apparent last week, when the city of Richfield shared that Best Buy’s headquarters building dropped nearly 50 percent in value in its most recent assessment.

But how was that office building’s value decided? And how does it affect your tax bill?

Josh Hoogland, assessor for Hennepin County, and Laura Russ, executive director for the Shenehon Center for Real Estate at the University of St. Thomas, joined MPR News guest host Catharine Richert to talk about commercial spaces and the impact their value has on cities.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

Sign up for the Planet Money newsletter. The world is confusing. Economics can help.

The freedom to choose your work hours has been a game changer for many white-collar workers. Now, it has quietly become an option for some blue-collar workers as well.

With U.S. manufacturers struggling to staff up, a handful are opening the doors to people who may not be seeking a traditional career in the industry or even a 40-hour workweek.

It's a change that manufacturers including Stanley Black & Decker and Georgia-Pacific are embracing. And it has also taken hold in rural northwest Georgia.

Ruth Ransom calls it the best thing she has ever heard.

"I wasn't interested in working full time," says the 68-year-old grandmother, who considered herself retired when she learned of the opportunity to pick up shifts at the Roper Corp., a kitchen appliance plant owned by GE Appliances. "I was just wanting to work part time, maybe two days a week somewhere. You know, just to get out of the house."

Today, Ransom is part of a pool of more than 900 workers who sign up for shifts via an app. Not only do workers make their own schedules, deciding how many four-hour shifts to pick up each week, but they also choose what kind of work they want to do. Assembly line jobs are fast-paced and physically demanding, so Ransom often opts for quality control, which she finds less taxing.

"It's your choice," she says. "I love it."

A COVID-era struggle leads to a "crazy" idea

GE Appliances first embraced flexible work out of necessity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company found itself inundated with orders and severely short on workers.

"People were buying appliances in record numbers, because they were staying at home and they were cooking," says Tony Gabbert, the plant's director of manufacturing operations. "It was a great time, great problem to have when you're just selling product so fast that you can't hardly make them quick enough."

The not-great problem was that workers were staying home, even quitting, because of COVID-19. On some days, the plant was hundreds of workers short. Salaried employees, including Gabbert, had to step in to keep the highest-priority lines moving.

Amid the crunch, Gabbert learned of a staffing firm called MyWorkChoice. Its pitch was intriguing. The firm would recruit and vet a pool of workers who could be trained to do different jobs, building ovens and ranges across the plant. The workers, who would remain employees of MyWorkChoice, would use an app to sign up for open shifts, covering for absences and helping out with increased demand.

Gabbert presented the idea to his boss, Bill Good, GE Appliances' vice president of manufacturing. Today, the two of them chuckle, recalling his response.

"I did say this is crazy," says Good, who has worked in manufacturing for almost four decades.

An industry that runs on consistency

The mantra in manufacturing, Good says, is that you need consistency to build a quality product. It's why, for generations, the proposition to workers was simple.

"We would say: Hey, we have a 40-hour job. We will pay you this amount. This is your benefits. You show up every day, and that is a nonnegotiable," says Good.

What was initially proposed felt like the antithesis of that: adding workers who could sign up for as little as two hours of work at a time.

"The two-hour increments scared the heck out of me, because I was envisioning people coming and going at a rate that we could not control," says Good.

So they settled on four-hour shifts. They started out small, in just a couple of areas of the plant, and expanded over time. Today, in any given week, about 450 flexible workers — roughly half the pool — pick up shifts at the plant, with workers putting in an average of 24 hours a week.

Their contributions have been key to GE Appliances' $180 million expansion of the Georgia plant, completed last year, which added 600 new jobs.

Prizing flexibility over money and benefits

Good's hope is that some of the workers who make their way to manufacturing through MyWorkChoice will discover that they want a career in the industry after all.

But many may not.

"I think with the current workforce, the way that it has changed, it's not the way that it was 20 years ago, where you come, you stay at a job and you work those hours," says Darcy Duvall, the plant's director of human resources operations.

She has found that people are comfortable with app-based work. Workers get rated on their reliability. Those with the highest ratings get the first pick of shifts.

"This is like the Uber of manufacturing," Duvall says.

She has also come to see that many workers prize flexibility despite the significant trade-offs — like lower pay and almost no benefits. MyWorkChoice employees can opt into their own group healthcare plan, but few do.

Kwame Crockett is among a sizable share of flexible workers who are putting in full-time hours at the plant. When he first started with MyWorkChoice, he saw it as a way to supplement his other job, managing and remodeling properties in a mobile home park. He'd sign up for shifts at the plant a few days a week.

"At the time, it worked out perfectly," he says.

More recently, he has been working five days a week. Under the agreement between GE Appliances and MyWorkChoice, Crockett could become a full-time employee of the plant and gain access to GE Appliances' full benefits package, which includes paid time off, paid holidays, on-site healthcare and even a 401(k) match.

But Crockett isn't interested — for now, anyway.

"I've thought about it," he says. "But I never know when my other remodeling or anything might kick up. So I might need a vacation or a little time off, you know?"

Keeping experienced workers on the job

The flexible work option has also helped GE Appliances keep longtime employees with decades of experience on the job.

Doris Hamby worked at the plant full time for 35 years. After her husband died, she might have retired. Instead, she went part time. These days, at 62, she works three to four days a week.

"That way I can spend time with the grandkids, and my momma's real sick so I'm having to take care of her too," she says.

After her move to part time, her boss got her back on the same line, so she's doing the same work, although for a couple of dollars less per hour. Being free to set her own schedule makes it worth it, she says.

"I got people asking me, 'When you going to retire? When you going to quit?'" Hamby says.

Last year, she told her co-workers maybe by the end of the year. Now, she's saying maybe by the end of this year.

"I'll probably be here a while," she says.

Copyright 2026, NPR

The Elk River City Council voted Monday night to reject changes to a city ordinance that would have allowed a new data center.

Elk River Capital and Swervo Development Corp. are proposing to convert an existing 60,000-square-foot industrial building to a data center.

The project would be smaller than hyperscale data centers proposed in other Minnesota communities and promises benefits including jobs and property tax revenue. But many Elk River residents have expressed strong opposition.

Elk River has two existing data centers that don't conform to the city's current zoning rules, which don’t allow data centers in any zoning district.

The City Council considered changing its ordinance to allow data centers in industrial zones, with restrictions. Those included limits on size and energy use, and a requirement to use a closed-loop cooling system to reduce water use.

But the council voted against the change after hearing from numerous residents. They voiced concerns about noise, energy use, pollution from backup diesel generators and health effects on neighboring homes and schools.

"This is not an anti-technology conversation. What this is is, ‘We don't know what we don't know,’” said resident David McClellan. “There are other communities that are investigating this for us. There's a lot to learn, but there's no reason for us to rush into this."

The council still needs to vote on whether to approve a conditional-use permit for the data center. Without the ordinance amendment, the project isn’t allowed. The council is expected to deny the permit at its Aug. 3 meeting.

Some council members said they’re not against all data centers but want to look at each proposal on a case-by-case basis. Some said Elk River Capital’s location near housing and schools doesn’t fit with the city’s future plans.

"Good community planning sometimes means saying yes,” council member Jennifer Wagner said. “It also means sometimes saying no, or not yet, or we just don't have it right yet."

Instead, the council asked city staff to draft a one-year moratorium on new data centers for consideration at an upcoming meeting.

Several other Minnesota cities have already adopted temporary bans on data center construction, including Minneapolis, Rosemount, Inver Grove Heights and Carver.

A data center developer is suing the city of Eagan after leaders adopted a one-year moratorium on new or expanded data centers in February.

Dozens of hospice nurses at Allina Health are on strike Monday, as they push for a contract and pay raises.

The group of 65 hospice nurses work in homes and nursing facilities around the Twin Cities metro area. They unionized in the spring of 2025 with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, and have been negotiating toward their first contract for nearly a year.

Nurses say it’s taking too long to reach a contract agreement. They’re also asking Allina to grant them pay raises during the bargaining process.

Susie Smerz — a hospice nurse and a member of the union’s bargaining team — helped lead a picket line outside the Abbott Northwestern Hospital in south Minneapolis. She says she loves her job, but the working conditions are stressful.

“We're not interested in working for free, we're not interested in being exhausted, we're not interested in being the sacrifice,” Smerz said. “It requires us to give so much of ourselves. We deserve to have management value us and try to work with us.”

Unlike nurses who work in Allina’s hospital, she said, hospice nurses don’t get overtime or holiday pay. Smerz says hospice nurses sometimes have to work 18-hour days, with assignments sending them all over the metro area to see patients. For those long days they receive the same salary they would get for working lighter hours.

“I want to do hospice until I need hospice,” Smerz said. “We're just having a harder and harder time being able to do that because we have a work environment that's not conducive to that.”

Smerz said those problems have led to turnover. She’s seen nurses leave Allina’s hospice program for other agencies.

A spokesperson for Allina Health says they're disappointed that the union chose to strike.

“We know the bargaining table is the best place to reach an agreement,” the organization said in a statement.

The spokesperson also said Allina has plans to continue patients’ care Monday during the strike.

Nurses plan to go back to work Tuesday after the one-day strike.

How can we spend less without giving up the stuff we need?

Maybe you're furnishing your first apartment, replacing a broken toaster, looking for clothes for a growing child or trying to put together a professional wardrobe for a new job.

MPR News host Angela Davis wraps up her “Cheap Week” series with ideas for saving money on the clothes we wear and the things that fill our homes.

She and her guests talk about how to stretch your dollar by shopping secondhand at thrift stores, consignment shops and online resale sites, and how to get and give away things for free through neighborhood “Buy Nothing” groups.

Guests:

• Roxanne Sanchez is co-owner of Nine Lives thrift store in St. Paul, which opened in 2024. She’s also an administrator of her neighborhood “Buy Nothing” Facebook group and had a previous career as a costumer for television and movies.

• Anna Thompson is a Minneapolis mom and digital marketing strategist who loves to shop at thrift stores and online resale sites. She runs the sustainable fashion Instagram account @annazzon and previously worked as a personal stylist for Arc’s Value Village thrift stores.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.    

When the war with Iran started, one of the top economic concerns globally was the slowdown of oil shipments. But there was another critical export that got stuck in the region when hostilities began: fertilizer.

Before the war, around one-third of the world's fertilizer transported by sea passed through the Strait of Hormuz, according to UN Trade and Development. The waterway has become a shipping chokepoint in recent months.

With the strait closed, fertilizer shipments from the Persian Gulf slumped and prices rose, affecting countries all around the world that import fertilizer. The war also created a global shortage of natural gas, a key component in nitrogen fertilizer manufacturing.

It caused a massive headache for U.S. farmers who were hit with higher fertilizer prices and limited availability just as they were deciding what to plant for the upcoming growing season.

But the costs borne by farmers don't necessarily get passed on to consumers, and food system experts say they're unlikely to have a major impact on the retail prices of fruit and vegetables.

“Consumers are going to see higher food prices come September to January, once harvests start coming in, and the few months thereafter,” said Chris Barrett, a professor of agricultural economics at Cornell University. “Very little of that is going to be directly attributable to fertilizer.”

That's because food inflation is generally driven by larger factors affecting multiple parts of the food supply chain, such as fewer workers and high fuel costs.

U.S. farmers are rethinking their plans

About one-third of the fertilizer used by U.S. farmers is imported, according to The Fertilizer Institute, an industry trade group. TFI Vice President of Public Affairs Christopher Glen said little of that comes through the Strait of Hormuz.

“But we get impacted in a big way because the fertilizer market is global,” Glen said over email. “Even if those tons from the Mideast aren't coming to the US, they are still tons that have been removed from the market and need to be made up elsewhere. That's where the pressure comes from.”

An American Farm Bureau Federation survey released in April reported that 70 percent of respondents said they couldn't afford all the fertilizer they needed this season.

Some farmers are more vulnerable to price swings than others. Producers of corn and wheat, which rely heavily on fertilizer, can spend around a third of their operating costs on fertilizer alone. Half of the farmers who responded to a survey released by the National Corn Growers Association in early April said they wouldn't apply the full amount of fertilizer to their corn crop this year, due largely to higher costs and limited availability.

Because farmers often secure their fertilizer stores well before a growing season begins, some weren't seriously affected by the price swings created by the war in Iran. (Iran said it closed the Strait of Hormuz shortly after it was attacked by the U.S. and Israel at the end of February. U.S. corn growing season typically begins in April.) But they are worried about the future: corn growers who responded to the survey were twice as concerned about the 2027 corn crop as they were about this year's.

This season, some farmers may opt to plant crops that require less nitrogen fertilizer than corn, such as soy beans, in response to rising costs.

According to USDA data, farmers are expected to plant 95.3 million acres of corn this year, down from 98.8 million acres last year. But the total acreage of soybeans is predicted to rise to 85.4 million acres this year from 81.2 million acres last year.

U.S. grocery prices probably won't take a huge hit

If higher fertilizer costs lead to smaller harvests, that could contribute to modest retail price hikes. A TD Economics analysis estimated that a 2-5 percent production shortfall in North America could grow food inflation by around 0.1-0.5 percentage points in 2027.

But experts say the costs of the fertilizer shortage will be largely shouldered by farmers.

The amount a farmer spends on fertilizer is a small fraction of the total cost to grow food and get it to grocery store shelves. Just 12 cents of every dollar U.S. consumers spend on food goes to farms, while the rest is received by transportation companies, processors, wholesalers and grocery stores, according to the USDA. And the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service reported that U.S. farms spent around 7 percent of their budgets on fertilizer, lime and soil conditioners in 2024 (though farmers growing crops more reliant on fertilizer such as corn would spend more).

Additionally, farmers don't have much bargaining power to negotiate with wholesalers for higher crop prices when their operating costs rise, according to Rob Vos, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. “Those buyers will go to other farmers to try and get it cheaper,” he said.

But there are factors other than the fertilizer crunch that are more likely to cause food prices to jump. Barrett said the global food industry is facing a “really unpleasant layer cake” of pressures, from tariffs and extreme weather to higher prices on labor, fuel and fertilizer.

“No one of those by itself is especially painful,” he said. “But when you add them all up, they become quite painful together.”

In parts of Africa and Asia, the effects of the fertilizer shortage could be far worse. Jorge Moreira da Silva, Executive Director of the UN Office for Project Services, said in April that the reduction of shipments through the Strait of Hormuz may prove “very significant and severe” for poorer countries. Less-developed countries that rely heavily on fertilizer from the Persian Gulf include Sudan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Somalia.

The fertilizer industry is recovering — and may adapt in the process

Some fertilizer prices have begun to fall again in recent weeks, after the U.S. and Iran reached a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz last month.

The Trump administration has also taken steps to lower fertilizer costs for American farmers. This week, Trump temporarily suspended “countervailing duties” on certain phosphate imports, which are added to some imported goods to cancel out subsidies provided by foreign governments.

Still, it will be a while before the fertilizer sector returns to normal. Vos estimated that it could take weeks or months for fertilizer manufacturing plants to come back online and return to previous production levels. If high prices stick around, that could snarl the plans of U.S. farmers preparing to plant cool-season crops this autumn, he added.

Barrett said the trouble with the fertilizer industry has also gotten farmers thinking about how they can protect themselves from these kinds of supply-chain disruptions in the future and looking for other ways to replenish their soil, such as manure, compost and cover crops.

“Just like we're seeing more people interested in electric vehicles because the price of gasoline and diesel has gone up, you see more farmers interested in other ways of replenishing soil nutrients as the price of fertilizer has gone up,” he said.

Copyright 2026, NPR

It can be prohibitively expensive for new farmers to get their start in agriculture. According to the 2022 National Young Farmer Survey, access to land is the biggest barrier young farmers face.

To help, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture launched the Down Payment Assistance Grant in 2023. Starting Monday, July 6, first-time farm buyers will be able to apply for up to $20,000 to go toward the purchase of a new farm.

Minnesota Department of Agriculture Program Manager Jenny Heck said that money can account for about 5 percent of a farm’s purchase price.

“Folks say that it allowed them some breathing room; right after they buy [a farm], they didn't use up all their savings just to make the down payment,” said Heck. “They were able to move forward with other projects to get their farm up and running successfully.”

The grants are awarded through a lottery system, which has enabled farmers across the state to access the funds. Heck said the program has helped 130 farmers make purchases since it began.

Not only can farmers get their start through the program, but once they make their purchases, Heck said many choose to invest in conservation practices they couldn’t use when they rented their land.

“Now that they own property, they're willing to plant perennial crops or invest in soil health, and these things that are so important to farming sustainably and for future generations,” said Heck.

Minnesota farmers are eligible if they or their spouse haven’t bought or owned farmland before. Their past farm sales must be under $250,000 per year, and they must demonstrate knowledge of the type of farming they intend to practice, among other requirements.

Farmers will be prioritized if they earn less than $100,000 annually in gross agricultural sales or produce industrial hemp, cannabis and/or specialty crops recognized by the USDA. Applications close on Aug. 31.

This marks the fifth round of grants awarded by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture through the program. Heck, who checks in with farmers annually for five years after they’ve been awarded a grant, said she hopes the program continues to help more farmers as it grows.

“You often hear that the number of farmers is declining or the average age of the farmer is going up,” said Heck. “But we know that there are people out there who want to get their foot in the door. It's just that they need a little support to make that happen.”

The agricultural economy isn’t the only thing causing headaches for regional farmers.

Grand Farm, a Fargo-based ag nonprofit focused on research and technology, released a report identifying five pain points impacting farmers in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota.

Grand Farm Executive Director William Aderholdt said his team reached out to commodity councils and associations to understand the problems ailing their members. But the report’s goal isn’t just to compile issues troubling farm country.

“With the pain point report, it is more about how do we take a pain point, expose it to the rest of the world, and then help attract companies to come here to help be a part of that solution?” Aderholdt said.

Trouble on the field

The most prevalent problem Grand Farm found was that weeds have become increasingly resistant to herbicides.

“When herbicide formulations came out, they were a great way to tackle a large number of weeds in the field,” said Aderholdt. “Over time, there would be survivors, and those survivors became herbicide-resistant.”

To manage these weeds, farmers have to rely on ever more complex herbicide programs, according to Aderholdt. Those programs are more costly, and it can be tough to keep up with those expenses amid a tough ag economy.

The weather has also restricted herbicide application windows for farmers, as high winds can limit spraying and drought can prevent the herbicide from reaching the plant’s roots.

Variable weather has also led to increased rainfall in some parts of the region, which can lead to flooding. Waterlogged soils can mean farmers have fewer workable field days. It also disrupts soil conditions and nutrient efficiency, which is a problem in and of itself.

The region's landscape is varied. It’s got hills, depressions and uneven terrain overall. These differences can make it difficult to apply fertilizer, as a blanket application could lead to oversupply in some areas and undersupply in others.

“There are ways to continue to improve each year, and that's through a lot of the solutions we're seeing in precision agriculture, remote sensing, using drones and satellites to see what's happening in the field,” said Aderholdt

However, a lot of the technology surrounding these solutions can be complicated and requires skilled labor to operate. That skilled labor tends to be younger, and younger adults may not be too keen to move to rural areas.

“My assumption is that there is the perception that services or amenities aren't as prevalent in these communities,” said Aderholdt. “So there's this feeling of isolation from what you might have become accustomed to or want out of the community you live in.”

Emerging technologies and training can help address some of these issues, such as pest detection, which often relies on manual scouting. Some imaging technologies show research promise for crop disease identification, but high equipment costs are among the obstacles to their adoption.

Aderholdt said it's important that Grand Farm connects with companies that have solutions to the problems highlighted in the report, as it has research fields for testing.

“We have testing environments that match the real-world conditions, so that these companies can try something else out at a low cost and see if it works for our farmers,” said Aderholdt. “You also might not have enough product to apply on a farm because you're a really early-stage startup, and so we work a lot with really small test plots to make sure we can get these things moving.”

The question of whether two locks and dams on the Mississippi River in the heart of the Twin Cities should be removed is getting new attention.

Several groups are exploring the pros and cons of removing the structures and returning the river to a more natural state. Those groups are also studying how it would change everything from safety to recreation.

Centuries ago, the stretch of Mississippi River between Minneapolis and St. Paul was a lot more wild and free-flowing before it became an important navigation route for barge traffic.

But the Upper St. Anthony Falls lock was closed in 2015 to prevent the spread of invasive carp, ending commercial barge traffic in Minneapolis, though it continues downstream at St. Paul.

Two downstream lock and dam structures – at Lower St. Anthony Falls and the Ford Dam, known as Lock and Dam No. 1 – are still operational, but not as vital as they once were.

The stretch of the Mississippi through the Twin Cities is unique, part of the only gorge on the entire river.

Some environmental groups think the locks and dams should be removed to allow the river to flow more freely again. They say it would help restore the ecological health of the river and create new recreational opportunities.

But there are a lot of questions that need to be answered first, according to Colleen O’Connor Toberman, land use and planning director at the nonprofit Friends of the Mississippi River.

"Changing the river in the middle of a major urban area is something that needs careful study and a lot of information before we know what the right decision is,” she said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers owns and maintains Lock and Dam No. 1, built in 1917, and the St. Anthony Falls locks and dams, which were finished in 1963. They were designed to make the river more passable for steamships and barges.

Dams hold back water to create deep navigation pools, while locks act as “water elevators” that raise or lower boats so they can travel between the different water levels.

In 2022, the Army Corps of Engineers launched a study to determine the future of the structures at Lower St. Anthony Falls and the Ford dam.

The so-called disposition study considers whether there is federal interest in continuing to own and operate the locks and dams. Other options could include transferring them to a new owner or removing them altogether.

But Toberman said the Army Corps of Engineer's study is fairly limited. So Friends of the Mississippi River is conducting its own study of the costs and benefits of removing the dams.

“What would a restored river look like?” Toberman asked. “What kind of ecological benefits would we see? What species would benefit? What would it mean for people who come to the river to fish or to paddle or to stand on its shores?”

This year, the Legislature awarded the nonprofit $923,000 for the study from the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, which receives a portion of state lottery proceeds.

Potential benefits

Scientists say removing dams and returning rivers to a more natural state with pools, rapids and islands can provide ecological benefits, such as improving water quality and restoring fish habitat.

Shallower, faster-moving water also can create new opportunities for people to access and enjoy the river, such as whitewater kayaking, tubing or wade-in fishing.

The nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association recently released a report examining how restoring portions of the Mississippi by removing the two locks and dams could expand recreation, strengthen community connections and generate economic benefits.

The report highlights other U.S. communities that removed dams and restored a riverfront. They saw increased tourism, local tax revenue and support for local businesses, according to Christine Goepfert, NPCA’s Midwest policy director.

"What those communities showed is that strategic investment in river restoration yields substantial local returns,” Goepfert said.

For example, two dams on the Chattahoochee River in downtown Columbus, Ga. were removed over a decade ago. A whitewater park for thrill-seeking rafters and kayakers now attracts roughly 50,000 visitors a year.

The report says removing the locks and dams could reshape how people experience the Mississippi in the Twin Cities, with places to explore, hike, fish and bird watch. It also could offer an opportunity to reconnect with sacred Dakota places along the river.

Federal land around the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam is being restored by a Dakota-led nonprofit, Owámniyomni Okhódayapi. The organization plans to turn the site into a place of healing, restoration and connection.

Down river, the Wakaŋ Tipi Center, a 27-acre Native-led cultural and environmental interpretive center, recently opened on the Mississippi River in St. Paul.

The two projects are “book-ending” the Mississippi River gorge, Toberman said.

“Deciding what we do to the locks and dams in the middle is a really exciting next piece of that story,” she said.

Weighing the costs

But there are potential downsides. Some recreational activities depend on calmer, deeper waters.

For instance, the University of Minnesota rowing team and several clubs use the stretch for practice. That would no longer be possible if the Twin Cities dams are removed.

Friends of the Mississippi's study will look at how a changed river might affect bridges and other infrastructure, Toberman said. It also will examine what would happen to all the sediment that's built up behind the dams.

"Is that sediment contaminated?” she asked. “What would happen to it if we removed a dam? Would it move downstream? Would we use it to build new shorelines and islands? Is it a concern?"

In a separate study, the University of Minnesota’s St. Anthony Falls Laboratory is building a physical model of Lock and Dam No. 1 to study how removing the structure could change the river.

Toberman said the Friends of the Mississippi River study should be completed by mid 2028. The Army Corps of Engineers is expected to release its draft report for public comment in the spring of 2027.

A final decision on whether to remove the locks and dams is up to Congress.. And Toberman says removing the dams could take 10-20 years.

“It's OK that a decision this big is going to take a while to make together as a community,” she said.

Universities, hospitals, larger nonprofits and religious establishments in St. Paul are tax-exempt but they should still kick in money to “pay their fair share” as the city struggles with a looming $26 million budget gap, City Council President Rebecca Noecker told MPR News.

A “payment in lieu of taxes program” is “something we've talked about for a long time,” she told Morning Edition host Cathy Wurzer. “I think this year we need to look at it with particular urgency.”

Noecker said the city is taking concerns about affordability seriously and she’s in line with the Mayor Kaohly Her’s directive to focus on the basics.

“We need to take care of the things that no one else can do first, so that's public safety, that's street maintenance, that's filling those potholes, that's trimming our trees, that's our parks and libraries,” Noecker said.

Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player button above.

A large resort along the North Shore of Lake Superior previously owned by Bryce Campbell, the Lutsen Resort owner charged with arson in the blaze that destroyed the historic lodge two years ago, has been sold to a group of Minnesota investors.

Landmarq Capital, an investment and asset management firm specializing in destination resorts, announced its acquisition of Superior Shores Resort, located just north of Two Harbors, on Tuesday.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. When Campbell’s North Shore Resort Company purchased the resort in 2020, it sold for nearly $15 million.

The resort will be operated by Leisure Hotels and Resorts, based in the Brainerd Lakes area.

The firm manages hotels and resorts in eight states, including Cragun’s Resort on Gull Lake in Brainerd, which was sold last year by its longtime family owners.

Leisure also runs several other properties in Minnesota, including Pier B Resort Hotel in Duluth, and Cove Point Resort on Lake Superior in Beaver Bay on the North Shore. Superior Shores “is literally halfway between the two of them,” said Jamie Tatge, president and chief executive officer of Leisure Hotels and Resorts. Tatge is also part of the investment group that purchased the resort.

Built in the 1980s, Superior Shores is one of the larger resorts along the North Shore. It includes 106 hotel rooms in the lodge, a restaurant overlooking the lake, a recently remodeled meeting and events center, lake homes and condominiums in an area of the resort known as Burlington Bay.

"Superior Shores is an iconic North Shore property with an exceptional location and significant long-term potential," Tatge said. He believes the property can benefit from an infusion of capital. “Some of these resorts that maybe have gotten a little bit tired, maybe need a little extra love,” those are the properties his company seeks out to reposition for the next several decades, he said.

Landmarq Capital purchased the resort from Blue Waters Development, owned by Joe Re. Re sold the resort to Bryce Campbell in 2020 after owning it for decades. But Campell lost control of the resort in 2024 — about six months after the Lutsen Resort was destroyed — after failing to make $13 million in payments required under a contract for deed.

A judge returned the resort to Blue Waters and placed it under the management of Iowa-based Kinseth Hospitality Group as a “temporary limited receiver.”

But Blue Waters didn't want it back, Tatge said, “and we acquired it from Blue Waters Development.”

Campbell has since been charged with three counts of arson and one count of insurance fraud for his alleged role in the Lutsen Resort Lodge fire. Campbell has asked a judge to dismiss the case, arguing prosecutors don’t have sufficient evidence to support the charges.

“Bryce [Campbell] had nothing to do with our acquisitions. It wasn't a reason to buy or not to buy the asset. We like the area, it became available… and we put the project together.”

Does it feel like every trip to the grocery store costs more than it used to? You're not alone. With food prices still high, many households are looking for ways to stretch their grocery budgets.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks with two experts about smart shopping, cutting food waste and preparing healthy, affordable meals.

Guests:

• Mary Schroeder is a health and nutrition educator with the University of Minnesota Extension and a registered dietitian nutritionist. She specializes in helping individuals and families make healthy, affordable food choices through meal planning, food budgeting and food waste reduction. She is based in Willmar, Minnesota.

• Jenny Breen is a chef, public health nutritionist and author of “Cooking Up the Good Life.” She teaches culinary nutrition courses through the Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing at the University of Minnesota.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.    

Officials in Richfield expect a drop in the city's tax base — and potential property tax hikes — after the Best Buy corporate campus property value was cut in half.

The city said in an announcement the value of the company’s Penn Avenue headquarters will drop from $63 million this year to about $32 million in 2027. According to the announcement, Best Buy requested the cut, and the Hennepin County Assessor granted it.

Officials said that will lead to a 5 percent drop in the city’s commercial tax base. That could mean increased taxes for other property owners in the city.

“While this is disappointing news, we know that the commercial real estate market has been struggling,” City Manager Katie Rodriguez said in the announcement. “Recovery since COVID has been slow and large employers across the country have been working to adapt. We also know markets are cyclical and that it will evolve over time.”

Commercial and office property values in the area have been declining for several years. Hennepin County reported a 1.8 percent decrease from 2025 in its 2026 assessment report.

The county determines properties’ values based on comparisons to similar properties and the estimated value of the land and buildings.

Richfield’s city council is scheduled to set a preliminary budget and tax levy in September, with final approval in December.

Whether you're planning a weekend road trip or hoping to book a flight, travel costs can add up quickly. But there are ways to spend less without giving up the experiences that make a trip memorable.

MPR News host Angela Davis and her guests talk about searching for airfare deals, ideas for destinations closer to home and finding more value when you travel.

Guests:

• Kyle Potter is the editor of the travel website Thrifty Traveler.

• Sara Joy Berhow is the public relations supervisor for the Parks and Trails Division of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.    

American officials have decided not to renew a key trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, which expired on July 1. Farmers have been bracing for possible changes.

“It's so much out of my control,” said Craig LaPlante, a farmer from Fisher in Northwest Minnesota. “I'm a bystander to what the politicians decide to do. That's the hard part of it.”

The agreement, known as USMCA, allows for tariff-free trade among the three nations on qualifying goods that meet its rules of origin. However, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer recently announced that the U.S. did not agree to renew the pact.

“The United States will continue to engage with Mexico and Canada to address the Agreement’s shortcomings and our trade deficits with these countries,” Greer said in a statement.

The three nations will conduct annual reviews of the agreement to determine what to change and whether to renew it. If the three nations don't reach an understanding over the next ten years, the agreement will expire in 2036.

The developments have added more uncertainty for farmers already contending with a tough ag economy.

LaPlante, who grows a variety of crops, such as soybeans, wheat and winter camelina, said he’s diversified his revenue streams and implemented conservation practices, in part, to cut costs. But that can only go so far given the low prices his crops fetch on the global market.

“We know that everything's going to be a down year,” said LaPlante. “But hopefully we can contain those costs as best as we can.”

Now, with the future of the major trade agreement up in the air, farmers such as LaPlante wonder what could happen to their markets.

An uncertain future

Minnesota has built sturdy relationships with Canada and Mexico over the years. The two nations are among Minnesota’s largest trading partners. The state’s Department of Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen said the trade deal between them helps strengthen those relationships.

“I would argue that it's worked well,” said Petersen. “If the United States backs away, that puts a strain on the relationship. That is not helpful. When you don't have a relationship, maybe with the country, then it's every state for itself.”

Close to 160 agricultural and food organizations from the U.S., Canada and Mexico have called for a renewal of the trade agreement.

Petersen said he’s concerned about potential tariffs that could be imposed should the U.S. back out of the agreement. That could raise operating costs for farmers as some necessities are imported from abroad. Potash, for example, is a vital fertilizer for soybeans, which the U.S. mainly sources from Canada.

On top of that, tariffs could also limit farmers’ markets. John Anderson, a pork producer who operates near Belgrade in central Minnesota, said the agreement has helped him sell some of his gilts to neighboring countries. He also says it’s boosted pork exports to those nations statewide. Minnesota is the second-largest pork-producing state in the nation.

And he said that having free trade with Canada and Mexico has meant he’s never had to worry about his product being subject to tariffs with those countries.

“I personally have never lost any sleep over tariffs,” Anderson said. “I lose sleep on a lot of things, but that's not one of them.”

Leaving the trade agreement could also raise food costs for the average consumer, according to University of Minnesota Grain Market Economist Edward Usset. He said that’s partly because some goods are more cost-efficient to get from other countries, such as tomatoes from Mexico.

To make the point, Usset offered an analogy.

“I could cut my own hair, but it's going to look bad,” said Usset. “I'm better off going to someone who knows how to cut my hair and spend my time doing productive things on my end, and trading for that. Trade is a good thing.”

A Purdue-led study funded by the Corn Refiners Association found that tariff reductions under the current trade agreement and its predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement, have reduced consumer costs.

The question of whether the trade agreement will be extended is the latest source of trade uncertainty farmers have had to contend with.

It’s one reason LaPlante is glad he’s been phasing his farm out of mass markets and into niche ones.

LaPlante’s farm, which is home to turkeys and geese, will soon include sheep, goats, and cows. He’s also growing apples to sell locally.

He hopes eventually he won’t have to worry about global markets at all.

“If I'm raising grass-fed beef, I'm taking it to a local butcher facility, and that's being sold from farm to the table, and that way I'm protecting myself,” said LaPlante. “[I’m] trying to establish local businesses, local economies to feed local people.”

Nestled among the pine trees along a stretch of Big Lake Road sits a tiny blue building. If the signs are out on the roadside, the coffee kiosk is open for business.

Jackson Ripley and his family opened the shop MiigWitches Brew in 2024, fulfilling a dream that began years earlier when the COVID-19 pandemic was in full effect. His spouse, Lyz Jaakola, found the kiosk for sale online in 2020, fully equipped as a coffee shop.

“ We had been doing nothing but drinking coffee, being at home, and I'd slowly start getting into more, different variations of coffee with using a mocha pot, thinking about espresso,” Ripley said. “And so I said, ‘Yeah, let's try it.’”

Ripley, 55, wanted to bring quality coffee to his community on the Fond du Lac Reservation in northeastern Minnesota. He and his family’s business have found success while prioritizing community over profits.

“That was kind of like our business mindset is that we would just serve the community and hopefully we’d make a little bit of money.”

‘Close to family, to friends, to culture’

As vehicles make their way down the drive, Ripley often recognizes the car or work truck and is already making the drink by the time the customer pulls up to the window.

Before the kiosk opened, customers living and working in the reservation community would need to press on a few more miles to the neighboring city of Cloquet.

The flagship coffee shop sits on Ripley’s family property on the reservation, about a mile from the tribal community center. His spouse is a tribal citizen of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Ripley is from the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation in North Dakota.

They’ve raised their family at Fond du Lac. Ripley’s in-laws, who are elders, live with them. His kids work with him at the shop and he can pop out from time to time to address his in-laws' needs.

“I feel like it's important for Native people to give back, or to be there for their families,” he said.

Proximity to family was a motivator in choosing a location for the business. And that’s not rare.

In a survey of 400 Native entrepreneurs, respondents said some of the perceived advantages to opening on tribal lands were financial benefits, familiarity with the location and being “close to family, to friends, to culture,” said Casey Lozar, director of the Center for Indian Country Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

‘The heart is always in it’

Miigwech means “thank you” in the Ojibwe language. Ripley credits Jaakola, 57, with the shop's clever name. Combining coffee, language and magic, the name became MiigWitches Brew. The logo is a cauldron with Ojibwe florals.

MiigWitches Brew is expanding. A year and a half after opening the kiosk, the family added another location 10 miles away at the Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College.

Jezlyn Abramowski expertly chats with customers while crafting coffee orders in a space that once served concessions during sporting events.

Abramowski, a Fond du Lac Band member, works as a barista while taking a leave of absence from her university studies. She said she needed time to address her mental health and that MiigWitches Brew is the right place for that.

“I feel like the heart is always in it, and you’re always serving your community, your people,” Abramowski said. “Especially up here on the rez, I feel like it's become a really essential part of our community to have MiigWitches Brew.”

Abramowski finds comfort in working at a business that supports her values and makes space for cultural ceremonies and events.

“Working for an Ojibwe business has been extremely healing for me as an Anishinaabekwe living in the world that we're living in right now.”

Perks that matter

The circle of support also extends to other local small businesses. Ripley sources his coffee beans from a roaster on the North Shore, and he gets his treat supply from a nearby Indigenous baker. For MiigWitches Brew’s signature drink, the maple latte, he gets maple syrup from a local Native farm.

“What we see from our Native entrepreneurs is, really, we prioritize supporting each other over making an outrageous profit,” said Andrea Reese, CEO of the Mni Sota Fund. The Mni Sota Fund is a Native community development financial institution that supports entrepreneurs through business loans and workshops.

“We’re just really rooted in values and culture, so that support of and for our community is really prioritized over anything else.”

Amid the sounds of steaming milk, vehicles pulling up to the kiosk window, and laughter with customers, Ripley has found a rhythm. There are hints that there may be even more opportunities to enjoy MiigWitches Brew in the near future via a mobile coffee shop.

He says he may not be the main breadwinner in his family, but he gets to bring good coffee to his community and he’s present for their kids. And for Ripley, those are the perks that matter.

This story comes from the Upper Midwest Newsroom, a public media collaboration between Wisconsin Public Radio, South Dakota Public Broadcasting, Prairie Public in North Dakota, and Minnesota Public Radio News made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Inflation has been too high for too long.

That was the central message of Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari’s statements at a Friday panel discussion at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Joined on stage by two CEOs and an economics professor, Kashkari fielded a wide-ranging set of questions about affordability and confidence in the economy.

Here are three main takeaways.

1) Kashkari expects a rate hike this year

Kashkari is currently serving a term on the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets the Fed’s benchmark interest rate.

In its most recent decision, it voted 12-0 to keep the rate steady. At the same time, it released a “dot plot” where Fed officials anonymously signal where they think the interest rate should head in the future.

Kashkari revealed Friday that he expects a hike before the end of the year, changing his mind from March’s dot plot, where he penciled in a rate cut. He said he’s informed by high inflation and uncertainty about the Iran War.

“I don't trust Iran to honor whatever agreement has been made,” he said. “There's some evidence overnight that they're already reneging on it, so I certainly am not seeing ‘all-clear’ coming out of the Middle East, and that makes me cautious about feeling too good that the worst is behind.”

Inflation has been above the Fed’s target rate of 2 percent for more than five years. The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure rose to 4.1 percent in May, the highest it’s been in three years.

2) Data center and AI investments are fueling inflation, interest rates

The expansion of data centers is also causing upward pressure on prices and interest rates, Kashkari said.

“If we as a country are going to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in this new sector called data centers and AI, that capital comes from somewhere,” he said.

Kashkari echoed a statement he made at a St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce event last month. The ongoing data center boom, which has been financed by companies borrowing heavily, raises the demand for capital. That raises interest rates and pulls capital away from less profitable projects, like, for instance, building housing.

That’s why, Kashkari said, bringing down mortgage rates isn’t as simple as the Fed cutting its benchmark interest rate. There are other factors at play, such as data centers.

“There's a higher return for the economy for that capital to build data centers than to build an apartment building,” he said. “So data centers (are) a big deal. It's having a near-term inflationary impact. It's probably pushing up interest rates across the economy now and for the next several years”

Kashkari said overall, he’s excited about artificial intelligence and that he’s not as worried about its impact on jobs as others are.

“I'm confident that there's going to be important roles for labor going forward, even in the AI dream world that allegedly we're all going to go towards, but that dream world is going to take a lot longer to get there than the forecasters are telling us,” he said.

3) Wages aren’t keeping up

Wages have not been keeping up with inflation recently. Kashkari described the labor market as “treading water.”

“It definitely is not a hot labor market like it was a few years ago, where businesses are desperate to keep the workers that they have, let alone to hire more workers,” he said. “It has definitely cooled off.”

But that might not be the case for long, he said.

“Workers ultimately are going to demand that they be able to make their basic ends meet, that their needs be met, and so one of the challenges is even if these supply dynamics fade, I would expect wages to continue then climbing to enable workers to slowly catch up,” he said.

That increase in wages, in turn, might cause inflation to fall less quickly than it otherwise would, he said.

“A very complicated set of dynamics (is) going on right now,” he said.