A pair of young Swedish farmers, who are also business partners, have spent the past week getting a taste of life in rural Minnesota.  Their two-day visit to the western part of the state featured farm visits, a trip to the test plots at the USDA North Central Soil Conservation Research Lab and a tour of the biomass gasifier research project at the University of Minnesota-Morris.

Erik Sundell and Per Hallnevik, both 26 years old, each farm about 240 acres planted to wheat and other small grains, in rural Sweden. Though these are lands owned by their families, farming on that scale doesn’t provide a living, and the two men are also business entrepreneurs—one owns an excavating company, the other a timber harvesting business and together they own a tile drainage business.

“These guys would love to make farming their sole pursuit, but when a 2400-acre farm came up for sale in their area, the asking price was $10 million—so making a living from farming alone is out of reach for most farmers there,” said Riley Maanum, the research & project manager for Minnesota Corn Growers Association, and one of the hosts of the tour. He brought Erik and Per to his family’s farm near Morris, Minnesota.

The two had hoped to see the soybean harvest but snow the night before kept the Maanums out of the fields. However, the Swedes were very interested to see the whole range of equipment at the farm run by Riley’s parents, Pat and Mona.

They saw planters, seed drills, sprayers, banders, combine and storage and transportation equipment on the Maanum farm.

“The scale of farming equipment here is fascinating to them,” said Riley Maanum.

After seeing all the equipment needed to take the crop from planting to harvest, the two young farmers sat down for a midday meal with Riley’s parents, his younger brother, Austin, Riley’s grandparents Toby and Dorothy Maanum and Janet and Butch Anderson. They were joined also by Kara Slaughter, the other guide for the tour.

Erik and his grandfather Hans, also a Rotarian, were among the hosts of a Rotary Group Study exchange program that brought Minnesotans out to Sweden for a five-week stay. One of those visitors, Slaughter, reciprocated by arranging this tour for Erik and Per, and coming along with Maanum as a guide for the day. Slaughter serves on the board of a non-profit organization called Renewing the Countryside, which focuses on efforts to revitalize rural Minnesota through sustainable farming, rural tourism, and economic development.

In addition to seeing the USDA soils lab and the U of M Morris biomass gasifier project, where corn cobs and other ag waste is turned into steam energy, the two Swedish farmers enjoyed the drive through the Minnesota countryside. Their climate at home is quite similar to Minnesota, in terms of temperature and seasons. One difference though is that they receive about 50 inches of rain per year, roughly twice what falls in southern and western Minnesota. Also, the terrain in Sweden is a lot more hilly and wooded.

“They said that, out of all the people in the world, in their experience they relate to Minnesotans best,” Maanum reported. “They see us as being easy going people who also value hard work and family.

After experiencing the wide prairie vistas where you can see ten miles or more, Erik said of western Minnesota, ‘I love it, absolutely love it—the only place where I have seen the heaven meet earth is at the ocean. But here, the crops touch heaven. It is very beautiful.”

source: MN Corn Grower’s Association