ND Has Resources Available for Animal Agriculture

In the last North Dakota legislative session, lawmakers took action to grow animal agriculture in the state. Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring said stringent environmental standards are in place, including the setback requirements. A task force is considering changes to the setback distances that would be “less restrictive than they are now, but still more restrictive than what is seen in South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota.” Goehring said resources are in place to assist animal agriculture operations, including the proposed dairy farms in eastern North Dakota. “Farmers are just bursting at the seams waiting for animal agriculture to show up in their community,” said Goehring. “They just want another market and quite frankly quite a few of them have said they’d love the manure. It’s a nice natural fertilizer that has a lot of bioactivity and a lot of micronutrients for raising a crop so there’s a lot of interest.”