Farming, Mining and Energy Development: The Lessons Learned from Common Beginnings
Our friend Jason Spiess, the publisher of The Crude Life and ESG University put up a wonderful op-ed post regarding farming and mining that deserves to be shared widely, because it is equally applicable to coal mining, uranium mining, and oil and gas development. It is authored by Julie C. Lucas, the Executive Director of MiningMinnesota, which is based in the City of Virginia, Minnesota. It’s about a nickel mining project in the North Star State, nickel being necessary for jet engines, stainless steel, batteries and electrical turbine power generation facilities.
As a farm boy myself, Julie’s post immediately resonated with me and so I share it below:
Why does it seem we are comfortable demanding a supply when we are uncomfortable supplying the materials to meet the demand?
When I was 12, my father purchased the Kettle River Locker Plant. Tucked away on County Road 12, a stone’s throw from the wild and scenic river the town was named after, the locker plant served for decades as the meat-processing and freezer storage facility for local beef and hog farmers. While I would have preferred to spend my Saturdays playing sports or reading, I learned how sausage was made. Actual sausage, as well as bacon, burgers, pork chops, and more.
I was able to meet and pet the animals coming in, and I was able to wrap up the meat in stiff butcher paper going out. Growing up surrounded by family farms, including our own, I learned early on that eating a bacon cheeseburger required showing respect for the sacrifice of the creatures, as well as the dairy cow that provided the melty cheese.
I was forced to look my dinners in the eye from the moment I first bottle-fed a calf or chased a piglet around the barn to the moment we loaded the animals onto a trailer to make the short drive to the locker plant. We were taught that our choices have consequences, that sustaining our lives sometimes meant taking the lives of animals, and we had to accept responsibility for that and demonstrate compassion and gratitude for those resources.
Or we had to choose not to eat meat.
But, this isn’t a story about meat; it’s a story about minerals.
As the crow flies, Kettle River is only 17 miles southeast of the even smaller town of Tamarack, where critical conversations about ethically sourcing tomorrow’s clean energy are being driven by the mineral resources underlying the region. Just as my father had an opportunity to ensure local farmers had a safe, healthy, respectful facility for meat production, the folks working for the Talon project in Tamarack have an opportunity to ensure that the first step in clean energy production is done in a way that reflects our local, Minnesota values.
While we all have the option of giving up meat or animal products if we are uncomfortable with the sourcing, we do not have the option of living in a world without minerals and mining. Even living off the grid requires mining the Earth’s resources for the necessary tools to build and maintain life. Saying “no mining here” while continuing to consume electricity, heat our homes, and live our 21st-century lives should make us all uncomfortable. We need to look our consumerism in the eye and demonstrate understanding and gratitude for the miners and resources that sustain us.
We need to have curious conversations about how our Earth’s mineral resources have been created in the regions where they have been created. We need to ask questions about how mining and processing would occur and what protections would be put in place to ensure there is a net benefit to the people and the planet. We need to learn how the “sausage is made,” because it isn’t the destructive process as so often portrayed, and it is a necessary one to power our future.
Like my father hoping to do his part with responsibly sourced meat, today’s miners are hoping to contribute our energy, passion, education, and diverse skills toward a more-sustainable mining industry that leaves a legacy of strengthened communities, infinitely recycled metals, and a healthy environment.
The Talon project deserves these conversations.
#Nickel #Minnesota #Energy #Talon #Farming #Tamarack
Worthwhile writing begging to protect the only way to live rationally - don't ignore the stuff you don't like. I see the easy dismissal of rural America as ad hominem attack on folks who aren't one dimensional stick figures, but fully formed people doing their best and sometimes not best like everyone else. But they always always carry the brunt of responsibility for providing food, power, materials and often finished goods for middle and upper class suburbanites and urbanites who point at them and hiss. Racists! Climate deniers! Xenophobes! Christians (?), Patriarchy! Ugh.
I visited a Trona mine in Wyoming about ten years ago. While walking through the parking lot I saw dozens of bumper stickers that were seven words all very descriptive and true(A National Mining Association phrase): “IF IT ISN’T GROWN, IT IS MINED”