By William Morris, Owatonna People’s Press

The weeklong legislative recess is a rare chance to catch up with local senators and representatives during session, and the Minnesota Corn Growers Association is among the groups urging citizens to make the most of it.

Executive Director Adam Birr said the organization, which represents almost 7,000 members, has a number of key issues it hopes to see addressed, including property tax relief, transportation spending and continuing refinement of the waterway buffer bill passed in 2015. And while the group is encouraged by many of the provisions passed in various omnibus deals to date, they want to make sure legislators know not to leave those sections on the conference committee cutting floor.

“We’re really trying to encourage our members. With the rains this week, they’ll probably be delayed getting into the field, so it’s a good opportunity to meet with their members (of the Legislature),” Birr said.

Farmer Jerry Demmer of Clarks Grove, who sits on the organization’s government relations committee and is a director of the Minnesota Corn Research and Promotion Council, said the most urgent concern he hears about for this session is the buffer law, which mandated that farmers put 50-foot vegetated strips along many streams and ditches in an effort to improve water quality.

“The buffer law, we would like to see the government push it out one year or give us more time to get the dynamics of it all settled in,” he said. “There’s still confusion out here in rural Minnesota, and then to clarify the 50-foot buffers that are needed on public waters and not on private ditches.”

Birr noted that the first compliance deadline in the original law is Nov. 1, but said many farmers are still unclear on what waterways on their land fall under different levels of classification, or whether there is compensation available for the loss of productive land.

“The DNR did address a lot of those issues, but folks are just now having a chance to look at those maps and see what is required … and there’s a provision in the law that allows for alternative practices that can be as good or better than buffers, and those practices are just starting to come out now from the state agencies,” he said.

On tax reform, budget proposals from the House, governor and Senate all include relief for farmers who have been hard-hit by school bond referenda, although it’s not yet clear how much the final tax bill will include.

“The differences in each budget proposal concerning the overall tax level are concerning,” Demmer said. “Both the House and Senate are going to have to have a compromise before the final tax bill can become law. It looks like we’ve got some tax relief coming, (but) we just need to keep explaining to our legislators that farm property tax relief is needed.”

And like numerous other advocacy groups, corn growers are pressing legislators on the perennial issue of passing a transportation funding bill.

“We’re not real hung up on how the transportation bill gets funded, we just want to make sure it gets funded,” Birr said, stressing the importance of rural roads and bridges. “We absolutely need that infrastructure maintained.”

The Legislature will return to St. Paul next week to kick off the final stretch of the legislative session, which is scheduled to end May 22.