A former Norwegian city girl stands up for rural North Dakota

In this episode, host Emmery Mehlhoff visits with Senator Janne Myrdal, who farms with her husband and children in Edinburg, North Dakota. She did not always call Pembina County her home, however. Senator Myrdal is originally from Norway and moved to North Dakota after she married a farm boy she met on a mission trip. Since then, North Dakota has been her home. 

Senator Janne Myrdal talks about her long-time potato storage taxation fight, her work for equitable ag land assessment across counties, the start of the rural caucus, the importance of political integrity, and how Lutefisk is not truly Norwegian but is an American-Norwegian concoction. 

Legislation addressed in this episode:

SB 2367 - Assessment of Agricultural Property https://ndlegis.gov/assembly/69-2025/regular/bill-overview/bo2367.html

SB 2039 - “Potato Warehouse Bill” Definition of agricultural property and the farm structure and improvements property tax exemption

https://ndlegis.gov/assembly/69-2025/regular/bill-index/bi2039.html?bill_year=2025&bill_number=2039

HB 1176 - Property Tax Reform 

https://ndlegis.gov/assembly/69-2025/regular/bill-overview/bo1176.html?bill_year=2025&bill_number=1176

Subscribe to our Legislative Front by visiting https://ndfb.org/news/signup/

Contact Janne Myrdal https://ndlegis.gov/biography/janne-myrdal

Contact us at emmery@ndfb.org

Transcript

[Straight Talk theme]

[00:12] Emmery: Welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB. This is your host, Emmery Mehlhoff. In today's episode, we visit with Senator Yanne Myrdal from Edinburg, North Dakota. Senator Myrdal farms with her husband and children in Pembina County. She originally hails, however, from Norway. And Senator Myrdal was quick to tell me that Lutefisk is not a Norwegian dish, but is instead an American concoction. Yanne is a longtime champion of tax reform and equitable taxation for North Dakota communities and farms. She cares deeply about the strength of rural communities, and she visits with me about the work that she's doing to make sure the rural voice is heard in Bismarck. We talk about her victory for potato warehouses, equitable taxation, and the importance of healthy rural communities. Join us for this episode.

[Straight Talk stinger]

[1:05] Emmery: Welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB. I have Senator Yanne Myrdal on with me today. She is enjoying the beautiful sunshine in Bismarck. And the sun is out and is shining, and we are thinking about farming today. So thank you, Senator Myrdal, for joining me.

[01:20] Sen. Myrdal: Well, thank you for having me. It's an honor. And you're talking about sunshine. I feel like I'm in a different world. 'Cause at home we still have snowbanks on the farm, you know, so. So much for diversity in North Dakota, right?

[01:33] Emmery: Yeah, exactly. Senator Myrdal hails from the northeast part of the state, but originally she is from Norway. Senator, can you tell us a little bit about where you came from and how you wound up marrying a crop farmer here in North Dakot?

[01:50] Sen. Myrdal: Oh, my gosh. How much time do you have? No, I was born and raised in Norway in a small, small town that has a lot of World War II history. Moved to the cities when I was five. Cities, meaning in southern part of Norway for industrial work by the ocean. So just as a side note, I never saw Lutefisk until I came to North Dakota. Just FYI, don't want to offend anybody, but we fished fresh codfish out of the ocean every day when I grew up, so we didn't have to destroy it by making it Lutefisk. And I've offended half your listeners, but came over to the U.S. in, gosh, it's a long time ago now, 1983. That tells you how old I am to work with YWAM, or Youth With A Mission, which is the National Christian Relief and Mission Organization. So I worked out of Central America, in and out of Central America with refugees. Ended up working a lot in the U.S. And Canada and overseas and inner city work, meaning --  I horrify my kids when I say this -- but I worked on the red light district and that's what I use when I need to wake up an audience, you know, when I'm speaking. So anyway, meaning I worked against sex trafficking, trying to get prostitutes off the street, trying to help those young girls. Sadly, now young men as well, and drug addicts and got into the pro- life work as well while I was living and working out of Texas and not going to bore you with the whole story, but it was a God thing. Somebody set me up with this big, tall, handsome farmer from North Dakota and the rest is history.

[03:21] Emmery: Tell us a little bit about your farm, what you raise and some of those details.

[03:26] Sen. Myrdal: Well, first of all, the family is long term Farm Bureau members and involved in Farm Bureau activities. I think my son and maybe both of them, at least one of them is in Pembina County on the board there. So we live in Pembina County. So we're kind of in that dark, dark blue, frosty cold corner of the, of the, of America where it's always cold, it seems like in the winter. We farm, it's a generational farm. So right now it's just my husband and I, but our two sons, adult sons, have just joined us on the farm. So we farm small grains, beans, sunflowers, corn, soybeans. Just in the last 10-15 years we've been able to do corn and soybeans because of the good varieties that have been brought, brought in. So we can do shorter season because it's funny to say, but you live in the south of Fargo or you live in the Southwest, it's totally different climate than there is in Northeast. So I'm about 30 miles from Canada, 30 miles from Minnesota. So I'm holding the fort there, not letting any other liberals into our state, you know. (laughter)

[04:23] Emmery: Well, you've been a voice for many issues. There's lots of social issues that have been important to you. And one area where you really specialize is in agriculture, being on a farm. I just want to talk particularly about some of your legislation this session relating to agriculture. And property tax has been a big thing in particular for you this session. I mean, honestly, honestly, Senator Myrdal, since, since you got elected, you've been trying to work things out for, you know, the potato warehouse folks up in your area. Why don't, why don't you just tell us a little bit about that battle and share with our listeners the victory that we have had in that this session.

[05:04] Sen. Myrdal: Yeah, yeah. It's been a long to shorten the story a little bit in one of our counties, actually a couple of counties across the eastern part. One county isn't mine, but that I am honored to represent. There was just a horrific taxation of a potato warehouse. And it went from something like, and I don't have the papers in front of me, something like $800 of property tax a year to $36,000 a year because they classified it differently on platted and they classified it commercial. And so I went to bat over that. I'm not a potato farmer so it's not self serving in any way. But I think since I started here, my passion has been a little bit not rural versus urban, but to protect rural values and rural infrastructure and rural business, right. Which is, which is agriculture mostly in our region, but it's also energy, gas and oil out in the west. They're also rural, rurally produced, right. So my, my favorite saying is everything we produce in North Dakota when it comes to agriculture and energy, to feed the world or to bring energy to our other states, starts on a gravel road, a township road. And I think that's important for this legislature, and I've repeated that for the last five sessions now. 

So this potato warehouse, all I said is taxation needs to be equal. And if it's part of quote unquote, raising a crop, meaning when I came to the farm, I just thought, oh, the tractor, they put the seed in and we wait 'til fall and we harvest it. Right? That's it. I was a city girl. Well, I learned that there's about 500 other things to do with that field in between. So I think the term raising a crop in Century Code needed to be clarified, which means, you know, from your work, the field to you, to your seed application on it, everything in between until it goes to the end user, right? Until it becomes commercial, meaning until I deposited and it's sold to an end line user. And so with potatoes, when they store potatoes, they're not improving the crop, it's not commercialized. And this particular facility, they weren't bagged up and sold on the street in the local grocery store. This is just the storage of a commodity. And so it took us five sessions or four sessions, I think now we finally passed an amended bill on the House coming over to us. And I think we'll concur with it. That fixes the problem, not 100%, but about 95%. 

And that just shows you, and I think your members, Farm Bureau members, how hard it is to get a concept through to a very urban, strong legislator. I mean they're good legislators. I'm not criticizing them, but it takes over communicating for them to realize. And I think there's a perception that, and I've heard it here amongst legislators, "Oh, you farmers don't pay any taxes. What are you talking about?" Well, I think one of the counties that I used to represent, I think 80% of their property tax comes from agricultural productive land. So that just gives you an understanding. While here in Bismarck, I think it's 24 or less, no, it's actually less percent comes from property tax. So it tells you who can survive without it and who can't. 

So having said that, my friend, I literally just came out from a meeting in the Harvest Room, which is a very small room with the property tax bill. And the governor was there, it says House Bill 1176. It's the governor's bill, basically, even though it has House members and they're fighting for it to go through 100% without being touched. And the Senate disagrees. So we had about five amendments that we presented today or our leader presented that we have caucused on. And the crux of it is this: We appreciate the governor's property tax relief, we appreciate private residency property tax relief. That's what people are asking for. But if you look back to the last election, we worked, many of us, maybe not your members, but many of us worked to say, "Hey, Measure 4, you know, completely getting rid of property tax may have some dire consequences on how we do things in North Dakota." So we disagreed with that. And most of the commodity groups and farmers said, "Yeah, I'm not sure. We're willing to pay property tax. We just need it reformed." 

And yet the property tax reform in 1176 only goes to primary residences, it doesn't go to ag land. So I'm going to... I can't go home and tell my constituents, mostly rural, that, "Thank you, but forget you guys." You know, so the argument from the Senate side and some of your listeners I know were really hard supporters of Measure 4 last time and I appreciate that as lawmakers we tried to do the very best to eliminate as many taxes as we can while looking long term, Legacy needs to grow for our kids and grandkids. Right? Because basically international relations, you can tell even now, even with a great president right now, we're still going to deal with some commodity price up and downs and maybe the tariffs. It's going to go down for a while. We're going to struggle for a while. We need to be wise as leaders here in Bismarck that even though we're doing well now. It was just a short few years ago, and I think it was 2017 when I first came in. We didn't have a surplus. We were in the negative. So. So we have to make those decisions, and we just disagree with the governor on some of it. And so it's kind of a heated conversation about 45 minutes ago here in the Capitol. So it's nice to be out talking to you, but that's kind of the update. And we'll continue to fight for rural values and rural infrastructure and everything that goes with living... 40% of us living in the rural areas in this great state.

[10:23] Emmery: I mean, one of the most important things farmers can do is to tell their story and in visiting with our members, just to be able to say to their legislator, "Hey, this is, this is how much I pay in property tax. You might think I'm not paying property tax because my, my home is sitting on my farmstead with my cows in my field, and I don't pay property tax on that house, on that farmhouse. But I sure am paying property tax out there on the land that I farm and all of the pasture land out there." And so I think that, I think that's a really important story to tell. And one of your other pieces of legislation this session had to do with the valuation on the agriculture property. Could you go but into that and talk about the problem that we were trying to solve? And, and just obviously, obviously, we established all of these modifiers out there to say, "Okay, here's what agriculture property is worth. Here's what it. Here's what its value is." Sometimes, though, there's some disagreement on the countryside as far as how that those modifiers should be applied.

[11:23] Sen. Myrdal: Absolutely. I think I've fought for that for a while, too. I'll give you an example. So I'm in the Red River Valley, however, where I live, I live not in the valley, not down in sugar beet and potato land. I live about three miles west of that. So I blame my husband and his forefathers for walking across the best land in the world and crawling up in the rocks, right? So they came from Iceland, God bless them. And so they saw rocks and trees and they thought, this is better. And the Germans in the region stayed in the valley. 

So once in a while, when I, you know, want to buy a new horse, I complain about that. We can't afford it because we live in the rocks. But just as an example, we. I'll do a personal example. We have a field that's 60 acres. It's never been farmed since homesteading, ever. It's, it's grazed. We rent it out for grazing. But it's full of rocks. And I mean, those rocks pop up, it's... it can never be cleared up. And believe me, we clear up rocks all the time. I mean, if anybody wants rocks, I'll give you as many as you want. So. And then just two miles to the east of me, there is no rock down in the valley, right down off what they call Agassiz Beach. So I can rent out that 60 acre lot for about 30, $35 an acre max. And you go three miles east and they can rent it for, you know, $240 for sugar beets or for potatoes or for, you know, whatever crop. I get taxed 15 acres on that lot, and the ones in the valley get taxed 18 acres an acre. That makes no sense. Right? It just makes no sense at all. So the law said that you may use modifiers. The assessors, you could if you want to. So of course, some subdivisions said, no, I'm not going to do that, or we're going to kind of do that. Or so one of the counties I represent, and people might get mad hearing this, but they struggle with this. And we actually had a town hall meeting with 150 farmers show up about three or four years ago. And you know how busy farmers are if they show up to the courthouse, there's an issue. Right?

[13:12] Emmery: Yeah.

[13:12] Sen. Myrdal: So, so. And I know if my husband shows up, there's really an issue because he loves to just be on the farm. He's a true farmer. So what I did this time is I said we have to tell all the counties that you have to use modifiers and this is how you should use them. Again, it was amended a little bit, but it was a partial victory and the governor already signed it. So I'm thrilled about that. The other thing is, we started a rural caucus. I had this idea, I don't know, over Thanksgiving, thinking, why don't we caucus together if we're the 40% of lawmakers that live in rural areas and there's about 45 to 50 members unofficially in that rural caucus, and we meet every Monday. And it's been extremely successful not to drive a divide between urban and rural because we all serve North Dakota, but to have a broader seat at the table and be a little louder, if that makes sense politically. And it's worked. We're being listened to and we're getting some stuff. We got a large percentage of infrastructure for towns and bridges in rural North Dakota. And we're working on some of these amendments on property tax. 

And one of the things I want to go back to what you said, Emmery, is when you talked about, yeah, we pay property taxes, right. What's going to happen if the vision to get down to zero property tax on residential in towns and subdivisions. Then let's say I'm just going to pick a town. Grafton decides in 10 years, we're going to build a $55 million school. So we're going to put it to the people. And the people that live in Grafton are going "We can afford that because we don't pay property tax." But all the farmers around in the same county school district who are still paying full property taxes on their productive land will now on top of that, have to pay probably a 20-year, maybe 30 mils or whatever it is on top of that. So we are getting double. Double, right? So the people who own the land and who want to rent it to you, you're a young farmer, my sons are young farmers. Young farmers coming up, they're going to say, "Well, I'll rent it to you for $85 an acre plus the new property tax." So it's not even so much the landowner that's going to get hurt. It's the young farmers that rent land. So that's the challenge down here, is to look at the broader picture. And as an association, I know your members are very strongly against property tax, but we need to have the conversation, what's the broader consequences if there's a whole group of people in North Dakota that don't have skin in the game when it comes to infrastructure and what we need? Right. 

And yes, we don't pay taxes on our homes that are on our farms, but we don't have paved streets or public sewer or street lights or walking paths or any of the services either, right. We do it all ourselves. So I think that conversation needs to be had and understood by members in your organization, people from the far left, far right, middle. We need to look at the broader consequences of all policy that we pass down here in Bismarck. And at the end of the day, Emmery, we are so blessed as a state. We are doing well and we have a surplus right now. The forecast doesn't look very good when it comes to oil and other things, but right now we have a surplus. And that's because we've been conservative, not because we're spending too much. And so that's another goal I have, is cut frivolous spending. And I'm trying hard, but I don't have the majority with me most of the time.

[16:32] Emmery: You mentioned how blessed we are as a state. And as a nation, if you just think about our past and why we were established and what our founder's vision really was for us, they placed a very high value on property owners. And like you said, you guys, as lawmakers, see that role as a property owner being like, okay, these people are the people who, who have to pay the bill and where is the reform for them? So I just, I'm very thankful for you and the others in your rural caucus to come together and be like, okay, the majority of landowners really is our rural agriculture farmers. I mean, in all honesty. And so, and so looking at that and saying, okay, we can't just leave out an entire sector of our state, the majority of the land holders here, without any sort of property tax reform. So I just very much appreciate the work that you're doing out there so.

[17:23] Sen. Myrdal: Well, thank you. And we appreciate what you guys do and your organization does. And it's. It's been a rough, you know, week here. I serve on Judiciary, too, and we had everything about sexual offenses yesterday in our hearing. And I just want to mention for your listeners, because it's in the news right now, former colleague Holmberg was just convicted yesterday of horrific evil acts. And I've heard on the Internet and all over, like, "Oh, you guys knew." Emmery, if I had known, he would be dead and I'd be in jail for murder. How's that?

[18:00] Emmery: No way, like, cutting to the chase.

[18:02] Sen. Myrdal: Yeah, well, I mean, I shouldn't say that. I'll probably get ethics complaints with that, but we're just horrified. So there's a somber mood here. I don't know any of my colleagues that would have known. Are there other people maybe involved? I don't know. But I know the integrity of our statement that we came out with from our caucus yesterday. We stand by that. And we don't call this an illness. We call it evil. I would call it demonic. And that punishment. Yeah, well, it's not enough, obviously, but we deal with those kind of things on a daily basis down here in Judiciary, too. And for some reason, we're seeing an enormous growth in sexual crimes against children in North Dakota and across the nation. 

And I just want to tell your organization and your listeners that, too, because, yeah, we fight battles down here, but some of them are, are more fun, like agriculture and things like we talked about, and some are very sombering. So we need a nation that comes back to God and fear of God and we keep trying to fix why things are wrong down here in the legislature. But at the end of the day what drives me is my Christian faith certainly. And I was just telling another lawmaker today who was frustrated with some of our hearings this week and I said, she said why is this happening? And I said because the fear of God is gone. And I would say most of your listeners are God-fearing people. So I just wanted to put that in there because it's been on all of our minds here this week

[19:20] Emmery: Well, thank you Senator Mirdahl and thank you for the work that you're doing out in Bismarck to protect our families and to protect our farms. Thank you for visiting with me today.

[19:28] Sen. Myrdal: Thank you. Be blessed. Take care.

[19:31] Emmery: Bye. 

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[19:33] Emmery: You've been listening to Straight Talk with ndfb. To contact us, visit us at emmery@ndfb.org

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