Economy of Minnesota - Industry and Commerce

Industry and Commerce

Minnesota's economy has transformed in the past 200 years from one based on raw materials to one based on finished products and services.

The earliest industries were fur trading and agriculture. Agriculture is still a major part of the economy even though only a small percentage of the population, less than 1% are employed in the farming industry.

Minnesota is the U.S.'s largest producer of sugar beets, sweet corn, and green peas for processing and farm-raised turkeys. State agribusiness has changed from production to processing and the manufacturing of value-added food products by companies such as General Mills, Cargill, Hormel Foods Corporation (prepackaged and processed meat products), and the Schwan Food Company (frozen foods).

Forestry, another early industry, remains strong with logging, pulpwood processing, forest products manufacturing, and paper production. The amount of forested land in the state is declining, from 16.7 million acres (68,000 km²) in 1990 to 16,200,000 acres (66,000 km2) in 2004; however, the average forest is maturing. From 1999 to 2004 the average annual growth within the state was 550 million board-feet (1,300,000 m³) of timber, while the average amount harvested was only 330 million board-feet (780,000 m³) per year.

Minnesota was famous for its soft-ore iron mines which produced a significant portion of the world's iron ore for over a century. Although the pure ore is now depleted, taconite mining remains strong using processes developed locally to save the industry. In 2004 the state produced 75 percent of the usable iron ore in the country. 3M (formerly Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co.) today is a diversified manufacturer of industrial and consumer products. The port of Duluth was created by the mining boom and today continues to be an important shipping port for the Midwest's agricultural and ore products.

Manufacturing was not left out, either. The brass era automobile maker Dan Patch was founded in Minneapolis in 1911.

Retail is represented by Target Corporation, Best Buy, and Supervalu, all headquartered in the Twin Cities. Southdale Center, the first fully enclosed and completely climate-controlled shopping mall in the United States opened on October 8, 1956, in the suburban city of Edina. The largest shopping mall in the United States, the Mall of America, is located in Bloomington.

Medtronic and St. Jude Medical represent a growing biomedical industry spawned by university research, and Rochester is the headquarters of the world-famous Mayo Clinic. UnitedHealth Group is the second largest health insurance company in the U.S.

Financial institutions include U.S. Bancorp, TCF Bank, Ameriprise and Thrivent Financial for Lutherans.

As might be expected in state with a love of the outdoors, boats and other recreational products are manufactured by a number of Minnesota companies, including Polaris Industries and Arctic Cat, who make snowmobiles and ATVs, Alumacraft Boat Company, and Lund Boats.

An active high-technology sector is represented by Alliant Techsystems, Cray, Imation, and a large IBM plant in Rochester.

Today, the most salient characteristic of the economy is its diversity; the relative outputs of its business sectors closely match the United States as a whole.