Senator Aric Putnam was chosen for the MN Agriculture, Rural Development and Broadband. The Duluth New Tribune reports…

State Sen. Aric Putnam admits he doesn’t know a lot about farming, but as a scholar, he’s ready to take a crash course to prepare to lead the Minnesota Senate Agriculture Committee.

Putnam, a Democrat from St. Cloud, was named to his leadership post just before the Minnesota Farmers Union state convention and went to the event Nov. 19 to be introduced.

“The first thing I said was, ‘I don’t seem like a clear fit for this,’” Putnam said. “I still think that the committee is a space to do great things for the whole state. So the full title is Agriculture, Rural Development and Broadband, so there’s a lot of stuff in that jurisdiction that I think I can help with.”

Putnam was elected to his second term in the Minnesota Senate in the November general election, which saw the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party flip enough Senate seats from red to blue that the party now controls both houses of the Legislature and saw Gov. Tim Walz win a second term.