Why Create a New Poultry Industry Sector?

Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on July 1, 2009

Because animal factories are inhumane, unhealthy and unsustainable for the future of our food supply systems.

As a Latino living in Southern Minnesota, I am proud to be working on a new system that engages the talents, culture, traditions and knowledge of sustainable intensive agriculture that we bring to this region as new or recent immigrants. This is something concrete, new, innovative, and significant to this country’s food industry that we hope we can contribute.

When we start remembering the good taste of a free range chicken, the traditions associated with growing them as part of a community of farmers, we also come to realize that we have moved too far away from healthy sources of high quality wholesome tasting poultry (and other wholesome fruits and a diversity of foods as well). How did this happen?. There is proof and theories to point in many directions, even farmers who did not hold their ground and allowed corporations to ridicule them for their traditional time tested methods are to blame. But again and again, corporate greed has gotten in the middle, removing traditions out of well established farming system and ridiculing those interested in the "old" ways of doing things.

We have now come to realize that time-tested systems based on nature’s own R&D can be and will always be much more stable, efficient, sustainable, and trusted than any corporate scheme to grow our food more "efficiently". In a separate posting, I will relate a story that I have read and heard many times and that illustrates how we ended up with so few options for healthy foods with a direct impact in our environment, water, soil, air, our health and our current and future economy as we pass the cost of our current savaging of natural resources to future generations.

So what are we doing about this?

Those who buy our chickens do so because they are a whole different product as a result of the way we grow them. Our poultry is free range (this means that they are fed outdoors as soon as they are big enough to be outside, with no feeding inside the buildings from then on), they roam pastures, and are fed organic certified grains (no meat derivates or GMO’s). We have designed a unique system based on small family-owned operations but organized into networks to achieve a regional competitive advantage for this specific sector of the food industry.

This means no more poking around the edges, but growing large amounts of birds in a truly sustainable system. For winter production, we have designed a system that allows the chickens to roam and eat from summer harvests brought in with minimal processing but protected from the elements through solar powered season extension technology. Although not as elegant as summer innovations and in a lesser scale, our winter production once deployed will sustain us through the seasons while keeping the integrity of the system, the health of the birds and the key customers supplied.

Our system is designed to go regional in the coming years and national in the long-term. The larger system will be modeled after the current production unit in Northfield and deployed to respond to the region’s demands for healthy poultry as a market entry strategy. As far as we have been able to document, this sort of enterprise has not yet been achieved in the United States at a scale with potential to transform an industry (there are many projects from which we are learning, but not a new replicable system in place yet).

As Hispanic/Latino families continue to grow in our region, we have taken the lead position in developing this new way of growing chickens and we are hoping that the public, political forces and established companies and institutions will recognize that this is something good for the economy, the health of chicken consumers and for an industry that has become inflexible, a liability to the health and our economy, and unfriendly to family farms the only reliable source of locally grown healthy and safe foods.

We are launching a new poultry production system with our eyes in making a transformational contribution to this industry while creating a new economic option for Southern Minnesota farmers and ranchers in partnership with the newest immigrants. There are many Hispanic/Latino families and a diversity of established farmers in the region who are now involved in this process. If you are a farmer and this intrigues you, please send us an e-mail from the contact us form.

Although we have advanced significantly over the last year, we need much more public participation, specifically in the Northfield area. One thing that is important for our success is the expansion of a direct customer’s network town-by-town until we cover the region. More specifically we need these networks to grow in the Cannon Falls area where we are putting together the infrastructure for a new production unit, in Dodge City where another production unit is in process for 2010. The roll out will continue with Red Wing, Faribault, Owatonna, Austin, and beyond. If you know someone who may benefit from this information in these targeted areas, we will appreciate you referring us to them. First step would be to invite people interested in buying our chickens to our mailing list, to do so, please send them this link: http://lists.ruralec.com/mailman/listinfo/poultryclients where they can subscribe/un-subscribe directly.

To order from our distributor or to refer our products to a retail store please contact Thousand Hills Cattle Company.