Economic Clustering, as a Poverty Fighting Strategy

Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on June 1, 2010

Last week and Monday this week, two fields of black turtle beans were planted ahead of the predicted rains. The first plot is in Cannon Falls, where one of our main ecological farm operations is being deployed. Although the plot is just 4.5 acres, the seeds planted there have been selected for a specific growing period, resistance to deceases and drought, productivity, size of plants, pods and beans and characteristics needed to achieve an excellent bean quality while keeping its genetic diversity improving.

What is important of these black beans is that as the poultry production system grows, our fields are also fertilized and improved with the manure from the barns and fields, the beans are but one in a series of enterprises being developed as part of our new approach to the whole ecology of food production and distribution. Dry edible beans are important for families like Maria Sosa’s, her husband and two kids. Saving this crop as a regular source of protein and basic amino-acids and vitamins is easy and inexpensive, but it is also a product that we have built a market for so it can be turned into a agripreneurship opportunity.

For a family living in poverty, getting their foot in the door of the vast food and agriculture industry is impossible, unless of course it is as cheap labor in a field or at an animal factory or processing plant. One process that is showing solid promise is the clustering of small farm enterprises, mostly part-time opportunities for people in poverty looking for a good source of food but also farther ahead into a possible farming opportunity.

Clustering allows for each farmer to become a highly efficient producer while staying small. For example, one family that produces free range poultry partners with another that produces grains, both can partner with another that grinds and mixes the grain into feed. After the poultry is produced an opportunity emerges for meat processing, marketing, distribution and value added. Manure from free ranging fields is full of a multitude of nutrients that do not get captured through confinement facilities and it is more stable and complete straight from the fields. This allows for vegetable and dry edible bean operations as well as grain production to reduce cash flow needs for inputs. A simple machine to turn manure into pellets is enough to create a large scale way of managing such valuable by-product and efficiently apply to regular row crops.

Back to the black bean operation, it can be combined with a garlic production operation as the two crops are distant genetic pools and are not affected by the same deceases or pests, while one fixes atmospheric nitrogen, the other needs it, while one is harvested in September, the other is harvested in July, one needs planting in the spring, while the other until November.

Finding the right crop combinations for people with economic difficulties is as important for creating a path to success as it is in being good stewards of the natural resources that make a new ecology of food possible and a sustainable food and agriculture system viable. When each of these crops are developed into production units that can be scaled or multiplied to meet market demand, consumers can get all the food they need and poor families can have a new opportunity.