Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on August 19, 2010
It was over a year ago, when I heard of Riverbend Market Cooperative organizing meetings in Red Wing. I had already met with Latino families there in an effort to establish a presence and link local farmers with low income families. Our efforts in reaching out to potential future farmers in the Latino community in Red Wing were happening parallel to other efforts to organize the market cooperative, both would come produce a very attractive partnership.
Three weeks ago, Hillside Farmers Cooperative started providing frozen chickens to Riverbend Market Cooperative with very positive results and the development of a closer working relationship that promises to re-invigorate the engagement of Latino families in that community and region and an increase capacity of the Rural Enterprise Center to continue to reach out to new agripreneurs and community leaders in the area.
Here is a recent video produced on behalf of Riverbend Market Cooperative.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on May 20, 2010
The Rural Enterprise Center’s Agripreneur Training Program was one of twelve projects selected to receive funding through the USDA’s North Central Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (NCR-SARE) Program. The two-year grant begins this fall and will make it possible to: …… Read the rest of our newsletter here
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on April 2, 2010
AURI, has been a key partner over the last two growing seasons, working with us to frame new ways of developing and testing methods for growing healthier, tastier, happier and sustainable food systems.
Recently, we partnered to work on testing a couple of medicinal herbs intended to improve the quality of the immunological system for birds without negatively affecting taste, texture or other key product characteristics for poultry. Cindy Green, a communications specialist with AURI wrote a general article our our work, although not very detailed, anyone can contact us for more information if these bits of information trigger their interest.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on March 18, 2010
I just came back from a trip to France where I traveled with my colleague Niel Ritchie at Main Street Project. Our mission was to visit farms, founders, genetic companies and the organizations that developed, manage and currently administer the Label Rouge, a french label developed to assure consumers that certain protocols for growing food are followed. Their biggest claim is in the poultry area with 25% of the market share through a unique free range poultry system.
I had read some documents and inquired about this system more than two and a half years ago as we embarked in an effort to create a free range poultry system for the U.S. but it is until now that it has become relevant as we look at the larger scale potential of our efforts. The reason I say “to create” is not because there aren’t good farmers growing free range poultry in the U.S. but because after looking at many of these projects, we were unable to find one that could potentially be scaled through a national program and eventually create a true alternative to conventional poultry.
So we developed a system, over the last two years and I have written in this blog about how it came about. This trip to France was the first of a series as we explore solutions to the genetic bottleneck in our U.S. poultry industry. We need to find a diversity of options for birds that can grow fast but slower than Cornish Broilers so that birds can fully develop their frames and capacity to sustain their own weight and live a happy life. The taste has also been lost with our U.S. genetics. What we need is a bird that can grow slower than cornish broilers but faster than heritage breeds, while maintaining many of the abilities of heritage breeds such as ranging in the outdoors, better food conversion rates, and most importantly a traditional taste and texture for the meat which we have lost in the conventional genetically deteriorated mass produced birds available from factory farms today.
As we move forward with our research and development at our own experimental sites in Minnesota, we will continue to develop the corporate infrastructure, make the proper arrangements and continue to explore the introduction of better genetics into our system. When we launch our first economic cluster between Northfield and Red Wing, we want to be able do so with a superior product that will do best under the free range and ecologically holistic growing protocols that we have established.
5th Immigrant and Minority Farmers Conference
FEB 19-20, 2010, St. Paul, MN
Location: Wilder Foundation
451 Lexington Parkway North near University Av.
This conference focuses on being as relevant as possible for farmers. Farmers are involved in the planning, presentations,
participation and evaluation. The conference is free to farmers and this is only possible with the generous support from sponsor partnerships. Farmers, sponsors & other participants welcome.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on November 6, 2009
I will be a speaker at the Superior Grown Food Summit on Saturday November 14th. This opportunity emerged as a result of networking with folks from that region during the recent From Commodity to Community food security conference in Des Moines, Iowa. In IA, where I was also a speaker during one of the plenary sessions I had a chance to expose our work to a network of over 400 community food coalition members and business leaders. It helped to have Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack speak right before. Many more opportunities for networking and building support for our system deployment have come as a result of these conference.
At the Superior Grown Food Summit my concentration will be on engaging bio-regions as we further study the ability of large scale engagement and reproduction of our systems, specifically the integrated agriculture infrastructure to produce short-term gains through poultry production without compromising the engagement of the larger biological regions or ecological corridors.
The Rural Enterprise Center is a program of Main Street Project that focuses on enterprise development. Our mission is to strengthen communities by bringing together the support infrastructure, systems, resources and programs that rural entrepreneurs need to succeed. More...
Farmers connected with the Agripreneur Training Center may become members of the Hillside Farmers Cooperative. Co-op members produce free-range poultry and other naturally grown farm products in southeastern Minnesota. The co-op connects Latino immigrants with established farmers, helping families and the whole community thrive.
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