MPR Coverage of our Work in Northfield
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on August 30, 2010
This piece aired this morning on Minnesota Public Radio about our work launching new immigrant farming entrepreneurs or “agripreneurs”.
Audio:
Partnership With Riverbend Market Cooperative Produces Results
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.
Mobile Meat Processing Plants in Minnesota?
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on July 12, 2010
Don’t think it is a pipedream, it will come to your local farmer and to our area very soon. If anyone out there is working seriously on this issue, PLEASE drop us a note at the Rural Enterprise Center. There are many strategies to deal with this problem of meat processing in our region and we are working hard at one option. Our meat inspection officials are very supportive, but as all of us know, meat processing has to be done right for it to be consistently safe for consumers, this means working with professionals in this area to get this done right and build a network of mobile facilities to serve our region’s local food markets and farmers.
For a closer look at what we are learning and monitoring in other states, check this recent article. If you have insights into this or want to have a conversation, drop us a note from the contact link.
Celebrating Farming, Bringing it All Together, Days to Remember
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on July 10, 2010
I am writing this blog to create a record of some great things that happened at our demonstration site in the last two days. Although, barely one acre total, this place is becoming a magnet for activity, people come here to figure things out, to plan, to share ideas, to ponder and to celebrate and finish hard working days on their own farming operations.
Starting on Thursday, we had a group of Saint Olaf College students led by Kris Estenson from the Center for Experiential Learning (CEL), their purpose was to look close up the issues of social responsibility and how change can come about by dealing with structural and systematic failures, especially in the food and agriculture sector. We studied the issues of vulnerable children, learning delays and other disadvantages directly originated by the lack of access to food or access to too much junk food. The discussion was lively and the farm tour full of great questions.
Friday afternoon, we had the new Arts and Agriculture bilingual camp. A nice group of 1st through 5th grade kids 
signed up. Led by Miguel Perez, Lucy Celis and Amy Haslett-Marroquin this camp brings kids together to be exposed to a different culture on a setting where they are free to share, learn, play and explore food production, healthy living, and cooking from scratch at its best (actually starting by harvesting the products they will cook, giving the idea a whole new meaning).
Two of these kids were itching to do some “farm work”, especially taking care of the little chickens. So they got their wish, Garrett and Jose washed the automatic watering fountains in the ranging fields and then spread barley that would sit overnight and soften for the birds to eat the next morning. The mix also included camelina (Camelina sativa) and comm on flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) seeds, both rich in omega 3 fatty acids. Not that the the young ones knew this or wanted to know for now, but the time will come when with properly nourished curiosity they will ask the right questions. For now, it is just about their curiosity for food and farming not going unattended.
Towards the end of the day, Maria Sosa and her black bean farm crew came over from their operation in 
Cannon Falls, I had marinated a bunch of our own free range chicken, Amy (my wife), had cooked a pot of black turtle beans, we harvested and cooked onions and other garden herbs, threw in a pot of rice and had a great dinner. Even the kids agreed this was a good evening although the soccer game they had picked, seem more important. After dinner, someone picked up a guitar, we made a 
bonfire and had some good conversation about life and mundane things that need to be ruminated to complete a full day’s worth of hard work and celebration.
As all of these went on, on a different corner of the farm, another crew under the leadership of Federico Vargas, put together an arrangement of equipment, a trailer, and a home-made shelter so that they can offer poultry processing on the farm for the many small flock growers in our region that are left on a limb when it comes time to process their family’s poultry flock. The purpose of the group is to go out to farmers who have raised chickens and need processing, bring the equipment, and help the farmers do the job.
Many farmers we are in touch with raise small flocks, sometimes under 50 birds, but then have to load them on the back of trucks and drive 50 or 100 miles to a meat packing plant, pay high prices to get their birds processed and then have to go pick them again and bring them home. This is not fair for the farmers who just want healthy foods on their farm, nor for the animals who suffer unnecessarily while the meat quality deteriorates. This group will take all of the pain away from the processing of these small flocks and do it right on the farm. Farmers who don’t have time or resources to put together an efficient system of their own, won’t have to do it, at least if they get in touch with Federico.
As perennial crops (fruit trees and hazelnuts) get established in this small demonstration site we run, we also get ready for many more gatherings like this, planned or unplanned, it doesn’t matter. For the younger folks, some “un-planning” makes the place more attractive, as long as we structure it well, young people will always get a fulfilling experience. Some fun unplanned stuff like bonfires can happen whenever there is grilling, a guitar handy and friends. The chickens always need care, the chores are always there and everything is prepared for anyone to do them so the kids interested in this jumped right in with some short instructions.
Many of us have learned that we shouldn’t plan kids out of their childhood, but we can surely plan a lot around their childhood, so when they are ready to be helpful they don’t feel left out of the adult structures and when they grow up they won’t go around thinking that food comes from the store and farmers are of a lesser social class. Animals and farms seem to generate kid’s desire to do things naturally (as long as the chore is not obligatory). For kids living on farms, the thrill comes from being able to show off their skills like my daughter and her friend who know how to milk goats by hand. For Hipanic/Latino farmers, it is the place where they have wisdom to pass on and an command respect, a concept slipping away in new generation immigrants who see their parents as obsolete and backwards. The demonstration site is planned to be just the way young people like things, unplanned (at least as far as they can see), fun and meaningful, but also “on their own terms.” If that is what it takes to get young people into sustainable agriculture, healthy lifestyles and healthy eating, then be it, as long as it works and the systems we develop don’t structurally and systematically leave vulnerable children living in poverty behind. We are happy to put our minds into designing and planning systems that are ready to do this, we hope you will join us in celebrating and supporting this kind of culture that brings about true “agri-culture” we so much need to make our rural communities healthier.
Full Slide show
Mercedez Farming Story in the Northfield News
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on June 7, 2010
What if every Latino/a family in Southern MN were given the opportunity to contribute their real skills, knowledge, entrepreneurship spirit, hard working ethic, and all the many other great assets to the regional food and agriculture sector? We could actually build a new system that is fair to workers, profitable for the small companies (farming enterprises or small farms), creates wealth for the region by keeping the resources multiplying and growing locally, improve our production efficiency (through richer, more stable, protected and improved soils, waterways and reduction of inputs), and build a regional ecology capable of turning around the way we think about farming, food, economic development, the role of new immigrants, and the ecology.
As long as we keep thinking just about job creation, instead of investing in competitive advantages as a strategy for economic development, we will continue to think of people like Mercedez as cheap labor for farm fields and meat processors and other factories, while missing the real potential these folks represent for the region. When we mismanage the people’s potential, we miss the larger potential to turn our regional food and agriculture into something we can sustain for the long haul. We have to keep in mind that conventional agriculture does not create competitive advantages, but keeps talent and opportunity from emerging through the forces that it generates in terms policies, subsidies for unsustainable systems, the flow of resources from the public to fields and factories and then out of the communities, eroding our natural and material resources while further creating economic and intellectual poverty and with it, the incapacity of building systems outside the of track of dead ideas.
Mercedez story is part of a series of articles, this is the second and many more are on their way, stay tuned. Click here to see the story published by the Northfield News.
Here are some photos of Mercedez’ operation. In a chronological account, we first we take the open fields and place free range poultry units in quarter of an acre plots, these birds are fed and live outdoors, they include a combination of meat birds and heritage breeds, most of the heritage breeds are 
picked live at the farms by families who like to butcher their own birds, as they like to use every part of the bird, the rest are taken to inspected processors for market distribution. From the fields, we remove excess composted manure and cure it to turn it into clean finished soil.
Then vegetable production can start, as these field composted manure is rich in all of the nutrients needed to grow vegetables. In the future there will be a story about this as well as further explanations are in line as to how we manage the micro and macro ecology that includes flora and fauna, organic matter, sun, water, etc, to its maximum potential for net energy yields in the form of food.
Mercedez has operated his poultry at the Rural Enterprise Center’s experimental farm in Northfield and grows his vegetables at his newly secured land in partnership with Greg Carlson on the South side of Northfield. He is now starting to think about strategies for land ownership. One step at the time, 
from the aspiring dreamy farmer living in poverty, to introduction to MN’s farming conditions, specialized training, to systems development, to land ownership, to the full launch as a new farmer working under a new ecology of food, that is Mercedez story, one that will still take many more years to finish telling, and his is only one of many we will be telling as we build a regional competitive advantage by building the systems, support infrastructure and programs needed to make Southern MN a hub of a new way of doing agriculture at a large scale without compromising the efficiency of the small scale farming systems and the contributions of new immigrants to this new ecology of food.
2010, New Opportunities for Growth and Partnership Building
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on May 7, 2010
2010 feels to have started like a bull riding exercise and it does not look like it will stay still. So far, the year has been full of incredible energy and I want to make sure that you feel part of this process. Our mission is to turn rural people’s aspirations into reality by building the infrastructure, programs and systems necessary to launch successful agripreneurs. Why agripreneurs? because from the start of our program in 2007 we knew this to be the most important sector for the incorporation of people living in poverty, into the rural economic equation in our state and the nation. When we talk about rural poverty, of course we have to understand that we are talking primarily about new immigrant families and especially Hispanic/Latino immigrants who hold the largest share of the short end of the economic stick.
At the same time, this industry sector and the families who feed its labor needs, represent enterprise development opportunities beyond anyone’s imagination. Different from opportunities in other industries, food and agriculture is at the core of rural economic development and competitive advantages, but it is also at the core of the new immigrant’s competitiveness as it pertains to family assets, traditions and vocation.
Given the labor and wages and benefits in our conventional food and agriculture sector, it is no coincidence that Hispanic immigrants make the bulk of the energy that goes into keeping our food and agriculture industry moving, it is the poor, the desperate and the un-protected that supply the labor in these sectors. At the same time, we also know that developing new enterprises in this sector has never been more promising given the rapidly growing demand for fairly traded, healthy, ecologically sustainable and socially responsibly produced foods. Families living in poverty who provide the largest share of the labor for the food and agriculture industry can have a way out, but unless we built an alternative system, they won’t get a chance to lift themselves and build wealth and opportunities, without a systematic way of building wealth and opportunities for the poor in rural America, we lose competitive advantages and future opportunities for rural America.
Community Gardens, Discovering the Assets
We have started 2010 with a well established community garden in Northfield where we get to introduce large numbers of families to the art of growing their own food, while getting fresh air, exercise, a place for the children to play outside and to build community. On top of this, the plots are big enough to allow a regular size family to generate enough food to balance their budget through food savings and increased energy and productivity that comes from better food, more exercise and a sense of belonging. The community gardens are our most effective outreach strategy, so we are also developing new sites in Dodge Center and Red Wing where we are replicating our Northfield experience. Northfield’s garden will total over 200 plots in 2010, which grew from barely 6 plots in 2007 when our program was launched. From these experiences over each town, we harvest market gardeners and future farmers who move into the second phase of our program, specialized training.
