Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on December 11, 2010
I mean farming the landscape of opportunity and the possibility of “redefining the role of Latino families in the food and agriculture system”. Our vision is that through a different arrangement of assets, resources, support infrastructure, the processes that define the current ecology (both the natural and artificial components) of food and agriculture, and by strategically overcoming a handful of critical barriers (access to land, financing, technical assistance and training) we can transform the role of Latino families and their participation in our agriculture and food system. Currently, although there are many Latino-led businesses in this sector, for the most part the vast majority of Latino families’ role in this sector is limited to providing unskilled cheap labor in the fields and factories. We are in the business of seeing this changed to a new role at the core of a new system that is socially responsible, economically viable and ecologically sustainable in the larger context of our market place and society.
We measure success as we structurally and systematically affect the role of Latinos from one of laborers who go home poor after generating millions of dollars for our regional and national economies, to one as players in partnership with the millions of farmers, consumers, farm organizations, government programs, and businesses who want to have a more secure country where our food does not depend on non-renewable resources and unsustainable practices. The Latino population in this country together with the millions of established farmers who they can partner with are positioned to make one of the greatest contributions to this nation from this point of view. We just need to realize it at a large scale, and to engage at the right levels, building capacity, re-directing resources and changing the systems and infrastructure that make our current systems un-sustainable in the long run.
Winter is the best time for farmers to plan and re-sharpen their saws, this is also true for our organization as we revisit and evaluate our plans and strategies and make the changes necessary to be more effective and aggressive about achieving our institutional mission and goals. This process goes a lot faster and a long way farther when there are partners, allies and supporters as well as whole communities willing to do their part to bring about the resources and support infrastructure to make things happen. The United States Department of Agriculture’s is a key supporter of our work. A recent Small Socially Disadvantaged Producers Grant is allowing us to build the foundation for a regional network of farmers organized under the Hillside Farmers Cooperative. Read more about this at the USDA Know Your Farmer Know your Food Program blog.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on December 9, 2010
All That We Share, by Jay Walljasper is a book about the things we share/own/control in common in our society in the U.S. and around the world. Jay also wrote another piece in the fall for Yes Magazine, called 51 Ways to Spark a Commons Revolution. We are on page 105 and 105 of All That We Share.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on November 13, 2010
Last night, I attended a Transition Northfield presentation by Richard Heinberg, senior Fellow-in-Residence at the Post Carbon Institute in California. Although he did not addressed the long-term solutions to the problem, he effectively addressed the challenge we face in our near 100% fossil fuel dependent society. The work we do at the Rural Enterprise Center fits within this overall picture as a new generation looks at scalable and sustainable solutions to our local economies, food and living systems in a way that we can re-design the way we produce and use energy, food, living spaces, communities, etc. I also checked their website and found this quick 5 minute slide show quite informative, check it out below.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on October 15, 2010
Although we have produced many thousands of meat broilers over the last couple of years as part of our systems design, both at our one acre experimental farm in Northfield and at the 80 acres Cannon Falls prototype farm, we have only scratched the surface of growing heritage breeds under a scalable system, that is about to change.
The first thing is to get to know the birds from a practical standpoint. Heritage breeds need a very different environment, they roam long distances, they eat a lot more bugs, scratch the soil and dig up warms and minerals to supplement their diets in ways that meat broilers can only think of doing.
Managing the environment around animals is the key to raising them in a healthy way, space is only important to the extent that they are not so crowded that they destroy the health of the environment around them. Density then is measured on different factors, outside density (for ecological management purposes), and indoor density (to shelter and protect them). The square footage inside buildings then is only relevant for nighttime shelter as during the day, only a few stay. On the other hand, during winter months, the tighter the space in between them, the better. In fact they get very close to each other on their own to keep themselves warm. Larger buildings are not only counterproductive in free range systems, but also an unnecessary expense. When poultry is raised in confinement, most of the manure is also deposited inside the building, ventilation becomes a need and dust and light control become real problems. In our free range systems, winter facilities have an insulated night shelter, and daytime roaming area under a solarium where an environment is created to replicate spring-like conditions during the coldest months of the winter. On warm winter days, they go outside anyway.
Our heritage breed growing system has just gone through another year of development and we are almost ready to embark in a formal experiment with a new farm in Cannon Falls to scale this up. So far, the best scenario to create the appropriate environment (large ranging areas, lots of bugs, pasture, etc.) for egg and meat (dual purpose) birds is in combination with a cattle operation, so we are taking what we have learned in our experimental space and will scale it to a regular operation and test it in the coming years.
This new stage, will provide us with the data needed to establish the benchmarks to define the relationship between cattle pastures/paddocks, design of buildings for flocks of birds large enough to manage the paddocks, and the mechanization of chores, such as feeding and watering year round, and most importantly, the collection and management of eggs. The environment for the animals is the key to their quality of life, how we do the rest will be up to the systems we can dream up, after all there are engineers, architects and systems experts willing to help with the mechanical aspects of making work on the farms easier, without compromising the principles and energy flows that make them efficient and sustainable in the long run from the stand point of sustaining the family farms and the ecology around them.
Below is a slideshow of the current ranging area where we raised White Rock heritage birds. The paddocks represent a very diverse eco-system and the management of these system is where the keys to healthy birds are (among other things you observe mulched areas from left-over sweet corn stalks for worm production and carbon:nitrogen balance, fruit trees and hazelnuts for shade and protection as well as soil conditioning and micro and macro biological management, and grassy areas for access to bugs, greens and sprouted small grains).
Birds raised this way eat very little regular feed inside their barn and they seem to take long naps during the sunny or warmer parts of the day. But they are hardly inside early and late in the day and during cloudy days, unless laying eggs (notice that the paddocks are also managed so there is no incentive for them to lay eggs somewhere else but their boxes).
We hope this gives you a glimpsed into the principles that define these new farming systems that we are developing, through them we seek to maximize the vocation of farmers, create wealth in rural communities while adding to regional economic competitive advantages, and the maximization of the production capacity of the ecology. Everything we come up with is designed to be scalable so that they can compete effectively in the large scale context of replacing unhealthy food products in the marketplace.
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...
