We see possibilities.
Friday, February 10, 2012
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 30, 2010
It is one thing if I say so, but a very different deal if a nationally renowned expert and economist points out the economic development potential of the work that we do developing local food systems across our rural communities. Without delay, I want to introduce you to Ken Meter, one of the most respected authorities in the economics of food and farm country. He wrote a fact filled piece for the Compost the newsletter of Just Foods Cooperative in Northfield for its October November issue. This was before he presented a much more extensive set of background facts and figures at the cooperative’s annual meeting.
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 24, 2010
I will be speaking at the Wedge Food Cooperative’s annual meeting, with close to 15,000 members, and over $31 Million in annual sales, the Wedge is the largest cooperative grocery in the country and a leader in innovative partnerships that have significantly expanded cooperation and local food systems development in Minnesota and the Midwest. Check out their annual meeting announcement and scroll down to Gardens of Eagan and Cooperative Partners Warehouse at the bottom of their website’s front page. Both of these initiatives add valuable and needed infrastructure to the growing local and regional food systems.
My presentation at the Wedge’s annual meeting will focus on the larger opportunities for systematic changes that we can initiate through larger partnerships, the deployment of new cooperative enterprises and structured and deliberate steps that can be taken to transform the flow of healthy foods from farm to table at a larger scale. At the Rural Enterprise Center we work all of these within a larger systems development framework, as we pursue these objectives in the transformation of food and agriculture systems, we incorporate principles for social responsibility, fair trade and ecological sustainability in a way that is scalable to meet real market demands for healthy products.
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.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on September 22, 2010
As our local food production and distribution systems evolve and a new infrastructure for processing and distribution of fresh farm products emerges, our schools will be more able to source lunches for our kids from healthy choices. The Farm to School Initiatives are key in setting up the flow of products from farms to our schools. I am writing this short note as a way to post an article from the THE MIX, a cooperative food stores publication. You can pick your copy at Just Foods Cooperative Store in Northfield or at any food cooperative location in Minnesota.
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...
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