Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on September 16, 2009
I just saw this article from The Twin Cities Daily Planet about immigrant demonstrations last weekend throughout some of our region’s rural cities and towns. The article does not cover all of the activities, more articles were written in the Post Bulletin and the Owatonna People’s Press. The issue of new immigrants, especially Latino/a in our region is bound to keep growing in its social intensity as well as its importance for the region’s economic vitality. Minnesota 2020 for example, has published some important facts about the role of new immigrants on the schools and the region’s economy, specifically in Worthington, where the Latino population became key in re-energizing the schools and downtown to name two areas positively impacted.
Here at the Rural Enterprise Center, we are concentrated in tapping on the opportunities that this new population represent, specifically the areas of intensive sustainable agriculture that engage existing resources and improve their productive capacity through the incorporation of traditional knowledge that many new immigrant families bring with them. Our current free range poultry and vegetable production system is one clear example of how we can all turn to the positive side of almost any challenging situation, no negative approach has ever produced a positive result, and no reaction to a situation is ever better than a proactive approach.
With this in mind, we will continue to work on our economic development systems, and as we do this, many other approaches will continue to evolve like the ones documented in the reports above. All of this is good, the conversations need to happen and policies and systems that don’t work need to be fixed, sooner or later.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on August 31, 2009
I just received the release below from the Latino Economic Development Center in Minneapolis. Ramon Leon, the founder and Executive Director will be receiving the Mexican Consulate’s Ohtli Award “Opening Doors” in the Nahuatl language.
Minneapolis MN. August 31, 2009
LEDC’s President and CEO Ramón León, to receive the prestigious Ohtli Award by the Mexican consulate of Minnesota
-For immediate release-
Latino Economic Development Center’s President and CEO Ramón León will be presented with the Ohtli award at the official Mexican independence celebration event on September 15, 2009 by the Mexican consulate of Minnesota. The Ohtli award – which is the Nahuatl language word for “opening doors” – is one of the most prestigious honors bestowed by the Mexican government to recognize individuals who have distinguished themselves in improving the quality of life for Mexican citizens living outside Mexico.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on August 9, 2009
In 2007, the Rural Enterprise Center was launched to create systems, programs and support infrastructure to maximize the success potential of Southern MN regional Latino/Hispanic families. A first step in this process was to conduct in depth community analysis and partnerships to identify long term (thinking of generations, rather than years as a measure of long term) enterprise opportunities. The most promising opportunities in every aspect that we can think of came from a natural, but still under developed sector “sustainable agriculture and food systems”.
By the end of 2007, after having met with over 400 Latino/Hispanic families, over 50 established farmers from the region, hundreds of economic development and social organizations and over 15 farming organizations, it was clear that we could move forward to designing and launching a farming system with a mission to incorporate Hispanic/Latino farmers into the farming and food infrastructure as a valuable tool for regional economic development and sustainable integration of a sector of this population to the main stream (social, political and economic system). To accomplish this, The Rural Enterprise Center would concentrate most of its resources to develop a farming system that integrates existing farmers, sustainable farming practices, and the assets and aspirations of Latino/Hispanic families in Southern MN.
Over the last 20 months or so, I have written extensively about the system that we developed, including postings with documents and other resources to explain our thinking to the public. Significant progress has been made towards the deployment of the planned enterprises. We have established partnerships in all aspects needed and actual farming operations have now been launched as part of an integrated, symbiotic array of farming enterprises. This enterprises are designed and networked to maximize value added for new farmers, while enhancing the ability of established farmers to engage their land and other resources, investors to contribute capital, distributors to deal with the system with confidence, etc. From all of this, the most important aspect is that the system is designed so that immigrant farmers can incorporate themselves through a series of steps aligned with their economic, social and political reality. The farming methodologies and process organizing is innovative on its own not only from the science angle but from the business viability of ideas that many farmers have tried. We went backwards if compared to many farming operations, we started with the customer’s preferences, the distribution systems available, the size of this market and distribution infrastructure, and then matched this with what we have to offer in our region. The partnerships we have established and the products we are launching respond to this process step by step so that the deployment can be methodical and deliberate.
The system is designed to engage up to 12 different farming enterprise opportunities. The launch sequence has to do with market driven forces, but its sustainability is defined by the relationships among enterprises and their ability to achieve full utilization of natural resources, biological systems and consequently, nature’s growing power and efficiency. As we do this, we add business relations inside the system and create value added while generating income for the families without complicating legal, operational and other sorts of support infrastructure and programming needed. The process we follow seeks to “uncomplicated” issues and fully engage the “natural” way of building sustainable (permanent) farming systems.
This morning I took pictures of some of our poultry as it represents the first and most promising step in building each 
one of the 12 enterprise sectors. This is true because of the poultry’s short life cycle and concurrent cash-flow that makes it possible for a low income family to enter the system while not having to disrupt their current situation significantly. Poultry is also an area of farming where Latino families already have much experience and knowledge. This knowledge and experience finds no opportunities in conventional poultry, so we had to start from the start, which also helped turn this asset into a competitive advantage for this fast growing enterprises. Among many other reasons for this first natural step, is the fact that in sustainable farming systems, biological activity needs the presence of livestock. Livestock helps all the way from soil disturbance to value added for grains and other raw materials. When we see the contribution and value of manure, we are thinking of a natural cycle and an opportunity to further utilize nature’s growth power for more efficient and nutritious vegetables, nuts, fruits, honey, biomass production, carbon sequestration, soil protection through permanent root systems, extraction of minerals from down deeper for healthier birds, avoiding disturbing the soil with machinery, reducing carbon emissions, etc.
As part of continuing to build the “symbiotic” relationships, this year we area launching two vegetable growers, in this 
picture, Mercedez shows proudly his second harvest. Last year’s poultry produced over 20 tones of compost. This compost is well balanced as we have designed a process to ensure that the end product is not tilted towards nitrogen content, which is mostly what comes out 
of the birds’ back end. On another post, I may explain how we accomplished this “balanced compost mix”. In 2009 we will be producing over 75 tons of compost as we grow over 7,000 free range birds. 2010 will see an exponential increase in productivity at all levels of the system and the possibility of launching operations in the third enterprise area (production of small grains), as we have acquired small equipment needed to grow grains without chemicals, and we are looking for land to rent to make this other enterprise opportunity possible within the system.
Two distribution partnerships have now been established to market the system’s products, if you are interested in knowing more about these enterprise development, please don’t hesitate to contact us through the contact us link.
