Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on February 20, 2012
Last February 14th, Senator Julie A. Rosen of Senate District 24 introduced S.F. No. 1713 -Immigrant and Minority Microloan program to the Agriculture and Rural Economics committee. I was invited to testify on behalf of this bill and I am happy to report that it passed the committee unanimously.
This bill is part of the work that the Minnesota Department of Agriculture has been doing to respond to the increasing demand for services, especially financial services to bridge the gap between aspiring immigrant and minority farmers who can’t access conventional lending to get started on their farming dreams.
Although our organization is working hard to build infrastructure that can deliver financing to the farmers we work with, the challenge is really overwhelming when we look at the larger landscape of opportunity to bring alternative economic development opportunities to our rural communities. This bill is a very important step in a process of building a culture of support, tolerance, and diversity. It is especially a step towards removing structural barriers that keep promising agriculture entrepreneurs from contributing their full potential to our rural and urban food and agriculture landscape.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on June 29, 2011
We often talk about support infrastructure as a key component of success in a systems change approach, no matter the target, the support infrastructure is critical. Last week we had a tremendous opportunity to take a huge step in building this support infrastructure. We were visited by a large number (over 60) of program officers and representatives of foundations from across the country at our humble experimental farm in Northfield, Minnesota as part of the annual meeting of the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders.
We hosted two bus loads of visitors on two separate tours looking at meat production and landscape impact and management as it pertains to the deployment of scalable sustainable food and agriculture systems. This was an opportunity to do many things, but most importantly, with our limited resources, meeting all of these folks at our own place rather than trying to schedule meetings and travel to meet them one-by-one across the country I would say is worth the largest contribution we could have received this year. Not only would it take a lot of cash resources but couple of years to accomplish such goal.
Needless to say, I am thankful in an immense way to be honored with such an opportunity where our team was able to interact with all of these folks. We understand some of the visitors do not invest in work in Minnesota, but the nature of our systems development thinking and of the prototype farms we are putting together have the scalability component embedded in the design, especially in the processes so that they can be adapted to local ecologies in a variety of places. Folks from outside our region can take what we are doing to a whole new level anywhere in the country and we look forward to working with them as our systems get launched and grow, opportunities arise and the business environment opens up the larger potential for innovation in food and agriculture systems re-engineering.
When we talk about systems change, we are not thinking micro or sub-systems, but the whole food and agriculture landscape, the fact that our visitors understand the larger picture and the challenges associated with this approach allowed us to have a leveled discussion about how we move forward and align our strategic thinking so that we can generate the highest returns on investment for our communities.
How can you support the next generation of farmers? What role can our community play in a sustainable regional food system?
Rural Enterprise Center is eager to invite you to join the conversation at a FREE event co- sponsored with Just Food Co-op and the Northfield Arts Guild.
The event is Friday, May 13 at 7 p.m. at the Northfield Arts Guild Theater
(311 W. Third Street, Northfield).
Look Who’s Knockin’, is a new one-act play from Land Stewardship Project, coming to Northfield for one night only. The 45-minute play focuses on a retiring farm couple’s dilemma as they wrestle with the future of their farm.
After the play we’ll have a panel and community discussion moderated by Ken Meter, economist and president of Crossroads Resource Center, with a panel including Melanie Reid, Just Food Co-op general manager and Reginaldo (Regi) Haslett-Marroquin, Rural Enterprise Center director.
Refreshments will provided from Just Food Co-op.
Call (507) 650-0106 or stop by Just Food Co-op to reserve your FREE ticket. Or email us, and we’ll reserve a seat for you!
This is sure to be a wonderful, enlightening evening. Invite friends & neighbors! We look forward to seeing you there!
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on February 12, 2011
In partnership with the program Achieve Ownership headed by Umbelina Treviño Cremer at the Three Rivers Community Action in Rochester, and Diana Lobo a Northfield based real state agent the Rural Enterprise Center has started a new outreach program aimed at providing services to a larger number of Latino families especially in the Southern Minnesota Region.
Although today we had individuals from as far as Saint Cloud, the goal is to concentrate our efforts in the Southern half of the state with an even more dedicated effort targeting five counties between interstate 35W and the Wisconsin border.
Informational meetings have been scheduled for every first Saturday of the month at 10 am at the REC offices, 105 E fourth street Northfield, and every first Monday of the month at 6 pm at the same location. Presentations are also being scheduled in partnership with organizations in the region as we identify new partnerships. This effort will significantly improve the public education about our work and our partners and the ability of families to fully participate in community life, establish permanent roots and participate and contribute to our rural communities in a meaningful way.
This outreach work started on the first week of February and will continue as long as families keep coming and responding to our calls or until our programs are fully populated. The goal for this year is to reach 300 families through informational sessions. From this larger group, a selected number of families will participate in one day intensive home ownership and financial management training. An even smaller group will qualify to participate REC’s poverty reduction and assets and wealth creation strategy through sustainable agriculture farming enterprise development.
The families that will enter the Agripreneurship Training Program at the REC are being trained to play a key role in the sustainable food and agriculture system that we are deploying regionally. This new system is part of a much larger and robust process to redefine the role of minority families in the sustainable food and agriculture system. We seek to significantly influence this role from one of primarily providing cheap labor, to one of defining, owning and benefiting from this emerging industry in the country.
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.
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.
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...
