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.

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.

From now on, I will link all of the postings as each article comes up. This you will have all of the stories related to The New Ecology of Food and our strategies and planning to develop processes and systems to scale up what works in sustainable agriculture so we can meet market demands, expand the economic frontier for sustainable agriculture products and create an identity for sustainability, one beyond individual claims and labels.

September 4th, 2010 Making Sense of the Numbers

August 7th, 2010 Investing in New Immigrant Families

July 3rd, 2010 The Story of Prink’s Farm

June 4th, 2010 The Ecology of Food: Mercedez’s Story

May 14th, 2010 Sustainability: The New Ecology of Food

As usual, we are looking for ways to engage the larger regional population in building this regional food system. If you are a farmer, write to us through our contact form and let us know if you grow grains or have land (4 acres or more) that you would like to commit to free range production in partnership with a new immigrant family.

If you live in any of the communities within the outlined region please sign up to any of the established mailing list and start purchasing poultry from the established farms or contact us if you are from a different city and would like to help us build a support network to launch a free range poultry operation in your area.

As the poultry operations grow, we will add vegetable production to fully utilize the composted manure that the poultry generates, will add grain processing and distribution to supply the feed for the poultry farms and other value added components.

Here are the cities where we are currently developing a support infrastructure, please click and sign up if you want to receive updates on the activities in your area and to purchase poultry at a local farm or through one of our local drop-sites.

Northfield

Cannon Falls

Red Wing Area

Dodge Center, Kasson Area

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.

I heard today of the Goldman Environmental Price, given to Jesús León Santos of Mexico. Read his story, if you listed to my own story on The Story, you will see that my story isn’t really just one, there are millions of us who can contribute greatly to the sustainability of this country’s food and agriculture system.

Here is a quote from his award that illustrates my point “It is time we recognize that traditional agricultural methods can make strong contributions to biodiversity conservation. We should encourage it and value it as a way to produce healthy foods that conserve and care for the environment.”