Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on May 11, 2011
I will be tackling this issue this coming Saturday at the former Resource Center of the Americas from the perspective of the work that we do at the Rural Enterprise Center. If you come, be prepared to think of your neighborhood’s profile and if you would be willing to volunteer to be a drop-site coordinator for Hillside Farmers Cooperative.
We are embarking in a large scale effort to build a grassroots network of direct buyers of products from Latino farmers as we prepare to launch them in free range poultry, garlic, onions and black edible beans production.
About sustainable systems: We see a sustainable system as one that produces energy as a net result. Energy is the common denominator or currency for determining the ecological sustainability of a food, agriculture and natural resources management system. A farm has energy on both ends, it comes in the form of nitrogen and other chemical compounds normally found in nature as well as energy from the sun, wind, people’s and animal labor, equipment etc. The farm is the place where specific processes convert this energy into usable energy or into raw materials that contain the energy to be made usable through value added processing or other means which also need energy to run. On the other end of the farm is energy again, this time organized and re-arranged so that we can use it. What comes in the form of BTU’s, horse power, nutrient units, etc. on one end of the farm, comes out the other end in the form of calories and other forms arranged in a way that we can use them to live on.
A sustainable food, agriculture and natural resources management system will be the one that produces a yield sufficient to supply the needs of the society. Now, are we there yet? What are the strategies that are winning in achieving this mission?
When we looked at how food is produced and decided to get into the systems design and development, we knew that in order to launch a sustainable system we had to start where it matters most. So far as we have documented, the role that minorities and people in poverty play in the food and agriculture system is the highest most important element of un-sustainability as well as appropriate systems to remove cheap labor from the conventional system, support diversity in systems ideas and other critical paths of least resistance and high returns on mission driven steps. These are the critical steps that we took and some of which I will be addressing at the presentation as I seek to engage YOU in building a new system that is sustainable. In other writings we will address this issues further, but if you want an advance on it, come Saturday to the Resource Center of the Americas and I will get you started and excited about the possibilities in front of us.
I have been meaning to write about this important report since it came out in February. A project of the Applied Research Center, The Color of Food is an account of the state of racial inequality in our food system, and a challenge to the “good food movement” (a catch-all for sustainable/local/real/slow food), stating:
A movement based on a holistic understanding of food justice needs to encompass the chain of food production that connects seeds to mouths. The food chain includes the workers that help to plant the seeds, harvest the crops, package the food, deliver the product and serve the meal to consumers.
The report is particularly interesting in what it reveals about Latino workers in the food system. As the graph below demonstrates, Latinos make up just 15.4% of the US population, but 25% of total food workers.
Despite being the most represented racial minority in food work, Latinos have the lowest median annual wage of all food workers, at $18,438/year. The median annual wage of all people of color is $19,349. For Black food workers, the median annual wage is $19,523. For Asian food workers it is $23,427, and White food workers make an annual median wage of $25,024.
The race/gender gaps in wages and management positions are also striking. Compared to a white man’s $1.00, Latino men make $0.66, and Latina Women make $0.50. Only 8.5% of managerial positions in the food system are held by Latino men, and 4.5% are held by Latina women. People of color in managerial positions also earn significantly less than White managers.
I recommend a look through the entire report; it presents the fact, clear as day: Good Food, Real Food, Sustainable Food — whatever we want to call it, it has to include justice, goodness, real wages, and sustainable lifestyles for producers, processors, distributors… all food workers.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on February 17, 2011
I posted Kate Taylor’s “goodbye Minnesota” note as she finished her work with the Rural Enterprise Center. The final product of her work includes three video recordings intended as complementary material for community leaders in other communities where we foresee developing new agripreneurs. I have added this material to the page with the full description of this approach, if you follow our work, this is a very important update.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on September 15, 2010
At the end of this post is a very short video of Jose Vanegas processing their bean harvest recently just South of Northfield, MN. His wife Maria Sosa (speaking on the background) was bringing the bean bunches and loading the “aporreadero” or beating platform. The beans are hit with a wooden stick (another fellow from El Salvador who was there the day before used two sticks one on each hand and was going at it much faster for many hours), the bean shells that are hit open up and drop down the beans into the tarp below through spaces between the 2×2 boards that the platform is made off.
A Latin American family familiar with cooking black beans in different ways can eat around 75 lbs a year. This amount can be grown in a space of 25 x 50 feet. It takes about two hours to plant it (20 inches between rows and 4 to 6 inches between plants), holes are made with a how or a shallow row is carved in the soil. Beans germinate by the 4th or 5th day. Two to three times of weed removal early in their growth can suffice, once they start flowering they need to be left alone.
90 days later, the beans dry and can be picked. Picking of this small area is done in about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Beating the beans off the shells can be done in about anouther 30 minutes. After shelling, the platform is disassembled and the beans are poured from a bucket into another on a windy day to blow the small shell pieces and dust off, a fan can be used if there is no wind.
After blowing out the dust and shells, the beans are placed on a flat surface and stones and other foreign materials are removed. The beans are ready to be stored, regular paper bags do the job great as they keep light out and moisture and air circulation, very important for keeping the viability of the beans if they are also to be used for seeds.
For many of the families we work with, food security is a primary goal of their farming operations, this simple plan can supply a family with beans for the whole year, but then why settle for a 25×50 space when families can get together and plant a couple of acres and even have some beans to sell. This is the case of the Vanegas family who planted a bit more than an acre and a half and harvested close to 3,000 lbs.
Most of the beans were harvested with a combine, after picked, they were windrowed and combined. The bean beating platform was set-up to teach the kids (many of them) something about how their parents and many generations before them have done things (in fact for over 7,000 years beans have been grown and processed in similar ways across Latin America), machines are useful and can bring benefits, but some families just can’t afford them, lack of access to machines, does not have to interfere with a family’s ability to produce and process their own food if they so desire. And if coming together, like in this case, the harvest from the Vanegas-Sosa family will be enough to provide a key source of fiber, protein, basic amino acids. Although black beans do not supply the full 9 basic amino acids, if combined with a high lysine corn variety and squash (three sisters farming system) for vitamins, a low income family can have a diet far superior than anything they can buy and except for the squash, storing these foods is as simple as setting aside a small corner of the house and keeping it protected.
This system has survived for thousands of years and can survive many thousands more, it is energy efficient and anyone can use and afford it, these and other principles are critical in the process of designing sustainable food and agriculture systems.
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...
