LEC and the Minnesota Food Association Plan to Expand Services to Rural Minnesota Agriculture Entrepreneurs

Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on December 8, 2007

Last Wednesday December 6, I traveld to St. Croix MN to visit with the Minnesota Food Association’s personnel to discuss a plan that we have been exploring since Joci Tilsen, Director of Programs, and her husband came to visit our vegetable gardens, chicken and black bean production here in Northfield.  That day we were also visited by a number of folks from the state’s department of agriculture, Mankato, Lewinston, Willmar, etc.  The discussions involved issues of supporting Latino/a farmers in many of the rural towns of Minnesota where there is demand for farm business exploration, training, technical assistance, lending and other business development areas that we cover at the Latino Enterprise Center.

At our meeting this last week, we concentrated on the conceptual, operational and financial aspects of a partnership, and agreed to work on a full business plan that would spell out all of the details necessary to launch such partnership. The objectives of a partnership would be defined by combining the strenghts of each organization to meet the needs of rural Latinos/as interested in farming and by tapping each others strenghts.  This non-profit vertion of a “joint venture” promises to bring needed services for Latino/a farmers in key areas such as Worthington, Austin and Owatonna and of course Faribault and Northfield.  We also looked into the other areas where an LEC and MFA partnership could serve given our established partner organizations and their confirmed interest in working with the Latino communities.

At the end of the meeting we all posed for a picture, from left to right are Annalisa Hultberg, a graduate student at the UofMN college of agriculture who is volunteering as a fundraiser for LEC, next in front is me, behind me is Wayne Martin, Associate Program Director, Alternative Livestock Production Systems for the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture at the UofM.  Next is Juan Carlos Cervantes, the Latino Coordinator for the New Immigrant Program at the MFA, behind Juan Carlos is Glenn Hill, Executive Director of the MFA, in front is Joci Tilsen, Director of Programs at MFA to end with Teresa Cuperus, Big River Foods Coordinator.

The possibility of a statewide partnership among agriculture organizations to serve the growing Latino population has been under exploration since 2006 when I did a research project for the Land Stewardship Project and documented what we believe is an opportunity to diversity the rural agriculture landscape.  Organizations in this exploration process include Rural Communities Program at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (Minneapolis), Minnesota Food Association, Land Stewardship Project (White Bear Lake, Willmar and Lewinston), Rural Advantage (Fairmont), Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota (covers the state through local chapters).

The business plan to tackle these issues will include an in depth conversation and exploration of partnership opportunities with all of the organizations above, but the operations management experience in terms of business training seems to be concentrated between the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings Program, the MFA New Immigrant Program’s Latino component and the LEC which is focused on the enterprise development process of rural Latinos.