Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on December 30, 2008
2008 will see a significant increase in activity in the following food and agriculture work areas at the Rural Enterprise Center:
- Poultry Operation: We will expand the growers network for our Southern Minnesota free range chicken brand “Pollo de Campo” (Free Range Chicken).
- The Northfield community garden will expand to 100 plots to include up to 75 families
- We will support the development of a community garden in Red Wing and the Morristown area west of Faribault.
- New market gardeners will be launched
- A regional new Latino farmers support system will be deployed to serve new areas where Latino/a leadership is found.
We look forward to engaging our existing partners and to finding new partners and networks of supporters to connect with.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on December 20, 2008
The Rural Enterprise Center has been engaged in assembling the partnerships needed to launch an agripreneurs (agriculture entrepreneurs) training center with an eye on the Southern half of the state as a target region, with Dakota, Rice and Steele county as target areas for initial deployment.
We understand that food and agriculture have been and will always be key sectors of our economy. According to the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota “Food and agriculture, the largest U.S. economic sector, commands a trillion dollars of retail sales, with critical impacts on employment, environment, and public health.”
I can also add without hesitation that the food and agriculture industry has impacted our social fabric and the health of our communities. In Rural Minnesota, Latino families heavily depend on these industries for jobs, which in turn shape social patterns and define the economies of these families. It is well documented that this sector also drives down wages and benefits, contributing to Southern Minnesota’s downturn in wages over the last 20 years. An irony considering the influence of such sector and a curse for the Latino community which provides much needed labor but can’t capitalize on the benefits, at least not under current structures.
As we think of strategic paths to support Latino families in rural Minnesota we see food and agriculture as a key sector to target for new enterprise development that can turn expanding markets into a new economic opportunities for this population, not only as providers of labor for this industry but in ways where the economic benefits can be improved. In order to accomplish results in this area, we need to explore systems and processes that create competitive advantages for this new population, while contributing to the competitiveness of the region as a whole. This results won’t come as a result of doing business as usual.
In the last 6 months, we have assembled a model and the support infrastructure that will allow us to launch a system to reach, screen, train, launch, support and grow new Latino farmers on a regional basis. This process have involved dozens of meetings, conference calls and many other forms of networking, most importantly, it has been a process of undurstanding the reallities of Latino families in the region. From the job siuation to leadership roles, from skills to knowledge of farm management, from farming experiences to potential interest in launching agriculture enterprises.
During 2008, many families participated in our food and agriculture efforts, although not fully deployed, the system resulted in 5 families growing range grown poultry, 30 families grew vegetables at our 48 plot community garden, 3 families became market gardeners, and we engaged families in Faribault, Owatonna and Red Wing in an exploratory process. We have now built a support infrastructure and structured the launch of a brand name for the poultry products with an eye on regional production and larger scale growth for 2009.
As the snow falls outside on the longest night of the year we are busy crunching numbers, working with farmers on their plans for the spring, researching winter farming options through season extension systems and cold frame techniques, organizing a cooperative of farmers, and so much more that I know spring will be here too soon for what we need to accomplish before it warms up again.
Stay in touch, stay warm, and enjoy the last days of the year.
Here is a video about winter farming, altough we are mostly collecting data this winter, we will be planting a 30×32 feet space in February 2009 with around 16 varieties of cold season greens that grow well in Minnesota’s limited winter light. Come fall 2009 though, we plan to be set-up to keep some families engaged for most of the winter months deliverying fresh vegetables.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on December 15, 2008
Red Wing community leaders achieved a major milestone in the process of organizing a leadership network in the larger task of putting together a community-wide infrastructure to support families in moving farther into, and participating in the life of the larger Red Wing area community.
The process was organized by the Goodhue County Hispanic Outreach Program and led by Adriana Thuerauf. The Rural Enterprise Center provided background for the process, materials, training, and other support needed to structure and develop an emergency preparedness plan and community-wide engagement strategies that have been utilized in Northfield to accomplish similar goals.
Last night’s meeting attracted over 75 Latino individuals, many of them whole families with children. Within this group were individuals with clear leadership potential that we will continue to engage as we move from the basic community organizing process into the engagement of these key network in economic development and other community building infrastructure projects.
The organizing process brought together outside forces as well, up to 40 individuals and organizations in the area have signed up to serve as a larger area support network for Latino-led initiatives, this coalition of organizations plus the presence of key regional leaders made the meeting more meaningful not only for the future efforts that were ignited though this building block, but as a motivational component and true show of support for the Latino community leadership development from the larger community leadership.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on December 1, 2008
I hope everyone who reads this blog had a great day of giving thanks, what a great American celebration. I mean it from the standpoint of producing turkeys and marketing them, of course one can be sarcastic and still truthful or viceversa on this issue. The truth is that I had a great time with my extended family in this country that I gained as a result of marriage, which also means that I have adopted (or have been adopted) into great culture and traditions. Although I keep my own, the more traditions and cultural experiencies, the merrier, specially if they involve such volumes of food.
Altough lately I have not written as regularly as I normally do, I hope to keep you engaged. We are busy working on many plans in preparation for the 2009 spring, it is a great therapeutic way to spend the winter and a wonderful time for planning, centering and re-energizing.
We are currently working on consolidating the great experiences from 2008 in the large community gardening that we put together in Northfield, surveying the families who participated and preparing to expand the garden to 100 plots for 2009. We will also be launching at leat three market gardeners in the extra 5 acres of land next to the gardens while we plan larger community gardening expansion.
We have also dedicated time to help community leaders in Red Wing organize a community-wide support system to start a process of reaching out and launching new Latino/a entrepreneurs in that area, for now we are working on the social and business environment in preparation for further engagement of the regional leadership in enterprise work.
In northfield we finished the first business planning and management training, graduated 10 individals and assisted a similar number in sustainaing the business or exploring their ideas.
We are also preparing for our second round of training, this time in Faribault, where we are engaging a large network of community leaders, partners, sponsors and individual entrepreneurs.
In Owatonna, a good number of potential farmers have surfaced and we are now preparing the curriculum to launch a farming start-up and planning training as well as helping others acquire land and assembling a marketing network to support them in selling their products once they get launched.
Back to Northfield, we also grew 4,000 meat chickens, produced over 17,000 lbs of meat and established a distribution partnership for the product to the Twin Cities and a 125 direct customer network that purchased over 1500 of the grown birds. We also managed to train 5 families on growing these birds and are ready to expand signifincantly for 2009.
We acquired equipment to process our own feed and distribute it to poultry growers and started sourcing larger volumes of grain directly from local farmers to supply the system. We are now also exploring new ways of processing our birds for next year so that we can expand production, processing and distribution.
Our partners network grew significanly and direct contacts with individuals and executives in the region soared. We have established over 1200 contacts since we started this process and this network has allowed us to support a significant number of new potential projects start-ups for 2009.
All in all, it has been a good year to be thankfull for and we foresee a start of 2009 in a much stronger position. Although we will be distributing a more detailed report of our activities towards the end of the year, I hope you enjoy this early installment.
The Rural Enterprise Center is a program of Main Street Project that focuses on economic development. Our mission is to strengthen communities by bringing together the support infrastructure, systems, resources and programs that rural entrepreneurs need to succeed. More...
Farmers connected with the Agripreneur Training Center may become members of the Hillside Farmers Cooperative. Co-op members produce free-range poultry and other naturally grown farm products in southeastern Minnesota. The co-op connects Latino immigrants with established farmers, helping families and the whole community thrive.
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