Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on February 24, 2009
At a meeting at Plaza Morena Restaurant in Owatonna on February 17 2009, a diverse group of restaurant and food business owners from Red Wing, Waseca, Albert Lee, Owatonna and Faribault meet to discuss an organizing process to secure higher level of cooperation and organization in the food business owners sector of the Southern Minnesota region.
Under the direction of the Rural Enterprise Center, the group will undergo a process of exploration of the regional opportunities within the retail food industry, the established capacity of the Latino/a owned restaurants and food businesses, the constrains and difficulties of growing these businesses within a down economy, razor thing margins and a competitive environment. Growing the influence and presence of these businesses, requires a plan based on in-depth analysis of the overall movement of goods and services and the business environment and industry related opportunities. A work-plan and strategy to significantly improve the ability of the region’s Latino/a restaurant and other food business owners to grow and thrive will be conducted, and exploration into how these restaurants can partner with other Latino/a-owned food production and processing systems will be a key component of any future planning.
These efforts also contribute marginal value to the growing Latino/a food production and value added processing initiatives underway at the Rural Enterprise Center, where we have designed a process for integrating some of the lines of production and distribution that are key in capturing more of the value added dollars of the food chain. Stay tuned, there will be more coming.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on February 9, 2009
Over 100 people packed the chapel room on the back of the main church at Saint Joseph Catholic Church in Red Wing last night to continue an organizing process that started towards the end of 2008 at the first community-wide meeting organized by the Goodhue County Hispanic Outreach.
Although the organizing process was just started last November, the community has shown interest and leadership. The Rural Enterprise Center has provided the organizing model and training for the local leadership to follow a process of engagement that focuses on previously identified opportunities, specifically issues of economic development that are at the center of the motivation of these families struggling to get out of poverty and find ways to more fully participate in their new hometowns.
From the participants last night, 18 signed up to engage in food production enterprises. With a free range poultry model already under implementation, these families can be integrated into the regional farming network and matched with the many farmers that are coming forward offering to mentor these newcomers and also provide access to land under a variety of partnership arrangements.
Last Friday, a group of farmers from the area meet at the initiative of Clarence Bishop, a regional food systems organizer and farmer working on the Red Wing farmers market and the Riverbend Food Cooperative. The Rural Enterprise Center’s model for incorporating Latino families into the regional food system was the purpose of the meeting. The combined land available from all of the participants already exceeds 500 acres and some of the farmers have already met with Latino families in preparation for possible work to be done during the growing season in 2009.
Though not al of these acreage is being made available, as our model gains momentum and the contacts with regional farmers grow, more land will be made available so that these new immigrant families can add new faces to the regional food and agriculture landscape together with new ways of producing food, in the pursuit of a more sustainable local and regional food system and healthier communities and economies.
As new immigrants in this community, Latino families have many questions about other issues, so legal resources were brought in to help them with basic immigrant rights and emergency preparedness. It is every family’s responsibility to be ready in case of any disruption of the community by natural or other kind of situation where families are separated and children put at risk.
Many more meetings like this will continue to happen throughout the region as we prepare a larger regional agenda for 
bringing all of these community’s leadership together to tackle important economic development opportunities and their larger role as integral part of the population growth of these rural small towns.
Smaller but more frequent meetings allow for continued organizing that will result in the launch of more food, agriculture an manufacturing enterprises. Specialized training of key individuals that show potential to take larger scale leadership roles in the civic and economic life of their communities will grow the future generation of leaders in these communities.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on February 4, 2009
Many things have happened at the Rural Enterprise Center recently, among them has been the follow-up to our project to develop a regional network of Hispanic/Latino owned restaurants, which has become a key economic development sector for Southern MN and is directly connected to food, agriculture and related value added and manufacturing opportunities. These sector is key in implementing economic development that attracts interest from low income families (our primary target market), and adds significant value to the economic pie and regional competitiveness.
This strategy has a promise of a faster net return on investment per entrepreneur launched, as these entrepreneurs’ economic contributions do not demand that city’s or counties sink tax-payer funds as a lure, but rather to deploy existing resources in the region that currently lay unproductive, and these resources include the local entrepreneurs who are already excited and willing to put themselves and any resource they may have, on the line to grow a local enterprise and grow our regional economic pie.
Some of the projects moving along this year include:
An Agripreneurs Training Center with a focus on training, launching and developing new farming enterprises in the region.
A regional network of restaurant owners, and a marketing and communications partnership program to establish a larger business to business relationship for these food retail sector.
Community garden growth to 100 plots in Northfield.
Establishing a strong network of organizations and resources in Red Wing where another community garden will be launched.
In Faribault, we have started building a network of organizations and resources also with similar goals as Northfield and Red Wing.
All of these city-based projects benefit from the larger regional support infrastructure that has been developing continuously over the last year and a half. In Red Wing, we are also part of planning for a farmers market and a food cooperative.
Recently, we also had a visit from Rodrigo Marquez and Daniel Castillo from the Mexican Consulate in St. Paul, they hope to organize delivery of educational services and other community benefits for Northfield in areas that the consulate specializes in. 
Jose Vanegas and Maria Sosa came from Faribault to meet with the consulate representatives. These connections are crucial in supporting leadership development in our region and to increase the consulate’s ability to deliver much needed government to government relations and services to Mexican citizens in our region. 
Joane Paul from the Goodhue county Hispanic Outreach Committee in Red Wing was here also to meet with our visitors and make this important connection.
Stay tuned for more updates, many more are coming.
Under the direction of the Rural Enterprise Center, the group will undergo a process of exploration of the regional opportunities within the retail food industry, the established capacity of the Latino/a owned restaurants and food businesses, the constrains and difficulties of growing these businesses within a down economy, razor thing margins and a competitive environment. Growing the influence and presence of these businesses, requires a plan based on in-depth analysis of the overall movement of goods and services and the business environment and industry related opportunities. A work-plan and strategy to significantly improve the ability of the region’s Latino/a restaurant and other food business owners to grow and thrive will be conducted, and exploration into how these restaurants can partner with other Latino/a-owned food production and processing systems will be a key component of any future planning.
