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 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.

Rural Enterprise Center is eager to invite you to join the conversation at a FREE event co- sponsored with Just Food Co-op and the Northfield Arts Guild.

The event is Friday, May 13 at 7 p.m. at the Northfield Arts Guild Theater
(311 W. Third Street, Northfield).

Look Who’s Knockin’, is a new one-act play from Land Stewardship Project, coming to Northfield for one night only. The 45-minute play focuses on a retiring farm couple’s dilemma as they wrestle with the future of their farm.

After the play we’ll have a panel and community discussion moderated by Ken Meter, economist and president of Crossroads Resource Center, with a panel including Melanie Reid, Just Food Co-op general manager and Reginaldo (Regi) Haslett-Marroquin, Rural Enterprise Center director.

Refreshments will provided from Just Food Co-op.

Call (507) 650-0106 or stop by Just Food Co-op to reserve your FREE ticket. Or email us, and we’ll reserve a seat for you!

This is sure to be a wonderful, enlightening evening. Invite friends & neighbors! We look forward to seeing you there!

We used to spend from Monday through Friday in the fields as the walk back and forth from home was too much on top of working 10 hours a day. One of us would go back mid-week to fetch provisions — mostly corn tortillas to supplement beans and other farm products we would cook at the farm. Once in a while my mother would send a plastic bucket with fried eggs and potatoes and we would have a feast for dinner.

On the way home on Saturday afternoons after a long week we learned to make sure that the loads for the horses and the loads that we carried on our backs where properly packaged and loaded so that we could carry them all of the way. Too heavy and we could not make it. Too light and we would waste our energy. Since we would start out cold, we would stop shortly after beginning to let our muscles relax. We took advantage of these breaks to check the loads of corn, pineapples, coffee, squash, avocados, firewood, and other products as they would settle and the ropes loosen. This was especially important with the horses as a loose rope or an unbalanced load could scare or overburden them. We had to take care of the whole “team” – ourselves, the horses, and younger brothers who were slower.

Thirty years later, how are these lessons critical to running the Rural Enterprise Center?

If you are really following my story, you will see processes, organization, task management, mission planning, execution, corrective measures to ensure proper direction, and estimating loads and distance to ensure successful delivery. What we do today has everything to do with those processes down to the last detail. It is just a different country, environment, and culture. The loads are just as heavy, and the path we are putting families on is also one out of poverty as best as we can design it in this new land of abundance and discrepancy between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’

At the Rural Enterprise Center, we are entering a very important phase of development:

• Since January this year, we have hired Katie Blanchard as Agripreneur Training Manager, Bob Kell as Training Farm Manager, and Maria Sosa as Outreach Coordinator.
• Christine Sartor, a Northfield resident and local food systems enthusiast is working with Hillside Farmers Co-op to build-out their direct sales strategy.
• Also part of the Co-op, Todd Prink of Cannon Falls has become the anchor farmer for the poultry division, Scott Johnson is the grain processing and distribution manager, and Victor Torres and several others are moving forward with poultry production. Many are producing vegetables for their families and market.
• A recently developed partnership with Just Food Cooperative in Northfield has been built as a community entry point for volunteers interested in helping at the Agripreneur Training Farm, where training will begin this growing season.
• Another partnership with Saint Olaf College’s Center for Experiential Learning is helping us connect with valuable student talent. Currently six students are working on a community-wide business environmental scan and another student is managing Faith Community Gardens.

The families we work with need a path out of poverty. As we create a path we see their traditions, background, experience, aspirations and dreams as some of the most valuable assets that define their determination to succeed and to do what it takes. But what we know too well, is that success in this sector will only come when we design paths that redefine their role in sustainable agriculture, food and natural resources management systems. Just preparing people to “get jobs” in a system will not do it not will it work if all we do it is help them with their life loads a couple of steps and drop them back into the existing structures and systems which are not designed for the poor to succeed to say the least. In creating this path, we are also defining our own institutional role in this new system. We started cold on this journey in 2007; this is our first stop to let our muscles relax, check our loads, re-estimate the path in front of us, and make sure it aligns with the paths of the families we work with.

The path is very long and I hope you will consider joining us. If we work as communities to make more of our food local and sustainable, there is no limit to how many generations can continue to do the same, but we must be systematic in the design of processes, relentless in observing, learning and adapting, and competitive in the launch of new sustainable systems that align with family farm values and can be scaled to deliver for the whole marketplace.

The Cannon River SFA Chapter will hold their annual meeting at 3:30 p.m. following the Farm To School program. Electing officers and planning activities for 2011 are up for discussion.

This event is free to the public but please RSVP to kzeman@kmwb.net or (507) 664-9446 by Jan. 26.