Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on June 29, 2011
We often talk about support infrastructure as a key component of success in a systems change approach, no matter the target, the support infrastructure is critical. Last week we had a 
tremendous opportunity to take a huge step in building this support infrastructure. We were visited by a large number (over 60) of program officers and representatives of foundations from across the country at our humble experimental farm in Northfield, Minnesota as part of the annual meeting of the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders.
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.
Posted by Kblanchard on June 28, 2011
My name is Rafael Martinez and I am interning this summer with the Rural Enterprise Center. I am a student of agronomy at Monterrey Tech (ITESM), in Querétaro, México, interested in the relationship between nature and people through agriculture.
My journey began 13 months ago, when I first came to the Midwest. That first summer I had the opportunity to work on a couple of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms in Iowa, and later attend Iowa State University as an exchange student during the fall. It was during this time that I learned about sustainable agriculture as an alternative to overcome flaws of our current food production systems.
My original plan was to attend Iowa State for the whole academic year. Unfortunately, due to the political and social situation in Mexico, ISU and other universities were forced to stop sending students there, canceling the exchange program with my home university until further notice. It was then that I choose to take this as an opportunity to obtain experience by getting involved in agriculture development projects. This winter, I worked at the Center for Rural Affairs in a Latino farmer outreach project. It was through this work that heard about the Rural Enterprise Center, and it’s unique approach to social issues and sustainable agriculture.
During this first three weeks of work here I’ve been most involved with the construction of the chicken production demonstration site at the Agripreneur Training Center and the development and facilitation of the training program. It has been hard (and muddy) work, but has given me the chance to meet this awesome community and hear about the ideas and the commitment of the people involved in this project. It is rewarding to see the chicken coop being built and the trainees taking it very seriously, making plans to actually start their own business. Bob Kell and Katie Blanchard have been wonderful too, giving me just the right support and making sure I’m having a good time.
Working with Rural Enterprise Center, I’ve been learning not just about the barriers and limitations that the Latino community faces in becoming agricultural producers, but also integral approaches to overcome them. I’ve always believed that I’m in a position to be a mediator between Americans and the Latino community since I deeply understand both cultures and especially the problems that immigrants faced in Latin America and when they establish here in the US. I’m glad that my work here at REC is helping me develop leadership skills to be a better me a better mediator, while letting me participate in this project.
I will be around for three more weeks, since I need to get ready to begin classes in August. I hope that the success of the Agripreneur Training Program brings along other projects to allow future interns the opportunity to learn about the Latino community and the training and support of beginner farmers
(Katie’s Note: It has been great to have Rafael around, and we are especially thankful for his hard work on the chicken coop. We look forward to many future opportunities for student intern involvement in the Agripreneur Training Program!)
Posted by Kblanchard on June 1, 2011
I want to be a real farmer. Honestly, you could say I don’t really have anything right now. I want information, ideas, experience, and support. But I do have this goal, and when you have a goal, you can reach it.
I grew up on a farm helping my father grow corn, beans, and papaya, and raise pigs. I loved that work. I want to raise chickens here and have some land to grow vegetables. I want my children to get to experience the life that I liked so much growing up.
I want to be the best onion grower in Minnesota!
The quotes above represent just a sampling of the ambitious and inspiring goals described by our new class of Agripreneur trainees at our introductory class this Saturday.
After working through the papeleo of registration forms, photo permissions, schedules, and guidelines, I sketched a path on on the chalkboard—the path from now to five-years-from-now. I described how the Agripreneur Training Program will include training on immediate skills and will also be and investment in skills for the future. We’ll learn about feeding chickens today and about financial management planning for the long-term, for example.
After this introduction, I set everyone loose to imagine their path—where do we want to be in 5 years? If it’s 2016, what do we want to see when we look around?
I had given five minutes for participants to brainstorm, but we had to take five more—everyone was scribbling away in their notebooks, drawing pictures of fields, chickens, vegetables, houses, and family members.
When it came time to share, the feelings of hope, excitement and desire for change were palpable in the room. Individually, the participants reflected on everything they lack along their path, but this was coupled with a communal reflection on the strength they share as a group, a team, a community of people who all want to reach their goals. The room erupted in applause for the particularly ambitious goals of a few participants, and nodded in support of the honesty of one participant who didn’t, or couldn’t, imagine himself in five years— He said, “I can’t think about the harvest when I don’t even know what I’m going to plant yet!”
And thus we begin the Agripreneur Training Program! From now until August, this group will come together to learn business-planning essentials and in-field skills. They’ll learn about financial management of a farm business, and the feed requirements of chickens, about marketing and manure-curing.
If the energy and interest of these introductory classes have been any indication, it’s sure to be an exciting season.
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.
Posted by Kblanchard on April 29, 2011
How can you support the next generation of farmers? What role can our community play in a sustainable regional food system?
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!
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on April 22, 2011
As a child growing up back in Guatemala, I worked in the fields with my father,
uncles and my brothers. Our land, is still in the family under the care of my youngest brother Elias. It is located about 1.5 hours walk from where my family lives in the Barrio Ixobel in the municipality of Poptún in the Northern rainforest province of Petén.
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.
tremendous opportunity to take a huge step in building this support infrastructure. We were visited by a large number (over 60) of program officers and representatives of foundations from across the country at our humble experimental farm in Northfield, Minnesota as part of the annual meeting of the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders.
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.
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.
