Latino Enterprise Center (LEC)

Seriously, I had a visit today by Debra K. Walchuk, State Outreach Coordinator for the US Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service. She is based out of Bemidji and took time her regional schedule to stop by.

With Debra, came Jeffery L. Koster, RC&D coordinator for the Hiawatha Valley region also of the same agency. We reviewed basic components of the Latinos in Agriculture Program that we have been working with, what it will take to put together a training center for new farmers in our region, and how to convert our current experiences into a regional opportunity for promoting the outreach for their agency to Latino farmers.

Jeffery has a wealth of networks with resources for Latino farmers, among those resources are pasture raised pork and other livestock, opportunities to work with him on specific issues such as documentation of our current experimentation with medicinal plants to improve our poultry’s immune system and how it may translate into better quality meat, etc.

I see possibilities working with the USDA, given their size and scope though, I know that we must concentrate our relationship on one project that we can start and complete effectively. Building an enterprise training center based on sustainable farming systems on the Manor’s farm by 35W and Hwy 1 in Dundas (next to Northfield), seems like the project that may put us in a path to a partnership. To this partnership we have brought a larger network of organizations working with small and emerging farmers in the state. This visit goes a long way in continuing to build the support infrastructure to successfully launch Latino/a farmers in the state.

I believe that Jeff and Debra’s outreach program and conservation can directly participate in our plan to engage Paula Manor and her Husband and their 35 acre farm that they have offered to us. To meet our and their (farm owners’) goals, we are designing a farming center that would reflect a diversity of people, cultures, and diversified and sustainable farming systems. We are now coming together with a solid proposal if we combine all of the experiences that we are accumulating in our region plus the support that this agency may be able to provide through the statewide office and through Jeff in our region.

As usual, I will keep you all posted on what gets accomplished as things happen.

A religious music group formed by musicians from Northfield and Faribault will hold a public concert on the parking lot of St. Dominic’s Catholic Church in Northfield on July 5th from 6 to 10 pm.

I met Roberto Ibanez over 9 months ago when he was looking for a place to record a solo disk. My neighbor Craig Wasner, happens to have a state-of-the art recording studio and was willing to donate his time to support this new entrepreneur. What came out of that process is a recorded disk that Roberto (Charlie) will have available at the concert on July 5th.

Roberto is not in this alone, he plays with other musicians from Northfield, and his group joined another group from Faribault recently as a way to put together the outdoor concert and introduce themselves to the wider community. I was invited to visit their rehearsing room at the Catholic church in Faribault last week, I took some pictures and recorded one of the songs that they were rehearsing.

Despite my inexperience with supporting artists, we are doing what we do for every entrepreneur, getting the word out about their work, helping them envision their business within a larger market context and supporting their business planning process to reduce their risks and increase their chances of success, those elements apply to all enterprises so we are happy to be part of this experience with this group.

On the drums is Carlos.

Efrain on the guitar

On the base is B.To Ibanez (Charlie), B for Beto, Beto for Roberto.

Not pictured: Oscar, Camen, Jose Luis and Miguel who play different instruments and will be at the concert on July 5th.

Here is also a short digital video that I took while visiting and that they gave me permision to post.

I had the chance to have Cecilia Alvarez from the Enterprise Assistance Fund in Montevideo, MN visit us today.  With her was Chuck Waibel, owner of Garden Goddess Produce in Milan, MN.  Chuck is a researcher and producer of vegetables for winter distribution, a really interesting operation that grows and stores food in the summer and distributes it in the winter.  We have a lot to learn from these folks as we look into the winter months for our production in Northfield and other areas.

Chuck also produces vegetables during the winter through a system of solar heated greenhouses that require a very small amount of heat during the coldest weeks of the year.  He is sharing all of this data with us in Northfield and the blue prints for a chicken/greenhouse that he has developed with the purpose of extending the chicken growing season as well as combining their production with vegetables under the same facilities, also taking advantage of the heat generated by the birds.

Kay Fernholz was also part of the contingent, whom, with her sister Annette run Earth Rise Farm out of Madison, MN.  They established a foundation as the legal entity behind their farming operation and training center.

I had learned from these folks back in 2001 and then again recently as we assembled a statewide network of resources to support Latino families getting into agriculture.  Recently, our partnership work with the Land Stewardship Project on farm management training brought us back to looking at Earth Rise Farm as we envision a physical location in the western part of the state where we can launch a program of this kind.

Working with Cecilia Alvarez to strengthen our links, and to share experiences for the benefit our Latino communities around rural MN has been very productive.  In the coming months, we will be learning more about Chuck\’s winter production methods and as we train Latino/a farmers in the Northfield/Faribault area, we will incorporate this new technologies and production and marketing methods.

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to meet a very nice group of people who are ready to take initiative and launch their businesses in our region.

Carlos Miguel Paredez Valiente, used to own a business in Mexico City, he started a company that consolidated sells of bus tickets to destinations all over the country. He now lives in Northfield and is exploring two possible business opportunities, one in regional tourism, and another in transportation. This exploratory process should clear the picture for him so that we can concentrate on a business planning process to launch him on the best option.

Clemente Lopez Arcos, is also from Mexico City, he lives in Northfield and has been interested in learning more about sustainable home building. He is looking to explore the possibility of starting a solar electrical systems company, to include solar panels, solar shingles, and passive-solar heating and other similar systems.

I ended the day meeting with three other people who have come together to start a residential remodeling company. They are Isidory Cornelio “Izzy” a graduate of Northfield High School, Gabriel R. Hitzil and Marie Langlie. A fourth member to this partnership was unavailable for today’s meeting.

Over the coming weeks, we will be holding exploratory and business planning meetings with these folks as we continue to chart a course of action for each of their initiatives.

On Sunday June 1st, I also traveled to Worthington where I met with food vendors and other business owners. My primary purpose for this trip was to meet with Adolfo Avila, an business consulting officer with the Southwest Initiative Foundation. Adolfo provides business consulting services to Latino/a business owners in the region and crosses over to Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation’s 20 county South-central region.

My specific purpose was to discuss Adolfo’s own farm operation out of Tracy, Minnesota and his interest in distributing our Northfield grown poultry in that part of the state. He is well connected and respected in the region and a good marketing partner to our organization.

Adolfo owns a 10 acre farm just west of Tracy and is interested in exploring using his farm as another training center for the region’s emerging Latino farmers. Having raised pigs in the past, he already knows the challenges and opportunities associated with livestock and will be a good asset to our rural farmers network.

We have now assembled a group large enough to organize our second formal general business training workshop. After visiting with over 25 business owners, we now have 15 who have asked for business management training. We will organize this training in cooperation with established partners such as the Southern MN Initiative Foundation, the Southwest Initiative Foundation, the Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce, the Northfield Enterprise Center, the Northfield Community Action Center and the Faribault Diversity Coalition.

I recently took the leadership team from the Northfield Area Latino Poultry CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) to negotiate a partnership with Callister Farms, in West Concord, South of Northfield.

Building local and regional partnerships is not something that just happens for us, it is an strategic component and key to success in our development model for rural Latino communities. Since we focus on the entrepreneurs, these entrepreneurs must be trained and educated on ways, strategies and know-how as it relates to why, when, how, and with whom to build partnerships, so that we can reduce the risks associated with launching Latino/a-led business initiatives in our rural areas.

So first why a partnership.? For us Latinos and Latinas in rural areas, if there is a partnership opportunity, it is really a golden opportunity to reduce risks associated with starting or growing a business, relate to a larger part of our communities, and build a healthier relationship and presence in rural areas. At the LEC level, when we think of strategies, partnership building is a sound and solid strategy to deliver concrete results in launching Latino farming businesses. Partnerships is also natural to farmers in rural communities and key to small farming systems in today\’s globalization and outsourcing environment.

Those of us who just came from \”underdeveloped third world countries\” can probably contribute to the strategic components that made rural communities and their people key players in our food system in the past. Many of us are here in the first place because we lost our local sustenance systems to global trade structures where a family farm\’s role in the economic vitality of rural communities is not yet factored. In short, we believe that we understand how immigrant populations integrate, but most importantly, we are doing our best to deliver a process that is clear and easy to understand, that is based on the premise that we must first fully utilize what we have, and all of this lends us building partnerships that can contribute to strengthen the rural economy, and where the Latino populations can realize their full potential to make positive contributions.

Why Callister Farm: Because they are a well rooted, responsible (both socially and environmentally), family owned, hard working farmers in our region. Because they own underutilized poultry processing infrastructure that we can improve upon while securing a needed service for the Northfield Area Latino Poultry CSA to succeed.

When: This is easy to figure out, since we want to deliver a high quality product processed in a certified facility. The answer to \”when\” was a very fast \”right away.\”

Callister Farm was the first suggestion by Wayne Martin at the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture at the UofM. Wayne is a specialist in developing this kind of operations and knows his stuff, so we looked at other places and ended right where started talking to the Callisters.

How: This part goes with the flow, how depends on what we have, what they have, what them and us needed from the partnership, etc. The how sort of comes out in the form of a \”to-do\” list based on our imagination, expertise we draw on, and most than anything, the level of trust and relationship that makes the \”how\” much easier when you talk face-to-face with a farmer who knows what it takes to get started and understands that your success is also his or her own.

Here is a slide show of the visit.

Recent increases in grain and fuel prices have affected our pultry growing prices significantly. We have updated prices after we were hit by a significant increase in our feed prices. Though our products are distributed locally and we avoid a lot of transportation costs associated with distribution of the final products, the feed is a whole different story.

Most of the links to old order forms have been removed from our website, we won’t be mailing the older order forms anymore and new ones are coming to accomodated these rapid changes in our food prices.

New updated order forms are now available in English and Spanish.

Just in case you are wondering why some of the links to the brochure and order forms are not working, it is because we have moved them to one location.

To order, print and mail order form from our brochure in English or Spanish.

Things are moving fast for our poultry entrepreneurs at the Northfield Area Latino Poultry CSA.

Over the last month, we finished the infrastructure to grow up to 1,000 chickens per round. Though there are only 500 in the first batch, the infrastructure we have in place can easily handle twice as much without compromising our operating principles.

Over the last month, we have also seen many visitors, from families who just want to learn how chickens grow, customers who have signed up to bring their kids to watch the growing process, to each family of the members of the group that was formed to run this operation. Altogether we have had over 30 people come visit, mostly family of the farmers and many of their friends.

This group of leaders in-charge of the operation have worked hard at many levels, just building the fence was a huge undertaking, once the post were in during the fall of 2007 we could only wait until the spring of 2008. Once the ice started melting, the chicken wire went up, and the warming house for the little ones was fixed up, then came the larger building where the first round of 500 birds is now inhabiting.

We bought very little materials and we built the place ourselves, we spent less than $4000 total, including the first order of feed.

Since birds take up to 8 weeks to be ready for processing, we have ordered extras to serve last minute customers. So if you have not ordered your chickens yet, print and fill out the order form and mail it to us with your payment.

Here is also an updated slideshow of the growing flock.

Juan Marinez, is a friend and MSU Federal Liaison at Michigan State University and a great resource on federal farm and agriculture trade policy. He forwarded a message that gives so much meaning to our chicken operation in Northfield, that I thought I would post it for your enjoyment and hopefully trigger some new thinking.

As you read this article, keep in mind that NAFTA was approved in January 1994 under the Clinton Administration, but it was not until this last January 2008 that it was fully implemented.

Our chickens won’t be marching to protest NAFTA downtown Northfield, and those of us working on this business have too much work, but we can all oppose unfair trade and agriculture policies by being responsible consumers as we go about our day, this is something that we can all benefit from and CAN be done by everyone.

If you think that building local food systems and linking consumers directly to farmers is something you would like to support, then stop for a minute, print our order form and send in your order for Northfield grown pastured chickens.

Two Chicken Stories: NAFTA’s Real Winners and Losers

Laura Carlsen | April 17, 2008

Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP)

Pedro Martin works on a chicken farm just outside the village of Pegueros, Jalisco. The state of Jalisco ranks among Mexico’s top chicken-producing states, providing the nation with 11% of all chicken meat produced.

Many of Pedro’s friends and relatives have already left Pegueros, pushed up north by the bleak joblessness and poverty of their hometown. But Pedro told the Washington Post that he’s determined to stick it out in Mexico.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week was full of activity, we had a business training workshop on Saturday and worked on planting some of the cover crops and forage for the chickens in our poultry operation, Martha Ortega, of Agstar was there as well as a trainee and to share her experiences working with beginning farmers as a financial associate with the organization. This new effort, added to last year’s training on farming and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) operations management. Here is a slideshow of those experiences including last Saturday’s group, tomorrow (Wednesday April 23) we have a continuation of this work at the Northfield Community Resource Center from 6 to 9:30 pm.

Yesterday, we had a larger crew finishing the roof on the outdoor chicken house (serves as night shelter, and watering and feeding area for the birds) and planting more cover crops.

We are experimenting with four different cover crops, two types of clover, a mix of pasture grasses, legumes and clover, and black beans as foraging material (worked well last year). We will be documenting how the birds utilize this forages this year so that we can make more informed and better decisions in the future. We will keep experimenting with other plants as well, including Portulaca oleracia L or Pursley (I believe is commonly called), which is allegedly much richer in Omega 3 than flax, Camelina sativa or spinach.

Here is a slideshow on yesterday’s activities, including all of the attention that the little birds are getting from customers and neighbors visiting our operation.