Energy Management

In this episode Reginaldo Haslet-Marroquin, President and CEO of Regenerative Agriculture Alliance, and Rodrigo Cala, owner of  Cala Farm and Owner-member/Secretary of Shared Ground Farmers’ Cooperative dive into the idea of regenerative agriculture as a system of energy management. From developing a regenerative business model, to using science to balance energy while farming, to how this plays out within the community, they explain some of the practices and principles they use to manage the health of the soil as well as the health of products in the marketplace. Reginaldo describes this as a way of working with nature, rather than trying to conquer it. Reginaldo and Rodrigo also discuss their work with immigrant and Latino farmers, helping them build business strategies to take them from doing cheap (or underpaid) work to being creative, getting ahead of market trends, and having such a secure system that they can last through economic hardships such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Full episode transcript available here.

Transcript

Episode 3 "Energy Management"

Tue, 12/15 8:00AM • 50:21

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

regenerative agriculture, farm, farmers, food, markets, regenerative, farms, system, community, farmer, produce, people, land, build, products, perishable, grow, crops, csa

SPEAKERS

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, Terry Hokenson, Rodrigo Cala

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin  00:00

In short, in regenerative thinking we don't think of ourselves as a producer. No one, none of us produces anything. All we do is manage energy from a non-edible form on one end, into an edible form on the other end. That edible form can be hazelnuts, can be eggs, can be chickens, can be tomatoes, peppers, whatever you want. But if you don't understand the transformational process of energy, then you're always going to be at an energy deficit. When you are at an energy deficit, you will pollute the soil and everything whether you are against it or not.

Terry Hokenson  00:42

Good morning, friends and neighbors. Welcome to the third episode in our series on regenerative agriculture. I'm Terry Hokenson, a climate movement activist with Minnesota 350 and Minnesota interfaith Power and Light. Today we're talking to Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, who is the president and CEO of Regenerative Agriculture Alliance, to get his perspective on regenerative agriculture, and why it's important. We're also talking to Rodrigo Cala, who operates the Cala Farm with his brother Carlos Cala near Turtle Lake, Wisconsin. Rodrigo also works as a trainer for the Latino Economic Development Center, and is a founding member and Secretary of the Shared Ground Farmers Cooperative. I want to welcome you both. And thank you for taking time to spend with us to dig deeper into this idea of regenerative agriculture. Regi, would you mind leading us in the land acknowledgement?

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin  01:48

Yes, not only a land acknowledgement, but I think we need to start by just quickly meditating. One, yes, we are here in Minnesota and according to the registries we're sitting on Sioux land, [ ]. So first of all, let's recognize that's where we are: we are not in America, we are not in the United States, only, we are also on lands that were occupied to create this country. Also, let's just meditate for a second on the purpose we are here for. And that's really to continue to create this collective capacity to reverse the negative impact of degenerative systems in agriculture that has resulted in incredible social, economic, and ecological degeneration. To be able to meditate on that we need to accept that we are accomplices in all of this, that we have ourselves been racist, that we have ourselves discriminated, and that in order to initiate a process of healing, we have to recognize the land we are on, and the injuries that all of us are responsible for, there is no exception. We all have done a little bit here and there, whether intentionally or not. That self awareness and that recognition really is critical. In order to start thinking about nature in a different way, and about each other in a different way. Without that recognition, we really can't start the healing process. We need to recognize that this is not something we created either. That is, this system perpetuates the colonizing, extractive, exploitative, and abusive practices seen not only against nature and people, but also animals, ecosystems, and so on. This is an inheritance that has been given to us by our ancestors. Those were colonizing systems that were built on the backs of not only native communities, but also African Americans, Latino workers, and so on. And as we recognize that, we also recognize that in order to be good and responsible ancestors ourselves for future generations, we must recognize that complexity, and that complicity, and our role in this process. Thank you for that opportunity to do this. And now move on.

Terry Hokenson  04:22

Thank you, Regi. I would like to ask each of you just some short questions about who you are so that we don't leave one of you in the midst while we go on with the conversation. So I'd like to ask each of you in turn, how do you, Regi, define the term regenerative agriculture?

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin  04:48

I define it in two ways. If I'm talking to an industry gathering, I talk about a set of practices and principles, criteria, indicators and verifiers which we utilize in order to create together how we manage the land, so that we can restore the health of the soil. They help with the processes that we use to grow food, so that we can also restore the health of the products in the marketplace. If I'm talking to our native communities and we are actually going back to the origins of regenerative, then I tackle regenerative agriculture as a way of thinking, seeing, and working with nature that recognizes the complexity of energy and the process of energy transformation that we are responsible for. And I know that definition, the second definition, is considered useless in many ways in the business community. They need to be more linear and more traditional. But for us, coming from our ground up perspective, it is really our relationship with nature that defines whether we are regenerative or not.

Terry Hokenson  05:56

So Rodrigo, would you give us your take on on the concept of regenerative agriculture and how it works for you on your farm?

Rodrigo Cala  06:06

Okay, when we talk about regeneration, I think "restore," fixing things. In my operation I feel that when we are working on the farm, we like to do a [unclear]. So in farming, we use a different process on my farm: we use cover crops, we use crop rotation, and we use soil building. So what we try to do is a regenerative system on my farm. So we tend to do year after year.

Terry Hokenson  06:47

Thank you. So now, Regi, would you tell us about your background? And would you give us some idea of what the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance is all about?

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin  06:59

Yes, our goal is to to build ecosystems and to build infrastructure. So I'm a farmer, by the way. I farm and I do very similar things to almost any other farmer on the land. We go to work every day, just like many others. But in the Alliance, I don't do farming at the Alliance, what we're doing is assembling support systems and infrastructure so that we can support the deployment of a multitude of farms that are in alignment, that are standardized, and that I have agreed to a certain set of practices, as I described at the beginning, that can allow us to build a movement of small farms. And as a result of that, build the capacity to scale up our vision and our way of working with the land. And to do that you have to standardize, you have to build infrastructure, you have to build brands, and you have to build marketing systems and all of those things that individually farmers are simply not in a position to do. So that's what we do at the Alliance; it's a collective effort; and so individual farmers succeed,

Terry Hokenson  08:06

Rodrigo, tell me how the Shared Ground Farmers' Cooperative works for you - you're secretary, you've said - so I'd like to know more about it, how it helps the members.

Rodrigo Cala  08:21

We started around the 9th 2014. And the reason for doing that is because we need more markets. I think over the years I see my need to figure out a way to make a living on farming. And one of the most difficult things for farmers in this country is doesn't matter where you're from or who you are. The biggest barrier for farmers is markets. We need to get more in for produce, so every day we try to figure  out the way to do that. And at one point, we figured that the only way to do that is to have a face and a market today in the cities. So we started working with six different farms around the state and we formed a coalition owned by Latino and Anglo farmers. So right now we are six six founding members. And the way to do that is to, well, we’re working with maybe 30-35 other farmers around the state just to bring produce to the cities.

Terry Hokenson  09:32

So how does it work, marketing wise? What does Shared Ground actually do to help you market your produce.

Rodrigo Cala  09:41

We talked with the buyers first, and we figured out the contracts and the markets for over the year. And then we have two different models for marketing the produce. We have a primary market: the founding members get, first, the opportunity to fill these markets; and if we don't have the ability to fill that. we are going to the second and the third level or farmers. And once we start working, we're going to the second level, which is immigrants and Latino farmers. And the third level is Anglo Anglo farmers. So in one way or the other, we tried to, to fill all these contracts. We - our network right now is bigger. And we have a building in the city, we have trucks, we have everything; we have marketing coordinators. So we own the co-op, but we give work to other people to do that work.

Terry Hokenson  10:52

I would like to find out a little more about your background, too. How did you get to your farm in Wisconsin, and when did you start it?

Rodrigo Cala  11:01

I have arrived in this country, I am from Mexico City. and this is funny because people told me, "Oh, in Mexico City, it is so foreign," yes, but we have a farm in Mexico City. I get that side from my mom - she's a farmer. My dad passed away four years ago. He was a professor at the University of Mexico. And I had the opportunity to arrive in this country in 1998. I started taking a training for organic production in 2006, and I got my farm in 2008, and when I finished this training for organic production, then I... What was the reason to be a farmer in this country? I - we - tried to find products from Mexico, and we tried to cook some dishes from our culture. And we traveled around Minneapolis and St. Paul to try to find these products. And the quality of these products was so poor, so we saw an opportunity. I started talking with my brother about this opportunity to grow Mexican produce. And little by little we start thinking on different ways, like we can do this for a hobby or we can turn this opportunity into a business and that is how we ended up with this farm in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin.

Terry Hokenson  12:33

How did you make the decision to grow organically?

Rodrigo Cala  12:38

The reason was because we tried to find a piece of land a small parcel to grow produce for us - just for our family. But we were going around Minnesota, Minneapolis and St. Paul to try to find a place, but we didn't have the ability to do that. So at one point, we found the Minnesota Food Association. They have a rule to just grow produce the organic way. At the beginning, it was a new concept for me, but over the years, I changed my mind on how to do farming in this country. So I was very impressed and attached about the concept at the beginning. And then I see the benefit for my family. I see the benefit for my farm. I see the benefit for the community. And that is why I'm so engaged with organics production.

Terry Hokenson  13:41

Rodrigo, you mentioned that when you started farming organically, you saw the benefits to your farm, your family and your community. Could you tell us a little bit about that? What were some of the benefits you saw?

Rodrigo Cala  13:55

When you have a family, the last thing you're thinking about is food. Sometimes, because the price of the food right now is so high, people don't think you get much good quality and healthy food. And when I started working with organic production, I started seeing the benefit for my kids, and for myself. And I started seeing like okay, this is an opportunity to invest in myself and my family. So when I talking about the food, I know food is some medicine, and that people sometimes don't get the importance of good food. People think on a weekend about going to a fast food restaurant and get whatever they want to have - that kind of food is not good at all for your family. When I start seeing the benefit that really I mean, in short term for my family, the amount of produce I can get from a little piece of land and give to my family, and I see the amount of money I can save just from growing my own food. I also realized that I have the ability to give my kids the best food in the world. So when we start talking about programs like Food for People, I want to give this opportunity to people in the community to get this kind of food. So as soon as we started to increase the production on my farm, I start seeing the only way to bring this kind of food to people is by working directly with the community. And as soon as the community started getting involved with us about, just like Regi says, farming is a very risky thing, it is a dangerous thing. It's like people don't think how much time and how much money it costs to get a pound of tomatoes or a  pound of peppers. So when the community engaged directly with a farmer, they saw the needs of the community and the needs of the farmers. So as soon as they became involved together, they saw that this is the only way for the farmers to succeed which is to work directly with the community.

Terry Hokenson  16:23

So Reji tell us, how does Rodrigo's experience with going organic fit into your your vision?

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin  16:33

So it's very different. I'm not saying one thing is better than another. We all have different ways of doing things. But this is very different from almost anything you have heard of. I never knew anything other than natural farming: I grew up with it, I was born into it. I was trained by indigenous and elders. I went to agriculture school in Guatemala to study conventional. And even on arrival at the school, it was impossible for me to reconcile with what they were asking us to do, and were training us to do. It was already something I understood by nature that you can't put chemicals in the ground, or to rape the Earth and expect to get something healthy out of it. And so we were already raised based on those natural principles. And, in my book, In the Shadow of Green Man, I explained that when I was about eight, nine years old, we had our first encounter with agrochemicals, and we used them once. And the elders, and especially my father, interpreted the results of that one time we applied a herbicide on our fields, and I we never did it again, up to now. So for me, I never really practiced conventional input- based agriculture. And so now the communities and the professionals are calling it regenerative. It doesn't matter to me, it was simply a way of thinking and working with nature. I grew up in extreme poverty, and it was that way of thinking that allowed us to move from extreme poverty, into poverty, and then further on into economic security, and hope. And that's what I explained in my book. This is my life, and this is the way I was trained. Regenerative agriculture, and the way we practice it now, is simply a transfer of our knowledge in ancient ways and wisdoms to this territory, this native territory we're in; and then taking in the ecology of this place, and interpreting it in the same terms and criteria that we used, growing up, so that we could work with the ecology I grew up with. So technically, I took that and applied it to this landscape, and on the basis of that we focused on regenerative poultry because we are in a Savanna ecology. We are, specifically, in my place here in Northfield, in the middle of what is called the Big Woods. The Big Woods are actually an ancestral system of very, you know, a geological blueprint that allows us to develop the technology and the ways that we farm. We didn't decide what we were going to grow here. We allowed the landscape to tell us. And now, as a result of that, we built the rest of the infrastructure from the bottom up. And that's how we are where we are today, you know, focused on poultry. We do vegetables and those kinds of things, but we do them primarily from an energy management perspective rather than a production perspective. In short, in regenerative thinking, we don't think of ourselves as a producer - no one, none of us produces anything. All we do is manage energy from a non edible form at one end into an edible form onn the other end. That edible form can be hazelnuts, can be eggs, can be chickens, can be tomatoes, peppers, whatever you want. But if you don't understand the transformational process of energy, then you're always going to be at an energy deficit. When you have an energy deficit, you will pollute the soil and everything whether you are organic or not. The linear way of thinking that defines production-based farms is really not our process; we were already completely indoctrinated in a whole different way. We work on circular basis, we work on an energy basis, and transformation equations that we then bring into a scientific framework. So then we can go back and define the productivity and the harvest of energy, and what we can acquire off a small piece of land. That's what defines our kind of agricultural practice.

Terry Hokenson  21:27

Thank you, Regi. Rodrigo. I came across a report online about a farmer named Javier  Garcia. This was an article that I found in the Todd County newspaper called The Record, I guess, no it's actually - The Record is in Morrison County, but the farm is in Todd County. But you are given credit for having told, or taught Javier how to farm, and I assume you were teaching him the organic concepts too?

Rodrigo Cala  22:11

Yes. Javier Garcia is one of the founding members of Shared Ground Farmers' Cooperative. He's one of the owners so on the Board of the Coop, based in Long Prairie Minnesota. And I started working with Javier in 2011; he's a very good friend of mine and he followed the directions and he manages right now eleven acrs of produce including watermelons, melons, tomatoes. He grows, I think 10,000 plants of tomatoes for tamale factory based in Minneapolis, and he sells watermelons and melons to Minneapolis schools. And he sells produce for the CSA and Shared Ground.

Terry Hokenson  23:06

And he was named Todd County Farm Family of the Year, and the article gives you credit for teaching him how to do it. So I enjoyed that. Okay, looks like a good place to stop and think a short station break. Welcome back. We've been talking with Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin of the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance, and Rodrigo Cala of Cala Farm in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin and the Shared Ground Farmers' Cooperative about regenerative agriculture. In recent months, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed some of the faults in our food system that regenerative agriculture works to correct, from the dumping of food to  outbreaks caused by poor working conditions, the pandemic has exposed the externalities created by our current food system. I see Rodrigo and the Shared Ground Coop are trying to overcome some problems to getting established and finding markets. I really want to ask Rodrigo about how he's been affected by the shutdown of restaurants and schools and so forth. And I'm wondering if Reginaldo can address these kinds of ground-level problems that farmers, all farmers, and especially immigrant farmers and small farmers, have in keeping their farms moving.

Rodrigo Cala  25:08

Okay, over the last three or four years, we've tried to sell more CSA shares so what's so difficult?

Terry Hokenson  25:18

I should mention, too, that some listeners may not be familiar with the acronym CSA and it stands for community supported agriculture, where members of the community out there are directly buying produce from farmers.

Rodrigo Cala  25:39

With this pandemic, all this response happened in Minneapolis, St. Paul, was basically the way to all these things changing for the markets for farmers, for local farmers. And we have started solving now all of our problems very, very quickly. And we see an opportunity to find new ways to market our produce, We have six founding farm members and each farm grows some amount of produce for the boxes for the CSA. Like, this is an example, on my farm we grow four different crops: broccoli, cauliflower, heirloom tomatoes, and garlic. And I grow these four crops for wholesale, for CSA and for the school system in Minneapolis. It is a lot of work trying to figure out thow o grow 40 or 50 or 60 different crops for one farmer just doesn't work, and didn't work for me in the beginning. So, if a group of farmers each grows four or five different crops and then we bring to a place in Minneapolis, or on any farm, we can pack it in a box and we can send to the CSA buyers. So for all, it is working really well working that way. Because you can focus just on a few crops and it's very easy for a farmer to do that.

Terry Hokenson  27:21

Regi, can use speak to this dilemma that the the small farmer and the immigrant farmers have when the markets are so difficult to access. 

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin  27:35

Farming is one of the riskiest businesses, one. Two, it has become extremely riskier as the climate changes and unpredictable situations are confronted,, especially if you are already at a disadvantage, you already have all kinds of other barriers and complications to your business. And so from the get go, for us, the key was strategy. Strategy is more important than the production, how you produce, the quality, all of those things are way down the line. Strategy is the most important aspect. And in terms of strategy, from the beginning, we knew that our strategy had to be focused on risk management. So the highest risks we had to manage was number one, climate because he was already changing back in 2006, when I came into this space. So climate was the first thing we had to manage for in terms of risk management. So because of that, we deliberately chose not to engage production of perishable products. So we deliberately never attempted to produce tomatoes, or any annuals, or anything that would be affected by the swinging in the climate. So we went back to the natural blueprint of this space and the most resilient options. That meant going into also into perennial crops, but also non perishable perennials. And so in those two concepts, we found, the main crops we could develop were hazelnuts and elderberries. So, I'm just giving you the layout of the discovery phase and on how we came to where we are now. So the other thing was that we needed to pick areas of opportunity where there was a chance for scalability. Even if we started small, we did not want to run just the farms. We also actually wanted to collectively build the foundation of a new system. When you work on systems, you can't be doing a little bit of everything. So we had to focus on one entry point that was culturally compatible, but also where our community, our Latino community, has the most competitive advantage; and that one area where we could do better than everybody else, was poultry. Poultry is one of those competitive advantages we have, it also has one of the lowest economic barriers to entry, and has one of the biggest market opportunities possible. Also, it's non perishable, and not instantly perishable anyway. But even if, like in the case of eggs, you can transform them into a non perishable product. You can either turn it into powder, or you could turn it into liquid eggs, or something else. The opportunity to make it non perishable is still there. So once we had all of that mapped out and figured out, we engineered the poultry production system under the regenerative principles and criteria, and indicators, and verifiers that I had under the regenerative framework of engineering, and so on. And because of that, when this recent crisis hit, we had already kind of factored in cultural risk management, market risk management, access to capital, access to land, and we deliberately did not become a raw material producer from the start either. We are not raw material producers. We also produce only non perishable, we had actually focused on value-added, which allows us to hold the value and also increase our return. We had standardized the production systems and all that so that we could scale, but also de-scale, based on market fluctuations. We had also built partnerships; instead of building a single supply chain from farm to table, and trying to manage that, we built partnerships along the way so that everybody could do what they did best. We focused on competitiveness at a system level, too; not only on the farm level. And then we also designed for scalability. And so all of that combined, when the crisis hit, allowed us to adapt and to mobilize our partnerships, so that we could find the new channels that were opening. The flip side of every crisis presents an opportunity. And for us, the opportunity was to further scale up our ability to bring a larger production system into motion. So in the last three months, we were able to sell out all of our production, because we were able to tap into our direct sales partnerships. We don't do direct sales. I mean, we were doing some of it, but we were able to scale up our direct sales because people shifted their choices. And so the other thing that came out of that is that in other regions, markets were completely dried up on some of these products. And we were able to secure new contracts for these new emerging trends in the market. So we are now scaling up to over 20-22 farms. And now we will have the investments in place to scale up to a new level. But what I can tell you is that we went from having about 10 partners, to over 150 partners. We went from having three markets, different layers of markets, to having many more layers of markets, because of the new trends coming up. We went from trying to run three or four farms, to engaging farmers on a much larger scale. And also, access to equipment and value-added processing that was almost impossible to do before the crisis hit. So those are just contrasts that we can use to analyze this current situation. Just wanted to say that the struggles that Rodrigo was describing - they are the same. All of us are encountering the same issues, but it's how we approach them, and how we tend to solve them that are different. That's why we bring a diversity of: approaches and ideas. And so I'm glad to be cooperating with Rodrigo in this conversation. And I wrote this in my book, too, "In the Shadow of Green Man: My Journey from Poverty and Hunger to Food Security and Hope" to me was about food. On average, in my own little space here in Northfield. I can save myself between four and $7,000 a year of food that I no longer have to earn money to purchase. That is food security in my side of the world. I don't care if the amount of time that I used to raise that food, if I were to do numbers and it comes out to be more than what I would need to earn, the bottom line is that it's not a straight equation, it's more than that. It's an issue of culture, it's an issue of physical, mental and spiritual health as well. Right now with the crisis, to me, a person with a garden is already better off than anybody else. So that's critical, that's a critical benefit to us. The next thing is that by working through regenerative methodology as we do, we can achieve. If we want to call it productivity, we can achieve levels of productivity that you cannot achieve with organic or conventional input-based agriculture. We can produce higher quality products with better nutritional profiles, better Brix value, and better quality of texture and flavor. These are more resilient products, meaning that they actually have more shelf life because they got more nutrients, more minerals, context and all of that, and at the same time, we reduced the amount of inputs that we are putting in, and especially the amount of labor. So those are critical benefits, because at the end of the day, our livelihoods are defined by what we get paid for what we actually market. And to the extent that what we get paid is going too much into the production, then we don't get to keep that wealth that goes back into someone else's pocket. So those are critical advantages of regenerative agriculture. Bottom line is, conventional agriculture is based on a linear equation, not on an energy equation. When you think linearly in agriculture, then your efficiency is really low, which means that a lot of the inputs, whether they are organic or not, are going to end up left in the soil, going into the air, and going somewhere else, but the actual product you are marketing later on. Shallow root.crops, like vegetables, for example, are at a critical disadvantage, because they don't capture a lot of that energy we're putting in the soil. And so, as a result, we are using inputs that we are not harvesting. And so, at the end of the day, regenerative agriculture allows us to minimize, and to even eliminate, all of the consequences and inefficiencies of linear, conventional thinking. And by the way, the consequences of that is polluted land,, polluted air, polluted water - many times the pollution in the very water we are drinking on our farms. And, by the way, organic agriculture can do the same thing, because nitrogen is nitrogen, which becomes a nitrate and nitrate is a poison, whether it's organic or not. And so all of those things are critical advantages, not only economic, social, but more more importantly for us, is the benefit of being able to be vindicate and to restructure the way we participate in the food system. And the option to participate in this food system, not just as cheap laborers, immigrant laborers, but actually as entrepreneurs. And to do that requires a level of entrepreneurship effort, organizational capacity, and commitment and community building that is very, very unique. And it's only through regenerative agriculture, that we achieve that. Regenerative, not isolated, in how you grow crops or animals, and how you organize the whole supply chain. That's what makes it regenerative. And we can all benefit from that; as consumers, we get better quality food, and as we scale, more affordable foods. Communities coming out to our farms allows us to reconnect in ways that is impossible through conventional systems that want to separate the farmer and the worker from each other, and especially the consumer, from the sources of food so that you can exploit the system better. We don't intend to do that. We intend to bring these things together. A chicken cost us $7.50, to $9 to raise. A partner in the city can come out here and harvest that chicken at that price, and also keep many more parts of the chicken that they will not get at the market, which means they get almost twice as much value out of a very inexpensive chicken on our farm, when they would be paying twice as much and getting half as much value from a conventional supply. Technically, if you look at not at buying products or buying food, but rather at buying nutrition and health. If you think of food that way, then we delivered twice as much for half the price of a conventional product. That's an advantage you can't beat, but it can only be achieved through regenerative thinking and that to Rodriguez' point is a community effort. Both Rodrigo and I come from a space where we came into this environment with a very large set of almost insurmountable challenges. And yet we have been able to navigate our way through, build opportunities, and bring back the dignity of immigrant and Latino farmers, not as cheap laborers of a system that is based on exploitation and extraction. But I tried to achieve an independent way to assert our right to be entrepreneurs, and to come into a crisis like this being able to implement our own views, and our own capacity, and our own creativity to also come out of it. That is a privilege - we are both privileged individuals. But, unfortunately, too many of our community members are still stuck in a system of exploitation and are actually taking the biggest hit and being impacted disproportionately by this crisis. That's a shame. That's a societal shame. We're lucky enough that we have different ways of approaching this.

Terry Hokenson  41:03

Thank you. Welcome back, we've been talking to Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin of the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance, and to Rodrigo Cala of Cala Farm in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin, and Shared Ground Farmers' Cooperative about regenerative agriculture, Regenerative agriculture is about crop rotations, cover crops, and other farming practices that increase soil health. But in the bigger picture, it is more about energy management than simple food production. Covid has exposed the faults in our industrial food system, and has also pushed consumers in the direction of regenerative agriculture. Adopting the wisdom of indigenous peoples is the best path forward to develop these regenerative systems. But we must be careful to consider and right the injustices committed to these communities up to now. Regenerative agriculture aims to generate food with less inputs, put the wealth back into the hands of farmers instead of large corporations, and provide food security for our communities. In order to achieve all these lofty goals, we must come together as a community. We'd like to turn now to consider what our listeners might be able to do to support small farmers.

Rodrigo Cala  43:03

We are sold out for this year, but we started working for winter CSA. And we started working for CSA for next year, because I think it's going to be a big challenge for me next year, with this pandemic being here too. And we are working on different programs such as Food for the People. As a group of farmers, we try to bring the process to low income members of the community who don't have the ability to spend much money on food right now. Working with the community on these issues, is the only way to succeed like a community.

Terry Hokenson  43:53

And the Food for the People program is something that if listeners wish to follow up on, they could go to the sharedgroundcoop.com website. You can find Food for the People there and  read about it. Regi, you have anything to say to people that would like to follow up and do whatever they can to assist these farmers in promoting the general idea that you're talking about?

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin  44:25

Sure. I mean, if you are in Minnesota, Wisconsin or Iowa, we are right now deploying the tri-state regional producer pool. If you're a farmer, and you want to join in and you've got land, get in touch with us. I provided the website there too, so you can just go in there, get in touch, we'll work on the details with you. If you're an investor, we have a pretty solid investment platform that people can participate in. If you're a funder, we also have support systems, training, and other kinds of nonprofit activities that can be grant-funded to support these communities. If you're a consumer, look for Twin City farms; other folks go to RegenerationFarms.com. And you can check a list of our core partners that can allow you to access our products. At the Alliance, we don't sell products, we don't market, we don't do any of that, we are simply building the infrastructure and supporting the folks who want to engage at different levels. Basically, you can engage with the farmer, if you're a worker, you're Latino, you are an immigrant farmer in southern Minnesota, and you want to join a regenerative poultry system, that's something else, but we are not asking anybody else to join us. If you are not in the poultry sector, we really don't have much to offer for you. Our goal is to deploy at least a $50 million regional deployment and we are really making progress towards that goal. And you can join again at those different levels. If you want restaurants or if you want any other commercial facilities that need or want regenerative poultry or any of other related products that we're now starting to put out - so we got some hazelnut production now, and we will have other products that are coming out - so get in touch, we'll give you a full layout of the landscape. Basically, our next big level of system infrastructure is to build a regional regenerative agriculture development Park. So we are partnering with specifically one of the cities in southern Minnesota to actually build an aggregation center out of scale. And so we put a bill through the legislature which is now still surviving on the omnibus bill. We are not asking people to take any action. This this is moving along. We have bipartisan support, and support from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture deed, and all of that. We do have tours that we do that are specialized. We don't just take visitors but if you want to visit, we have tools coming up on July 14. And we're trying to confirm a second one for some business partners, commissioners, and legislators to come and visit, and if people want to join some of those specific actions, that's good.

Terry Hokenson  47:49

Thank you Regi. And that was regenerationfarms.com?

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin  47:53

Yes, that's the commercial side of our operations. The Regen Ag Alliance is where you can come in at an entry point. So, regenagalliance.org and regenerationfarms.com.

Terry Hokenson  48:08

Thank you both very much for spending time with us. Rodrigo, I really appreciate your showing up and sharing your farm experience with us; and Regi, it's always a pleasure to listen to you talk about the vision that you have. It certainly has got a lot of us motivated and wanting to throw in somehow and push it along. I've learned so much you know myself doing this stuff. And that's kind of why I do it. So thank you very much.

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin  48:47

Thank you.

Rodrigo Cala  48:48

Thank you.

Terry Hokenson  48:52

I'd like to give credit to Sasha Ende for our music. And thanks to the volunteers at MN350 for the work that went into making this broadcast. Much thanks to KFAI radio and the Wave Project for providing airtime for this program.