COMMONER
Latino entrepreneur Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin returns to his roots with a local food project
“Common sense” is a term entrepreneur Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin uses with ever increasing enthusiasm to describe the local food initiative he is creating with immigrant Latino farmers in Minnesota.
“I come from the commons,” declares Haslett-Marroquin, who grew up in Guatemala, where his family still farms com- munal lands. “And I am going back to the commons.”
He is the co-founder of the fair trade Peace Coffee Company, and leads the Sustainable Food and Agriculture Program at the Minneapolis-based Main Street Project. In 2006 founded the Rural Enterprise Center in Northfield, Minnesota, which like many Midwestern communities has attracted growing numbers of Latin American immigrants.
In times of economic stagnation, many people worry that immigrants are taking jobs needed by native-born Americans. These fears are especially keen in small towns, where the impact of the continuing economic crisis hits hard. Haslett-Marroquin, however, sees an opportunity that can benefit both immigrants and the community as a whole.
He noticed that many people around Northfield were eager to eat more locally raised, healthy food but were unable to afford it or sometimes even find it. At the same time, he saw that Latino immigrants had lifelong experience as sustainable farmers but lacked the financial means to take up farming. The solution was obvious. Find a way to get Latino farmers back on the land and connect them with consumers seeking wholesome food. This is exactly what Haslett-Marroquin did in launching a free-range poultry enterprise, market garden and family farmer training program, all designed to put good food on local dinner tables and income into the pockets of family farmers.
“Agripreneurship” is how Haslett-Marroquin describes this effort to revive family farming for local markets by taking advantage of immigrants’ first-hand knowledge of small-scale sustainable agriculture practices. “Commons sense,” he says, is another word for what he and his colleagues are doing.
This training center and enterprise are a shining example of an emerging idea known as commons-based development—a strategy that strengthens the commons by making sure that economic expansion projects help the community as a whole.
While commons work is often seen as an activist or community cause more than a business model, Hasslett-Marroquin’s projects embody fundamental commons principles: a commitment to future generations, a focus on sustaining the earth, and a means of providing a benefit to everyone.
As Haslett-Marroquin says, “the commons is a very straightforward common-sense approach to creating systems that sustain society and sustain life on the planet.”
—JAY WALLJASPER
