SE Minnesota: A Third World Colony?
Southeastern Minnesota is being impoverished by its existing method of food production. The seven county region experiences a net loss of $800 million annually from status quo agriculture. This siphoning of resources
to other areas is draining the rural communities and placing farm families first into near poverty and then into a state of peonage. A few fragile experiments in the area suggest there is a path to economic recovery.
These are the findings of a new report, "Finding Food in Farm Country: The Economics of Food & Farming in Southeast Minnesota" , commissioned by Hiawatha's Pantry Project and compiled by Ken Meter and Jon Rosales.
"Our key finding is that the existing economic structures through which food products are bought and sold extract about $800 million from the region's economy each year. All this money, currently earned by Southeast Minnesota residents, is spent in ways that weaken the capacity of the
region to build wealth for its citizens," write Rosales and Meter.
The two, using existing government statistics, found that the region's farmers operated at an $80 million net loss in 1997. Additionally, those farmers purchased $400 million of farm inputs and credit from outside the region. And, they calculated, the regions residents spent $506 million buying food produced outside the region. Thus the calculated $800 million hemorrhage.
Finding Food draws a dreary picture. It is, however, a call to action. Meter and Rosales devote half of the of the report to the possibilities for a truly new economy. Two of the local food initiative already existing in the region, Root River Market in Houston and Plainview's Rebekah's Restaurant were detailed in the October, 2000 issue of Hiawatha's Pantry. Both are recent entries into the effort to establish a self sustaining and nurturing regional economy. The authors also report on the tenacious elder of the small community of Southeastern Minnesota businesses striving toward that goal: Full Circle Cooperative of Oak Center.
"As we brought new farmers into the coop, it has gotten better for all of us," says Steve Schwen, who has helped coordinate organic produce sales for Full Circle for over fifteen years. "We get more sales, better prices, and we make customers happier. [But] when we have pulled back and
thought of each other as competitors, marketing entities placed us against each other , and our prices were driven down."
Meter and Rosales put forward these three pioneer enterprises as examples of how some of the $800 million drained from Southeastern Minnesota can be recaptured through the simple acts of purchasing, cooking,
and eating food grown in the area. The result, they assert, will be an increase in both financial and social wealth.
A full copy of the report can be obtained by writing to Nancy Bratrud, Hiawatha's Pantry, Rte 1 - Box 71, Lanesboro, MN 55949.
