Three years ago, the Rutabaga Project was awarded a USDA grant focused on recruiting new farmers, providing them training in marketing their goods, and promoting the Arrowhead Grown effort to publicize farmers markets in northeast Minnesota. The grant concluded on November 30 and, despite two years of altered plans due to Covid, met its goals. The Rutabaga Project began in 2013 as a collaborative effort between the Arrowhead Economic Opportunity Agency and the Iron Range Partnership for Sustainability. Its purpose has been to promote access to healthy local food. AEOA has been the fiscal sponsor. As part of IRPS, I volunteered with the project, providing my time as part of the in-kind match for the grant.
The funds were granted in 2019. Just prior to that, a 2018 study by the Iron Range Partnership for Sustainability, “Local Food as an Economic Driver,” demonstrated that northeast Minnesota could feed itself, growing its own food, with a few exceptions like coffee and olive oil. The good news is that recent USDA data show northeast Minnesota is one of the few areas in the country where the number of farms is actually increasing. But we need many more farms and farmers to be food self-reliant. In response to that need, one of the major goals of the USDA grant was to recruit six new farmers.
A “new farmer,” according to the USDA, is a farmer who has been farming less than ten years. We recruited twelve new farmers, and almost all of them have been farming less than three years, with some just starting in 2022. Heather Mahoney, manager for the Rutabaga Project, has reached out to new farmers across the Range and connected them with each other as well as with training. Groups of new farmers attended the Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service conferences, the New Farmer U sponsored by Renewing the Countryside, the year-long Farm Beginnings course by the Land Stewardship Project, and water safety training and well testing with the North St. Louis County Soil and Water Conservation District. The project also provided training in the use of online platforms such as Open Food Network to sell to individuals as well to retailers.
And the final training effort, a series of a dozen “how to market your farm” videos, will be published soon to the Rutabaga Project YouTube channel. We hired a local videographer and traveled around the Iron Range documenting how successful farmers have diversified and promoted their products, from offering Community Supported Agriculture shares to U-pick flowers to pizza on the farm to hayrides and corn mazes, Airbnb lodging, microgreens, and online sales. We spent time with a University of Minnesota Extension educator who runs a successful organic farm by offering a CSA and an on-site farm stand as well as selling at a farmers market and to a food coop. We talked with a chicken expert about how to scale up and market a chicken operation for eggs and meat birds. And a cottage food producer who has increased sales each year from her farm through social media and local fairs. Finally, we filmed a farm business planner and a social media expert offering skills to new farmers. All that training will be available for the foreseeable future, free, on the YouTube channel.
We had proposed an aggregated CSA, a community supported agriculture share program aggregating produce from five farms. We implemented the “Grown on the Range CSA” in the summer of 2021, but the long distances between area farms made this model too expensive to sustain. It was a great idea in theory, but the Range is so rural that the logistics proved to be a challenge, even though we chose farms as close to each other as feasible. Live and learn. Thank you to the five farms who participated: Homegrown in Embarrass, Early Frost Farms, Aspen Falls Farm, Bear River Farm, and Murray Family Farm and to AEOA Senior Services for covering the share costs for five lucky seniors in Virginia!
Rutabaga Project manager Heather Mahoney also spent a good deal of time assisting the Mesabi East Farm to School effort which has just expanded to purchase from even more area farmers. USDA Farm to School grants are supporting similar efforts across the state. According to the most recent (2019) USDA Farm to School census, 1,008 schools in Minnesota are participating. The national Farm to School program includes edible gardens at schools and Farm to Early Care initiatives.
The Rutabaga Project grant also supported the Arrowhead Grown website, farmers market directory, billboard campaign and local newspaper advertising campaign. Arrowhead Grown promotes farmers markets in northeast Minnesota. Check out the listings for your area at www.arrowheadgrown.org You’ll find video introductions to eleven markets on the Range as well as a comprehensive listing of farmers markets indicating where they’re located, when they’re open, and which programs are offered (SNAP, Market Bucks, WIC/FMNP, and Power of Produce Club for kids and seniors). During the summers of 2021 and 2022, the Rutabaga Project ran Arrowhead Grown ads for six weeks in seven rural publications across the Range. And the billboard stood along Hwy 169 just west of Mt. Iron for three months in the summer of 2022. The Department of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation provided matching funds.
The future beyond the grant includes using the newly established Virginia Farmers Market Hub online platform to help area farmers market to individuals as well as to grocery stores and restaurants. It’s a delicate balance promoting demand for local food and ensuring that the supply is up to meeting the demand. They never quite match exactly, but that’s part of the challenge—to incentivize farmers to produce more and individuals and retailers to buy more local food. The 2018 study projected that if we spend just twenty percent of our food dollars locally, we can generate 248-694 jobs and keep $51 million dollars circulating right here! We have a good start thanks to the USDA grant funding the Rutabaga Project’s work.
