The Main Street Project

“The board of directors will hold a special meeting to consider and approve the form 990 prior to filing.”

“Conflict of interest forms are signed by all employees and board members at the beginning of each fiscal year and are reviewed during the year as new vendors are identified.”

“Performance reviews of the ceo are performed by the board at least bi-annually; related salaries are reviewed and approved annually as part of the regular review and approval of the annual budget.”

“Paper copies are kept on file and are available to the public during regular business hours. Electronic copies are kept for distribution to electronic requests.”

“Women agripreneurs while raising chickens was sometimes a family effort, several of our agripreneurs were women. Women agripreneurs engaged their husbands in helping with their flocks, even though they held primary responsibility. One woman especially liked having her husband come with her to the coop in the evenings. In addition, our women agripreneurs took their children along to the coop. One said raising the chickens was "natural, like raising children and liked caring for the birds. Raising chickens provided an opportunity for women to contribute to the family income without an outside job and allowed them to do so without requiring daycare (and the associated cost). Women agripreneurs gained confidence with their flocks and valued learning more about providing a healthy diet for their families. Youth agripreneurs several youth were engaged in msp's egg production in 2017, responsible for the basic maintenance of the chickens, feeding and watering them, ensuring their health, and collecting, washing, and processing the eggs. Four of the youth plan to continue farming as a vocation. Two have secured access to land, built their own coop (with msp support and materials), and started production. The training they received with msp has provided them the experience and confidence to move forward as independent producers. Msp continues to provide technical and marketing support, as we do with our other independent producers, including notices of the latest regenerative agriculture innovations being employed in our model. Established farmers established farmers in the region have expressed interest in our regenerative agriculture model. This has presented an opportunity for msp to explore the possibility for expanding support for our model via engagement of traditional farmers. Interest from established farmers has been strong, and this outreach is laying the foundation for expanding a regenerative agriculture model in the broader region. Over the past year, outreach has resulted in partnerships with local farmers that will site 9 of the 30 coops we are working to establish as our preliminary regional cluster. Additional outreach is continuing and new partnerships for siting coops are in process. Sharing our roots program msp has also launched our sharing our roots community engagement program and expanded it through a partnership with rice county community health organization growing up healthy to bring local latino families together to address the diet related health concerns in the community through community engagement, education, and distribution of no cost produce from main street project's regenerative agriculture enterprises. Six participants in the sharing our roots program went on to receive msp agripreneur training. In addition, msp and growing up healthy partnered to establish a new project, cocina y campo, to provide health, nutrition and food education and build community around common interests in food and agriculture, using msp's central farm as a hub for project activities. In the coming year, we expect that msp will give 20 presentations reaching 400 people (including some in schools), 200250 of which will participate at the farm in special community building activities, and that 80 of these participants, including multigenerational families and individuals, will become more deeply engaged in our market garden and growing for their own consumption. Outcomes outcomes for main street project's (msp) training participants included increased skills development, income, knowledge of nutrition, and access to healthy food. - agripreneurs who raised flocks were able to supplement their family incomes. After all expenses (including costs of chicks, feed, coop rental, and processing) agripreneurs netted between $3,200 and $5,700 per flock. - new agripreneurs learned how to raise and care for chickens, how to implement the msp model, how to do daily documentation of raising and caring for their flock, and how to develop a”

“We have come to realize the importance of our regional expansion work being centered in the midwest, and specifically in the driftless area, a distinct geographic and soil region of "marginal lands." here, farms remain relatively small due to the geology. Intensive artificial drainage systems made agriculture flourish but resulted in significant water quality problems and diminished soil vitality. It is an ideal living laboratory. Msp's research farm and central farm are prime examples of the region's marginal lands, and our perennial based and poultry based model is designed to work well here. The farm will serve as hub for demonstration and training and a catalyst in the region. It has become increasingly clear that reintegrating perennials - including fruit and nut trees, grasses and feed grains - into the landscape must be a part of the broad nitrate management strategy needed for reductions at the scale required to achieve substantial environmental impact in the region. But reintroducing perennials into an area dominated by conventional commodity agriculture is complicated - uncertain markets, long production lags and built-in market disincentives make it difficult for farmers to transition from conventional corn and soy production. To overcome these hurdles, msp's model provides farmers in the region with a field ready roadmap based two primary products - sustainably and humanely produced poultry, with a quick startup, strong market and steady cash flow? And woody perennials like hazelnuts and elderberries that take 4 to 5 years to mature, but then provide many years of steady production and income with less field work. Our model provides a jumping off point for developing a regional cluster of farms that can begin to demonstrate impacts at scale. But change doesn't happen in a vacuum. We have become acutely aware of some of the structural impediments farmers face in reintroducing perennial crops into the landscape. Developing and implementing methods for "de-risking" this transition - removing systemic barriers to entry for new and limited resource farmers - have become defining components of our work to facilitate replication of our model in the region and beyond. This includes setting standards, developing markets, planning for infrastructure needs, and securing financing and investment. In furtherance of these efforts, we developed new partnerships in 2017: - iroquois valley farms, llc, to develop a regional financing partnership to provide land access to farmers implementing our poultry centered regenerative agriculture model (iroquois valley has also provided msp with financial support from a usda/conservation innovation grant they received to offset our early stage land restoration efforts as part of a comprehensive program to place more organic farmers on the land) - shared capital cooperative, to develop a pool of operating loans for coop construction by farmers applying our model, and to establish a grower's cooperative - dakota county, to pilot a hybrid agricultural easement that would allow farmers using our model to harvest perennial crops and small grains from expanded buffer zones, reducing the cost and risk of transitioning land from annual to perennial production - lift economy and cogent consulting, to develop regional business modeling, cooperative governance/ownership structuring and franchising/replication expansion strategies we have now laid the groundwork for our plan to incubate the first regional cluster of participating regenerative farms, in cooperation with regeneration farms, llc, the first for profit aggregator dedicated to building a market presence for our regenerative process certified products. Our goal is 30 paddocks in production within 36 months, 15 of which have already been sited, with partnerships for the remaining 15 in development. Implementation partnerships as we have continued to build out a new regional food system in southeast minnesota, we have also expanded our partnershi”