What Main Streets have over Wall Street

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Far from America’s money center, community-based, farmer-owned and consumer-owned cooperative businesses in Minnesota are helping create jobs and wealth, and investing in their communities.That became apparent in an event advisory sent by Frank McDowell, general manager of New Vision Co-op, a southwestern Minnesota regional agricultural co-op now based at Brewster.“There is a lot of strength coming from agriculture for the last three years or so, and it is good for the whole economy,” McDowell said.The co-op is “retiring” (paying back) about $4 million in equity to original members who formed New Vision in 1998, a merger of two large co-ops in the area.About 3,000 farmers in southwest Minnesota and nearby border areas of Iowa and South Dakota will receive these checks. “Our local merchants will be glad to see this money show up on ‘Main Street’,” McDowell said.Such actions are expected as companies, of any ownership structure, prepare for the future and positions themselves to cope with changing market conditions and business opportunities.In contrast, critics of big stock corporations and high-finance note that corporations now have about $3 trillion stashed away, not being reinvested in the economy. While this stunts job growth and further holds back economic progress, other critics warn that when corporations start “investing,” much of it will likely be in merger and acquisition (M&A) activity that won’t necessarily grow the economy or put people back to work.More often than not, M&A activity creates “redundancies” and “synergies,” said Gerardo Espinoza, executive director of the Local Enterprise Assistance Fund (LEAF) at Brookline, Massachusetts, in a recent interview. They usually lead to layoffs and more unemployment and further weakening of the economy.That is a danger for America down the road. But that isn’t the case with New Vision Co-op and a new merger partner, the Wilmont-Adrian ag co-op that merged into New Vision on September 1, or other co-ops based in Minnesota.Back on Wall Street, another danger is the debt being acquired by U.S. companies, according to AP business writer Bernard Condon. Continue Reading

Wall Street train wreck slams farmers

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The fallout from the collapse of MF Global continues to reverberate around farm country. The firm’s demise is yet another painful case of how Wall Street’s recklessness is overwhelming under-resourced regulators and hurting people around the country. The response from Congress? Continue Reading

Made in Minnesota 2011: Fertile ground for minority opportunity

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Long before corn and soybeans dominated Minnesota’s countryside, its fertile land provided a way of living for newly arrived Scandinavians, Irish and Germans in small-scale farming. More than 150 years later, more small growers are using the land again as an income stream.Download full report (pdf) View online at ScribdMinnesota 2020’s latest report, Made in Minnesota 2011: Fertile Ground for Minority Opportunity, estimates that farmers’ markets contribute a net economic impact of $64 million to the state’s economy. Community supported agriculture (CSAs) contribute $10.5 million.The report also shows that more recently, Minnesota’s Scandinavians have been joined by Hmong, Somali and Hispanic people. While small-scale farming and Minnesota’s larger food processing industry provides many new immigrants workforce entry, entrepreneurial opportunities are growing for these populations away from fields and factories. Some have set up retail shops, selling food and clothing.As a result of this activity and population growth, Minnesota’s ethnic and immigrant communities contribute more than $12 billion to the state’s overall business activity.Minnesota is home to more than 11,000 Asian-owned firms, which generate $2.4 billion in revenue and employ nearly 17,500 workers, according to Concordia University’s Bruce Corrie, whose research MN2020’s report cites. Continue Reading

Sherrod on growing poverty: ‘Something has to change’; Wealth gap extends into rural America, Black farmers hardest hit

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The American people should take notice of what the Occupy Wall Street movement is doing across the country, said former Obama administration member Shirley Sherrod Thursday, November 3, at St. Paul’s William Mitchell College of Law. “Somebody needed to rise up and say what’s happening in this country is not right. I appreciated them for standing up.”A longtime board member of the Farmers’ Legal Action Group (FLAG) and at one time the organization’s president, Sherrod was the featured speaker at the 25th anniversary of the nonprofit law center that serves family farmers. Her nearly 30-minute speech mainly focused on race and poverty.The U.S. today “can’t seem to be able to support the family farmers and others who are the backbone of the country,” Sherrod pointed out. Continue Reading

OPINION | Invisible solution for costly problem

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Farmers in West Central Minnesota will soon be confronted with challenges of how best to bring an entrepreneurial product to market, ignite economic development somewhere in Swift County or nearby, and, if past value-added processing history is repeated, add value to area farmers’ soybean crops.This represents all that is well with entrepreneurship and ground up economic development that utilizes Minnesota scientists’ talents and rural Minnesota resources. If successful, the result will be new high-tech products that also benefit humanity worldwide. The idea starts with two managers of the Glacial Plains Cooperative at Murdock who knew there had to be better, and greener ways, to store grain outside during and after harvests when production overwhelms storage capacity at country elevators and processing plants. With an idea in hand, Glacial Plains general manager Tom Traen and operations manager Doug Kavanaugh sought help from the Agricultural Utilization and Research Institute (AURI), the state agency created to encourage innovation and entrepreneurs.As travelers across rural Minnesota in the fall might suspect, losses occur to the piles of corn or other crops left outside unless they are covered by tarp or great sheets of plastic. This gets expensive; by some accounts, country elevators pay up to $50,000 for tarps to cover the outdoor storage.This is where Glacial Plains managers and publicly supported scientists at AURI make a good fit.Kavanaugh and Traen contacted AURI with the idea that there ought to be a farm-commodity, bio-based spray to cover the piles of grain, preserve them from rain and moisture and not harm the nutritional value of the grains.AURI chemists went to work on the idea at the agency’s labs at Southwest Minnesota State University at Marshall. A couple of formulae using soybean ingredients were tried and tested; a third formula seems to have hit the mark.A larger test is being planned this fall. Continue Reading

Two sides on every coin

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Minnesota farmers have nearly completed the fall harvest and the vast majority can declare victory, “mission accomplished,” or make some similar pronouncement to mark the end of a successful growing season.

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OPINION | Current policy won’t feed 7 billion

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How much food do we throw away in this country?It’s a question veteran agricultural consultant and writer Jim Ruen recenly asked.He’s not just talking about food wasted from inefficient households, or from institutional and food industry feeding operations. Rather, what’s caught his attention is the steady stream of food recalls for food safety reasons that pull enormous quantities of food out of the supply chain.As recently as last week, several thousand cartons of eggs from a southern Minnesota farm had been recalled.  This is on top of October’s national recalls. USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced the recall of 377,775 pounds of ground beef from a Los Angeles meat company, 875 pounds of center cut steaks from an Oklahoma City meat company, 15,760 pounds of frozen chicken and steak fajita products from a Boulder, Colo., firm, and an undetermined amount of ready-to-eat, seasoned beef and shredded pork products from an Ohio company.These recalls came on the heels of a massive, multi-state recall of fresh cantaloupe that had consumers shying away from produce departments in grocery stores. That brought back memories of an earlier scare that nearly toppled the American apple industry in some states.A joint journalism project between MSNBC.com and the Carnegie-Knight News21 program on food safety noted that 48 million cases of forborne illnesses are recorded in America each year, of which 128,000 require hospitalization and from which 3,000 people die.USDA personnel have responsibilities at most domestic food processing plants where products enter interstate commerce. Continue Reading