main street project

For more than a decade, Main Street Project has been working to create pathways out of poverty for the growing numbers of rural Latino immigrants relegated to working in low-wage farm and food industry jobs, with no benefits and no future. We developed programs to deliver specialized agriculture training and skills that could help immigrant workers increase their incomes and leverage new job opportunities. We quickly realized that our industrial food system is actually built on a foundation of low-wage work, externalized costs and direct subsidies; unsustainable by design and beyond repair. We needed a bigger approach. We needed a new system. In 2010, we began development and testing of a new model for producing free-range poultry as part of a sustainable regional food system that would be accessible to aspiring immigrants and other limited resource farmers. We worked with our trainees to develop prototype facilities and a specialized core curriculum including hands-on poultry production and business planning. We integrated perennial crops (hazelnuts and elderberries) to the basic production model as a way to maximize system efficiency and began production.