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We are planting the seeds of respect, pride, and financial freedom for future generations of Latino Americans.
We strive to provide a complete one-stop agricultural business program for all of our clients. Over the last 10 years, LEDC has developed multiple ways to help Latino farmers in Minnesota both start and grow their farm businesses. We provide technical assistance, business development, access to capital and markets, as well as specialize in Organic and GAP certification for your farm. We believe all of these services provide the farmers with whom we work the best possibility of long-term success. We work one-on-one with each of our clients and will often travel to meet clients in their home communities. Below are more details about our services.
This video shows the agriculture services that the Latino Economic Development Center (LEDC) offers in Minnesota.
In these videos in Spanish, you can find information on the search, collection, and diagnosis of problems in the plants of the field.
Informative material created by the University of MN Extension with the collaboration of Rodrigo Cala.
We provide one-on-one technical assistance to farmers in their own fields. We have highly skilled farm trainers who own their own farms and are able to help think through most any problem. Technical assistance includes farm planning, crop planning, irrigation, tractor and equipment purchasing, seeding and planting, disease management, and harvest/post-harvest handling. Throughout the year we also provide more in-depth workshops on a variety of subjects.
We work one-on-one with our farm clients to help them see farming as a business. Our farm business consultants work to guide our clients through the process of obtaining licenses and permits needed to start a business in a legal manner within the state of Minnesota. They receive advice about how to implement a basic bookkeeping system, a marketing plan, and business registration. In addition, our clients can work with us to get their operations Organic certification as well as GAP certification.
Our farm loan officers will advise and help individual farmers prepare a loan package to obtain business financing and start-up loans. We work with our own loan fund as well as leverage funds from other financial institutions including the Rural Finance Authority of Minnesota. We are able to help clients obtain start-up capital, operating loans, and have helped farmers purchase their own land. For more information, please visit our Loans page.
We recognize that good markets are the most important part of any farm’s ability to be successful. In 2014, we organized Shared Ground Farmer’s Cooperative sharedgroundcoop.com (SGFC), a Latino-owned marketing cooperative that sells its farmers’ produce to high-end local markets. Its mission is to get the highest price possible for its farmers. Our staff work with SGFC staff to ensure there are clear pathways for our farm clients to sell into SGFC markets. In addition, we work individually with clients to develop their own markets in their own communities.
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