The goal of the minneag network is to build relationships, coordinate a community input process to define the strategic priorities, collaborate with partners to develop needed civic engagement…

The goal of the minneag network is to build relationships, coordinate a community input process to define the strategic priorities, collaborate with partners to develop needed civic engagement resources, and support communications capacity building to boost community storytelling. Minneag network aims to lift up community members and highlight their solutions to nurture vibrant food systems that provide access to sufficient, safe, culturally appropriate and nutritious food while developing local supply chains that allow small to mid-scale farmers access to markets. State policy and decision-making spaces for food and agriculture create structural barriers to engagement, resulting in a systemic lack of equity, empowerment and inclusion in decisions that affect everyone. Policy advocacy to redress this inequity is a luxury for small organizations, whose work is focused on urgent and practical needs, such as land market access and food security nutrition. This project will strengthen relationships across organizations and deepen stakeholders understanding of civic engagement. Easy to understand, multilingual, actionable resources can support a wider group of individuals in civic engagement and offer representation for emerging and small and mid-size farmers in minnesotas decision-making spaces. The workplan will focus on network relationship building, gathering community input on what civic engagement materials would be most helpful for partners, and supporting communications capacity building and organizing to boost community storytelling for the minneag network.to support inclusion of the broad perspectives that make up minnesotas farm and food system, we will cultivate deeper relationships with existing minneag network members and reach out to invite new members to engage, especially focusing on continuing to reduce barriers to participation for bipoc, immigrant and emerging farmer members who face additional systemic barriers to engaging in decision making spaces.to meet our goal of increasing access to decision making processes for partners members, we will craft our input process to identify strengths, gaps in knowledge and opportunities to develop supportive resources and will design the structure of a minnesota farm and food systems civic engagement 101 set of resources. We will then develop these materials with input from our member organizations. Our goal is to shift the public narrative to lift up community members and highlight their solutions to nurture vibrant food systems that provide access to sufficient, safe, culturally appropriate and nutritious food while also developing local supply chains that allow small to mid-scale farmers access to markets. The key-partners and CO-collaborators for this initiative are the institute for agriculture and trade policy (iatp), the land stewardship project, MN 350, minnesota farmers union, the blue cross blue shield center for prevention and current and prospective members of the minneag network. While the focus is primarily on investing in the civic engagement and lifting up the needs and experience of emerging farmers, including bipoc, immigrant, women, beginning and small-scale farmers, we agree with paul wellstone that we all do better when we all do better, recognizing that all minnesotans would benefit from a community-centered farm and food system.