For more than a decade, Main Street Project has been working to create new possibilities for the growing numbers of rural Latino immigrants stranded in low-wage farming and food industry jobs with no benefits and no future. In 2010, Main Street Project set out to create a new regional food system that was fair, equitable and regenerative by design. They wanted to harness the entrepreneurial energy, traditional knowledge and experiences of agricultural workers in their region.

Poultry was chosen as the entry point and  a new system of free-range production was developed that integrated perennial crops (e.g. hazelnuts and elderberries) and other native tree species (e.g. oak and maple) for biological diversity. The new system was called “poultry-centered regenerative agriculture”. Prototype training/production units were build on three farms near Northfield, Minnesota. Bi-lingual (Spanish-English) training curricula were developed and technical support programs focused on the model of poultry production, perennial and annual cropping systems, and farm business planning.