Rodrigo Cala has worked relentlessly in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin to build a livelihood from regenerative agriculture on 46 acres. He raises 4,000 chickens every 10 weeks. He markets hogs and sheep. He grows vegetables and flowers, and he works with other immigrant farmers. As a “multitask” farmer, he is constantly trying new crops and re-assessing the profitability and sustainability of what he’s doing.

“I don’t want to lie,” he said. “Farming is really hard. It’s really difficult.”

Cala is up at 6 a.m. every morning to feed livestock, followed by long days managing the operation’s complex, moving parts. “We do it all with a small crew, five tractors, and two old trucks,” Cala said. “It’s very intensive. It’s very crazy.”

His diversified farm is always evolving to maximize profitability and efficiency. Cala grows marigolds for Dia de los Muertos and Mexican herbs. He uses numerous species of cover crops finished by sheep to protect the soil. Pastured chickens fertilize tree crops like hazelnuts and apples.

Cala grew up on a small farm in Mexico City and moved to New York in 1998 for a job programming robots to make horseshoes. “We made 8,000 horseshoes every four hours,” he said.

On a work trip to the Twin Cities, Midwestern corn and soybean fields reminded him of the “open spaces” of his youth. He wanted to leave the “fast pace” of the city and his high-tech work. He wanted to farm.

He started on a small garden plot in the Twin Cities, but he needed access to more affordable land. He looked east, to Turtle Lake. “I didn’t have the qualifications for a loan, so I built my credit from zero in six months,” he said. “The first thing I bought from my credit was a computer. The second thing was a tiller. The third time, it was a tractor, and the fourth time it was a truck, so that one day, I had the ability to buy a farm.”

 Cala spoke this fall to Wisconsin Farmers Union members, USDA, and White House officials at an event in Chippewa Falls, Wis., about challenges for farmers who want to grow high-quality food. These challenges include access to markets, access to land, financial literacy, and climate change.

Farmers are also an aging population: 58 is the average age of U.S. farmers.

One solution for a greying population of farmers? Removing barriers to farm ownership for immigrant and minority farmers. More than two-thirds of American ag workers are foreign-born, and U.S. food systems can benefit from leveraging their farming skills into entrepreneurship.

“I am a Latino, and I bought a farm in the middle of a really conservative community,” Cala said. “This country is changing a lot. You can see people from Somalia, from Mexico, from Guatemala, from other countries. This country is going to change in the future, and we need to be prepared for that.”

Cala is proud to produce local food, but he knows that high-quality food is not accessible to everyone. “I have the ability to grow organic and regenerative food for my community and for my family,” he said. “When I bring my food to Minneapolis and St. Paul, and I go next week and see the prices in those fancy stories, I see the reality. It’s very difficult for low-income people to go to these stores.”

Cala has contracted to provide food through Wisconsin’s Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program, which buys local and culturally-relevant food from farmers for free distribution through partners serving underserved communities, with initial funding by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

“We need to make sure we have the ability to change that system to bring the opportunity for the next generation to try real food,” Cala said. “The same quality of food I give to my kids every day, I want to share with other kids.”