New Roots in America:
Immigrant Farmers Make a New Home

Lewiston, Maine — Fatima Aden, dressed in long skirts and the headscarf traditional to her Bantu tribe, moves back and forth across a small plot of land, plucking ripe zucchini and lettuce. There are many things about Lewiston that are different from Aden's home country of Somalia, but the one she has thought the most about recently is the way seeds are planted.

"Back home," she says, speaking through an interpreter, "we used a long tool, like a hoe. We planted in straight rows. Here, it is different. We plant in a grid, and the seeds are different." She pulls her skirts aside as she bends to pick a cucumber in the middle of the six-acre plot of crops on the edge of town. She has kept at least one habit from her life as a farmer in Somalia: Her feet are bare.

Aden and a handful of other Bantu women in bright scarves and long dresses are harvesting vegetables for a weekly farmers' market in Lewiston, about half an hour north of Portland. The women, who are part of a recent influx of Bantus to the Lewiston area, are learning to farm in Maine with the help of the New American Sustainable Agriculture Project (NASAP).

NASAP, in turn, works with the National Immigrant Farming Initiative, or NIFI, a collaborative effort supported in part by Heifer International, which helps recent immigrants interested in sustainable farming. Currently, NIFI works with some 20 projects and organizations around the country, helping connect immigrant farmers with educational opportunities and other resources, and building awareness of their contributions.

For recent arrivals to this country, the projects help ease the transition, giving immigrants practical skills with which to support themselves as well as access to fresh, inexpensive food. By emphasizing sustainable agriculture, these projects are also helping to reform and revitalize farming in the United States, which is heavily industrialized.

"Our farmers are aging, and their kids aren't taking over," says NASAP's founder Jim Hanna. "The most important part of our farming infrastructure is our farmers." According to a recent USDA census, the number of farms in the United States decreased by 4 percent from 1997 to 2002. Immigrant farming, however, seems to be on the rise; for example, the number of Hispanic farmers increased by 50 percent during the same period.

"The most recent census data suggests that immigrant farmers are the fastest growing population of new farmers today," says NIFI project director and Heifer's Northern Program Manager Alison Cohen. "This is a group of people that has passion, drive and skills. What they need, and what we can help with, is access to training, information, land and markets."

Learning by Doing
The Lewiston project and others like it often work with communities ofimmigrants who have settled in a particular area as a result of refugee relocation programs, by low housing costs or by the possibility of work. Often, as with the Bantu community, people from a particular village or tribe will immigrate to one town or region over a period of time.

Mohamed Dekow, who works for the Lewiston project as a translator, acknowledges the unlikeliness of a community of Bantus in Maine, but says, "We are a family. We travel together. If it is nice somewhere, we call everyone. Then here comes Jusef, here comes Habib, here comes Mohamed. It's better if we're all together. If someone has a problem, we can help each other." NIFI projects include Cambodian farmers in the Boston area, Hmong farmers in Atlanta, Latino farmers and cattlemen in Texas and Iraqi farmers in Lincoln, Neb.

The gently rolling field where the Bantu women are working on the outskirts of Lewiston is leased from a farmer named Bob Packard; it has been in his wife's family for more than a hundred years, but they can no longer use all of it. For the project, NASAP divided the field into a dozen parcels, each of which is being worked by a woman and her family. The project has also set up a demonstration plot on the land, used to show cultivation methods.

"People have to learn by doing," says Amy Carrington, NASAP's project director. "You can tell them how short the growing season is here, but it's only once they feel it that they believe it."

There are other differences between Maine and the arid climate of western Africa; the fertility of the soil is different, there are different insects and animals that prey on the plants, and different ways of fending them off. On the other hand, drought is much less of a problem. Farmers used to coaxing crops from the dry Somalian soil, says Carrington, "tend to be a little more frantic about water."

In Maine's brisk mid-summer, the women's plots are already overflowing with produce: squash, purple beans, eight varieties of tomatoes, all of which are popular at the local market. Mostly, "we focus on what grows locally," says NASAP's project director Jim Hanna, but he says that project directors also help participants seek out plants native to their homelands that will survive in regional climates.

"People always ask if they can grow bananas here," says Carrington. Okra, however, which is grown in Africa, does well here, and several of the Bantu women have included it on their plots. Several Sudanese farmers in Westbrook, a site serving Portland-based project participants, grow a leafy herb called molokia, often used in soups. A couple from Guatemala grows plants popular with the local Hispanic community in Lewiston, and their plot is fragrant with cilantro.

Hanna, whose Lebanese grandfather was a gardener, understands the juggling act that many new immigrants face. "We want them to value their culture," he says, "and not just assimilate."

Bridging the Gap
In much of the world, farming, whether as a full-time occupation or a part-time avocation, is a much more common pursuit than in the United States.

And, says Cohen, "while the entry point into the United States for many immigrants is a city, farming is what they know." So for many immigrants, used to the fresh produce and supplementary income of a small garden plot and a few chickens or a cow, farming is a way to bridge the gap between their old and new lives. Ingrid Kirst, director of a farming project with Iraqi immigrants in Lincoln, says that participants "come from backgrounds where farming was much more a part of their life. To be able to provide that," she says, "is very important."

Hameed Aljabiry, a Kurd who lives in Lincoln, farmed in Iraq before arriving in Nebraska 10 years ago. Once there, he worked in a factory before leaving that job to work for the NIFI project and on a farm. "I love farming," he says, laughing. "Working in a field is 10 thousand times better than working in a factory. I have such a good feeling when I go out to the farm."

For many immigrants, unfamiliar with the amount of prepared and processed foods in the United States, the fresh, immediate supply of home-grown produce is the cheapest and most nutritious way to feed their families.  After only a year in the project, Aljabiry says his garden has served his family well. "We didn't buy nothing," he says. "We got tomatoes, we got radishes, we got so many vegetables."

Agostin Juarez, an immigrant farmer on New York's Staten Island who originally farmed in Mexico, says, "It's like it is in our country. Everything tastes good, fresh."

Markets Make a Difference
For those willing to put in the time and labor, farming can also be a way to make money. NIFI projects help connect farmers to markets, usually local farmers' markets where the farmers sell their own goods; to community-supported agriculture programs (CSAs); or sometimes, to independently owned grocery stores. Kirst says that Lincoln has three markets currently, but the program is hoping to start more.

For many immigrant farmers, selling their crops is the most difficult part. While many are seasoned vendors, with a great deal of experience selling their crops in their home countries, they are not always familiar with the nuances of marketing to American consumers. Language barriers complicate the simplest transactions, and finding transportation from field to market is often challenging for those without vehicles or driver's licenses.

On a recent morning in Lewiston, a woman named Martha Putnam explains, with the help of Mohamed, how to pack a box of produce to sell in a store or at a market. Each variety of vegetable-lettuce, green peppers, zucchini-gets its own box, she explains. All the peppers must be facing the same direction in the box. Produce must be washed and undamaged.

Putnam arranges a bunch of lettuce gently at the bottom of a box. "Twelve bunches to a box," she tells the group, who stand in a circle around her, watching intently. This sort of standardization of wares might seem frivolous, but it is essential, Putnam explains, to the stores who will buy from them.
Many immigrant farmers hold full-time jobs in addition to their work in the field, and taking their farmwork to the next level-relying on it for their entire income-is often an intimidating leap to make. "It's a lot of work for people to make a decent living at it," says Kirst. "For an immigrant refugee, you've got your job, your family, maybe school and your community responsibilities." Full-time farming, as a sun-up to sun-down, seven-days-a-week occupation, is often a daunting prospect.

But for those who are able to do it, selling the food they have grown or raised directly to the people who will be enjoying it is enormously rewarding. In New York City, Nestor and Alejandra Tello, who came to the United States from Columbia in 1992, have their own business selling eggs and produce at farmers' markets around the city. At a market on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, Nestor flips a dozen eggs over with a flourish and checks for cracks before righting the package and handing it to a customer. "Tello's Green Farm," the sign reads. "Pasture-Raised Hens. Happy Chickens."

"Always I had the dream of farming," Tello says. "Either here or in my country." In Columbia, his family raised chickens and cows; at one point, he says, his father had 200 cows. After moving to the United States, he worked in a factory making bulletproof jackets for the army, and as a butcher, a job he particularly disliked. "I don't like to kill animals," he says.

In 2001, his father-in-law saw an ad in the paper for the New Farmer Development Program, supported by Heifer, on Staten Island. Tello grew eggplants and tomatoes on their training plot, which, on a small plot of land between apartment buildings and shopping centers, is the last working farm on Staten Island. He found that both the farming and the marketing came naturally to him, and was able to begin his own business, which he now runs full-time.

While farming in New York is not as easy as it is in Columbia-one program participant described farming in the temperate climate of his homeland as "throwing seeds at the ground and coming back a month later"-Tello has largely figured it out. "It is more difficult because of the weather," he says. "You have to do everything on time."

And the work seems to suit him. He chats easily and warmly with his customers, bagging vegetables with a showman's flair. "Everyone goes to the city," he says. "But I feel comfortable on the farm."

Making a Home
Perhaps one of the most substantial benefits to the work of Heifer's immigrant farming projects is that participants who farm and sell their food to stores and markets are integrated into the fabric of their communities in a way they might not be if they were working nearly invisible jobs in factories or kitchens.

Especially for refugees of war or civil strife, making a home in their new homeland becomes one of their primary goals. In Lewiston, a town of 35,000 which, according to the 2000 census, was more than 95 percent white, the Somali refugees, which now number more than 2000, have brought unexpected diversity.

There have been some bumps along the way. In 2002, according to newspaper reports, then-mayor Larry Raymond asked the Somali community to stop moving to Lewiston. In July of 2006, someone hurled a severed pig's head into a Lewiston mosque during prayer services.

But locals and community leaders have been vocal in their support of the refugees, holding rallies in support of the increasingly diverse communities calling Lewiston home.

At the farmer's market downtown, after the morning harvest, a steady stream of customers picks through the vegetables at the NASAP tent.
Mohamed helps the women make change and field questions.

Some of the customers are Bantu, their jewel-toned headscarves bright and anomalous against the stark gray and white row houses. But many others are long-time Lewiston residents.

In any other place the two groups might not have much to talk about, but here the focus is on the food: buyers prodding and inspecting, sellers proudly displaying.

Hawa Abrahim, the group's de facto leader, is a little shy about speaking English, but when a customer plops a few zucchinis onto the scale, she reads the numbers aloud. "Two pounds," she says, smiling broadly.

Habiba Noor, who is part of the NASAP project, was a farmer in her native country Somalia. Before moving to Lewiston two years ago, she lived as a refugee in Kenya.

"Since I was born," she says, "my family taught me how to farm."

She admits that farming here has meant some adjustments. "In Somalia, we use hoes," she says. "Here, machines."

But these are small things, and a conversation with her is a reminder that differences, and unrest, are relative. When asked if she has been happy here, her face lights up. "I like America," she says. "There is no fighting. Here, I have peace."

"Because I Grew It"
As these farmers become established and expand their businesses, their hard work and expertise will be invaluable to the American farming economy.

"In Sudan," says Johan Yonga, standing on the sandy plot of land he has been farming, "we don't say how much land we have. How much you farm is according to your efforts. If you have tools, you can have a business."

Yonga says that in Sudan, people also have a particularly inclusive approach toward the experience of farming, a spirit of group responsibility, group reward. Such an approach can only be a welcome addition to the industrialized, commercial, largely lonely pursuit of farming in the United States today.
"When it is time to harvest in Sudan," Yonga says, "we invite people. We eat, drink, work, dance and the work gets done."

As for themselves, participants in these projects find life here can be a little sweeter when they have a hand in cultivating it.

Yonga stoops over and pulls up a plump radish, a vegetable he said was unfamiliar to him when he first planted it.

"I used to hate it," he says. "But now I can eat it because I am the one who grew it."