Alexander Velikoretskikh and his family at Lents International Farmers' Market. Photo by Mount Burns Photography

Forty-six years old, lean, angular, with a shock of white hair, Alexander wrinkles his forehead as he searches for the English words to explain why he’s choosing to farm in the United States, a place where—as Drew Katz, coordinator of the NAAP program, points out—it’s far more common for refugees and immigrants to end up on the fast food line than self-employed. Typically, people get funneled into low-wage, low-skill jobs with little opportunity for career growth and lots of opportunity for layoffs.

It’s a pattern that Mercy Corps Northwest and a handful of partners are trying to curb. By providing packets of donated seeds, marketing help, hands-on grower education, business planning support, loans, and access to land, NAAP is helping refugees and immigrants incubate small-scale, farm-based enterprises in Oregon and Washington that capitalize on direct, niche, and value-added markets.

To either side of Alexander’s market stall, Hmong, Turkish, Cambodian, Oaxacan, and Russian farmers vend produce, flowers, honey, eggs, and handmade tamales. Many of the vegetables—some of them totally foreign to my eye—reflect culinary traditions from far-flung homelands. As the season progresses, there will be bitter melon; yard-long beans; Thai basil; Russian, Armenian, and pale green cucumbers; and more. A number of these farmers are plugged into NAAP, and for some like Alexander, the Lents International Farmers’ Market, established formally in 2007, is their first experience with direct marketing.

NAAP farmers are also selling directly to restaurants, while some like Suleyman Idrisov, a displaced Turkish farmer who founded Hayat Farm, are exploring the possibility of supplying major grocery stores such as Whole Foods with seasonal produce. In the case of Lor Kao, a Hmong refugee, he sells his one acre of Corbett-grown produce at the Lents market and directly to congregations through the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon.

Wandering the Lents market, I begin to notice something. Food is cheap. Hand-scrawled signs read rock-bottom prices that would undercut any other market in town. When I go to buy a handful of baby Cocozelle zucchini from Hayat Farm, I tell Suleyman to keep the change. He refuses, I refuse back, and then he concedes by filling my hands with twice again the zucchini I paid for, ignoring my protests. Alexander does the same when I buy a bunch of beets, reaching into a plastic tote full of carrots to top off my purchase.

Knowing firsthand what it takes to plant, weed, harvest, bunch, wash, and haul those veggies to market, paying so little knots my stomach. Whether the pricing is cultural, or evidence of these farmers’ newness to direct marketing, or simply what the market will bear at the Lents market, it’s hard to imagine it penciling out.

It’s an issue that vexes Lents market manager Jill Kuehler as well. In striving to create economic opportunity for immigrant and refugee farmers while simultaneously addressing food access issues within the low-income, ethnically diverse Lents neighborhood, the Lents International Farmers’ market has taken on a tough challenge. Its double social mission would at once put enough money in farmers’ pockets without taking too much out of shoppers’ wallets.

The weekly abundance of affordable fresh food and unusual ethnic fare was well received by the 400 people who frequented the market every Sunday last year, but to see growers hauling home boxes of unsold produce at the end of a six-hour day with only a few hundred dollars in the cash box raises questions for Kuehler about how well this nascent market is serving farmers.

Nevertheless, she maintains a guarded optimism as she points out the fact that farmers keep coming back each week and the number of market shoppers is anticipated to double in 2008. There seems to be no lack of heart behind the Lents market, either. On this particular day, like every Sunday, Kuehler works with a steady stream of volunteers, including board members and State Representative Ben Cannon, who helps sell produce at the market’s community table. “There’s no market like this in Portland so there’s no model to look to,” says Kuehler, squinting into the spring sunshine. “It’s about how creative we can get to meet everyone’s needs.”

The ongoing list of challenges facing immigrant and refugee growers, from soil fertility to finances, has not gone unnoticed in the Portland area. Last summer, a local nonprofit hosted a new farmer training series. Relying on simultaneous translation headsets for Hmong, Russian, Spanish, and English speakers, specialists from Oregon State University and seasoned local farmers taught workshops on soil fertility, land access, new crops, weed management, marketing, farm business management, and farmers’ market display. Forty-three farmers took part, and the program is set to go again this spring.

Meanwhile, NAAP has taken the lead with its growing inventory of more than 110 acres of private land that can be leased by NAAP farmers, and its loan program to serve folks that a typical bank would send packing. For Angel Garcia, an immigrant farmer from Oaxaca, that meant a $14,000 loan that’s financed his production costs for a 30-acre pickling cucumber operation in the Willamette Valley.

Still, it’s not easy. Immigrant and refugee farmers are faced with all the usual hurdles that accompany farming—inclement weather, short-term leases, competition, pests—as well as the challenge of learning a new language, currency, culture, climate, and consumer palate.

On this last theme, advocates are striving to introduce farmers to a diversity of marketable crops that will grow well in the Northwest, and also encouraging them to capitalize on their culinary heritage to carve out a specialty niche in the marketplace. For some Hmong growers this has meant branching out into unique Asian vegetables instead of growing only cut flowers—a cash crop that predominates in most Hmong farmers’ fields. Diversification and differentiation have helped some gain entry into markets where before they were boxed out by competition.

As is often the case for even fifth-generation American-born farmers, many immigrant and refugee growers aren’t making ends meet by farming alone. Most have spouses and family who work other jobs off-farm, and some work second and third jobs themselves. Alexander, for instance, is studying to get his commercial driver’s license to supplement his farm income. “Farming is a difficult way to make a living in this country,” Kuehler admits. “What we’re hoping to do is connect the farmers with enough shoppers so they do not have to rely on second jobs.”

Despite the hardships of farming, Alexander is satisfied with his choice. “I like work in farm,” he says emphatically. “It is sun. It is air. It’s good work. I want more land.”

Zoë Bradbury is a Kellogg Food & Society Policy Fellow. She lives, writes, and farms on Oregon’s southern coast.

Resources

Mercy Corps Northwest
New American Agriculture Project
Drew Katz, Project Coordinator
503-236-1580 ext. 200

Lents International Farmers' Market
Jill Kuehler, Market Manager
9 a.m.-2 p.m., June 15-October 12, 2008
SE 92nd and Foster

Zenger Farm
Emerging Farmer Training Program
Wisteria Loeffler, Project Manager
503-781-6219