These brave farmers have found a niche market in their new home in Arizona, USA, thanks to support from FARM (Fostering Agricultural Refugees Microenterprises). And they are busy growing and selling organically grown vegetables reminiscent of varieties they grew 'back home'.
Managed by the IRC, a non-governmental humanitarian and relief organization based in New York City, and supported by the governmental Office of Refugee Resettlement, the FARM programme aims to provide food, work, income, dignity and familiarity to displaced people who have escaped persecution, war and armed conflict. So far 6,800 refugees have been helped by one organization or another to resettle in Arizona.
Timothy Olorunfemi, Coordinator of IRC’s FARM program in Phoenix, is an agricultural economist with ten years of experience training farmers in Nigeria to turn subsistence farming into commercially viable ventures. He feels the best way to learn is by experiencing for yourself, so at a 14-acre (6 hectare) organic farm his trainee-farmers get right to work: they prepare the land with compost, sow their crops of vegetables and melons, nurture, water and eventually harvest the fruits of their labour. And the trainees take their produce to the local farmers market, too, so they learn to handle the business end of farming.
As soon as they graduate from the training, FARM helps the new farmers set up independently, putting into practice what they have learned, with periodic get-togethers for special training sessions and group support.
Local challenges
Farming in the Phoenix area is challenging. First, the weather, with temperatures that sizzle for six months of the year. Second, the lack of affordable land in and around this mega-sprawling city. Third, little start-up capital.
But IRC and FARM are resourceful, looking for ways to make the programme work anyway. They focus on developing small plots – 3 acres (1.2 hectares) or so of rented or donated land, whether privately owned or belonging to an organization like the YWCA. By keeping the plots small, they avoid investing in equipment essential for large farms. And the trainees learn local organic techniques for combating extreme temperatures, improving the compacted desert soil and protecting their crops against insects without using pesticides and the arsenal of toxic chemicals that are de rigueur – and very expensive – in conventional farming.
Says Jon Vosper, Phoenix IRC general manager: Going organic means “there’s a potential for produce to be sold at a premium.” He adds: “We still have a family that is harvesting just the okra, and they are able to make a living from that one crop.”
Olorunfemi says with pride in his trainee-farmers that in one training session, “we grew Armenian cucumbers, zucchini, cantaloupe, melon and okra.”
Keep those vegetables coming – fresh, organic, local! People like this are not only feeding their families and feeding their community, but they are joining a worldwide movement that is regenerating the earth: helping the world start over, organically.
SOURCES: Telephone interviews with Jon Voster and Tim Olorunfemi; “A new kind of farm aid” by Sloane Burwell in Edible Phoenix, Winter 2008, 12:22.
Article originally written for L'INCONNU magazine, Autumn 2009
