Feeding mouths and hearts: What it’s like being an AANHPI Farmer
It doesn’t take long for a baby to know it needs food to survive. It’s one of the first needs they are acutely aware of.
As you grow older, your relationship with food grows and changes. You can pick at your vegetables, make a face at the rubbery textures of some foods, and groan as loud as you want when your parents say you’re having lasagna for dinner (again?), but at the end of the day, you know how important it is to eat.
Food keeps us alive, strengthens our bodies, and helps us grow.
Food is powerful, not just because it’s our body’s fuel but because it can feed our souls and memories.
Nostalgia on the mind and tongue
Many first-generation immigrants’ strongest memories of their homeland revolve around food. Ask them what they miss or remember the most about home, and the answer is most likely to be ‘food’ eight times out of ten. Food is one of the first things they miss when the homesickness hits hard. But it’s also one of the aspects of the homeland that can be recreated if you have the right ingredients.
In this way, food can feed your soul. A certain flavor that you’ve grown up with unlocks a world of memories.
While nostalgia is a subjective flavor for many first-generation immigrants, second-generation immigrants mirror a similar relationship with food.
If you’re a second-generation immigrant, your parents may have introduced you to foods that they were surrounded by in their home countries. Food connects the life they left behind and the life they are now building. Food helps us grow connections, memories, and love.
Farms that feed our souls
Sourcing the ingredients that go into our favorite foods from home is easy thanks to ethnic stores that stock much-need components to create the dishes we love.
We often overlook what makes it possible for ethnic stores to be able to sell this produce: Asian farms.
There's a long history of Asians working on farms and transforming land into the bountiful resources they are today. For example, Sonoma County in California is famed for its wine; what often goes unmentioned is the Chinese migrant workers who worked on this land nurturing it into what it is today.
Today, the exclusion of Asian farmers and agriculturalists continues. According to a 2017 Census of Agriculture, Asian farmers and farms are a sliver of food production in America.
It was this lack of representation that inspired Leslie Wiser to start Radical Family Farms (Sebastopol, California). Honoring her mixed heritage of German, Polish, and Jewish descent and Chinese-Taiwanese roots, Leslie grows heritage vegetables from Germany and Asian cultures—a process she calls ‘identity farming’.
The challenges of an Asian farm outdo what conventional farms face with climate patterns and operational issues. Asian farms must source hard-to-find South Asian and East Asian seeds, and grow them in soil and a climate that’s starkly different from our home countries. Despite the odds against them, these farms produce vegetables that we love and can experiment with in our kitchens.
Digging up the dirt
Despite many Asian countries being agrarian, the idea of an Asian farmer in the West still raises eyebrows. Without generational wealth, it can be tough to start a farm, but young Asian farmers are using social media to keep their farms running and serving communities. In fact, Jade Sato of Minoru Farm launched a Kickstarter campaign to buy her farm in Brighton, Colorado. She says her farm was “born out of the urge to reconnect with my ancestors and their experiences through honoring my Japanese-American agricultural roots”.
The hard-to-farm-in weather patterns of Colorado sometimes keep her up at night, wondering if her farm’s greenhouse structures will survive the strong winds and dry air.
Green house at Minoru Farm
Many farmers reveal that farming doesn’t reap much profit, but the community gained from it is priceless. They form relationships with food trucks, small businesses, and people who buy their produce. For example, Flynn Farms run by a veteran AANHPI female farmer grows a diversity of crops for non-profit organizations, grocers, restaurants, and direct sales.
On a large scale, Asian-run farms boost local economies by keeping ethnic restaurants and stores in business. Their hard work flows down into our lives; an immigrant mother out there can introduce her children to Kilawing Puso ng Saging because of an Asian farmer who painstakingly grows banana hearts.
This is not to say that Asian-run farms exclusively feed certain ethnic communities. Vegetables strongly associated with Asian cuisine don’t always need to be cooked an ‘Asian way’. Having easy access to these rare-to-find ingredients allows everyone, Asian or not, to experiment and discover new flavors and textures of food.
On being a female farmer
If being an Asian farmer doesn’t come with its challenges already, being a female Asian farmer raises the bar of difficulty. Jade tells us that at farmers markets, people assume she works the booth or is clueless about the food that her own hands have grown. It can be challenging to not receive that benefit of doubt. But nevertheless, knowing that she feeds mouths and homesick hearts is the motivation that keeps her showing up to farmers' markets, again and again.
In addition to the work that goes into the soil, there is a lot more work behind the scenes to keep a farm running. Vanita Patel of Switch Gears Farm is using her former work experiences in planning and coordination to update their online presence, send communications, and coordinate sales and delivery of produce. Her husband, Brett, handles the growing and harvesting. After years of being a working professional, to now helping run a farm, Vanita has switched gears, true to the name of their farm.
Vanita Patel, Behind the Scenes Farmer of Switch Gears farm with potato crops
AANHPI farmers do more than feed people, they offer a representation of the food we love and cherish. The physical farms also offer a safe space for people of color to visit, and build community. Kasama Farms, a queer, Philipinx-American influenced farm in Oregon, boasts of being a place where queer, trans, BIPOC individuals can show up wholly. Kasama means ‘companion’ in Tagalog. Jihelah Greenwald, one of the owners, says about growing Filipino crops “It’s amazing to be able to grow food for people that move to this country. It brings their culture here and reminds them of home.”
That truly is what food can do: transport you to a different time and place that feels like home. They keep our stomachs and hearts full. As Jade of Minoru Farm says in this article, ““I cry a lot when I eat some of these vegetables, because I’m realizing what I’m missing out on with these flavors and textures, and it’s so healing,”
Another way you can feel closer to your roots is to join Asian Girls Ignite’s program where we help AANHPI girls and gender-expansive youth feel like they can learn and celebrate their AANHPI identities. Also, we do our best to ensure that we showcase food from local Colorado AANHPI women-owned businesses during our programs!
We believe in knowing our roots, and eating them as well.
