Immigrant & Minority Farmers Conference

On February 2nd, I had to opportunity to attend the 8th Annual Immigrant and Minority Farmers Conference in downtown St. Paul, hosted by the Minnesota Food Association. The culture I explored during this experience was that of minorities.

I had known of the Minnesota Food Association(MFA) before this conference, but I did not know what their main purpose is. After doing some more research, this is what I learned. The Minnesota Food Association is committed to helping farmer participants explore and develop the skills necessary to become independent farmers on their own land. They realize that owning and operating a small farm in the United States is a difficult task. Their main goal is to expose farmer participants to the realities of running an independent farm: not just the work of producing food, but the details of running a successful business. It is a primary goal of the program to encourage farmers to think realistically about the feasibility of running and owning their own farm operation.

I found out about this event because one of my bosses at work volunteers to help with this conference each year. It is two full days of workshops, presentation, and opportunities to learn from established farmers and educators from various organizations, such as the United States Department of Agriculture(USDA), about programs that can help other farmers find land, markets, and be more successful. The main organization that hosts this conference is the Minnesota Food Association, but three other groups help plan this event: Association for the Advancement of Hmong Women on Minnesota, USDA Farm Service Agency, and USDA Natural Resource Conservation Services.

The conference offered a variety of workshops for the farmers to attend to share their stories, learn new techniques and information, and to converse with others about their backgrounds and methods. One of the workshops offered was called Food Safety on Your Farm where they discussed the importance of food safety to those who work on the farm, those who consume the food, and for the farm business as a whole. The session was hands-on and covered topics such as how to build a low cost hand washing station to be placed in the field, the importance of measuring chemicals correctly and reading the labels thoroughly, and how to keep vegetable wash water clean. The session was led by farmers who talked about how they do these practices on their farms. This workshop was rated for “beginner farmers”; others were rated for “advanced farmers”.

 Another one of the workshops was entitled Labor and Employment Issues, designed to help farmers figure out which labor and employment laws apply to their workers. The workshop provided a general overview of how federal and Minnesota state laws and exceptions all fit together and how they apply to small family owned fruit and vegetable farms. This workshop attempted to answer some of the main questions farmers had about their responsibilities as employers and introduced farmers to some of the labor and employment issues they should consider when having friends and family help with work on the farm. Professional Laura Frierichs of Loon Organics shared her story of her real-world experiences with hiring employees to work on the farm. The Farm Service Agency, Minnesota Department of Agriculture, and AgStar Financial Services  provided brief introductions to their microloan plans for small scale farmers at the end of the workshop.

I had the opportunity to attend most of the first day of the conference. I was intrigued by this conference because I grew up on a small farm in southern Minnesota where we raise corn, soybeans, sweet corn, and peas. I have also shown horses and rabbits for quite a number of years. Agriculture is my background, my backbone, and my future. I plan to have a career in an agricultural communications field with an international emphasis. What these farmers do on an everyday basis is what I hope to involve in my career plan. It would be my ultimate career goal to become an international agriculture symposium and seminar coordinator. My hope would be that I would put together two or three week long events for American farmers to go abroad to a different country and explore agriculture there. I have been a participant in an event like this myself and it showed me that my passions really lie within agriculture, education and communications, and international affairs. This event was a real-world example of cultures interacting in an educational setting to better agriculture across the world.

There were various things going on throughout the day, but the time frame that was most important to my intercultural experience was the mid-day luncheon and farmer stories. Bo Thao-Urabe was the facilitator of the lunch program. Bo is the Director of Capacity Building and Organization Learning at Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy(AAPIP), a national membership organization dedicated to advancing community and philanthropy. At AAPIP, Bo is responsible for development, implementation, and evaluation of infrastructure building programs that combine grant making and capacity building strategies, and leads development and learning strategies that help build organization cohesion and impact. Bo was very captivating to listen to and follow through the program.

The most interesting part of the program was the farmer stories. This was a large block of time where farmers could volunteer to go up to the podium and share their stories of their lives as farmers and what it was like to be in America. I was captivated by the story of Phua Thao, a 60 year old Hmong woman who has spent the last 30 years of her life as a small scale organic and chemical free farmer in the United States. Through a translator, we learned that she lives near Spring Valley, Wisconsin, with her husband. In her story, she said that her family came to the US because they wanted their kids to have a better education; she is quite proud that her two children are now a doctor and a nurse. She and her husband sell their produce at the local farmers market. At the end of her story, Phua got a bit teary eyed and ended her short time at the podium by expressing a thank you to America for giving her and her family the opportunity to live the life they have and for allowing them to build their American dream. 

Here is a small video clip of Phua and her translator.

 

 

I noticed a number of cultural differences and interactions that I would like to discuss. I attended this conference because I am in deed a minority farmer; I am a woman. When I was there I felt like a minority not because I was a woman but because I was Caucasian. There were an estimated two hundred people there at the same time I was there, and although the majority of the volunteers were Caucasian, my friend and I felt like we were about 25% of the Caucasian attendance.

One of the biggest cultural differences that stood out to me was the atmosphere of the luncheon. From my past experiences, I would consider the professional community in the United States a more high-context group. When I have attended other conferences in the past, the verbal style is very formal and the attitudes of the people work together are indirect with confrontation, and there is verbal reticence present. During the luncheon portion of this conference, I noticed a much more low context style. There were lots of people talking, moving around, and getting up to leave during the middle of the speakers giving it a more informal style. Most of the speakers spoke to us through a translator; the main language spoken at the conference was English. This gave the luncheon more of a direct verbal style because the phrases were shorted through the translator and I assume that some of the verbal eloquence was lost. Also, there was verbal assertiveness coming from some of those speakers that were talking about things that were difficult about being in the United States.  

Another thing I would like to point out is the food that was served. Picutured here is the lunch that was available to everyone. 

And this is a picture of my plate and my friend's plate after we were done eating. 

We had both considered ourselves fairly adventurous with food and open to trying new things, but this was definitely food we had never had before. My friend was not very fond of any part of it, whereas I found i did like one part quite well. Most of the aspects of the dish were filled with new foods and new flavors. After we decided we were done, we were a bit on the embarrassed side because there were lots of people who were talking about how delicious the food was, but because it was so different to us we didn't really like it. We found ourselves moving form the unconscious incompetence level to the conscious incompetence level through this lunch. 

Another thing that stood out to me was the mural on the wall in the main hall of the building. Here is a picture of it above some people headed to lunch. 

This was interesting to me because it is clearly an very large bald eagle with the American flag painted over its body. This is a very patriotic picture. Granted, it is difficult to find a space that is the size needed at an affordable cost. But, it was still almost shocking to me that an intercultural event would be hosted with this clearly displayed very large. I was discussing it with my friend and her view of it was that it was a good thing, it was like a welcome symbol to everyone. It showed that we loved our country, and they are welcome to also. When I asked some of the other farmer participants about it, I got a variation of reactions. One said she did not notice it, one said it was a very pretty picture, and one said she did not want to comment on it. I wondered if this mural had any impact on the attendance or on the approval rate to the conference. 

I ended my time at the conference by having a nice conversation with one of the farmers who got up and spoke at the luncheon. I thanked him for having the courage to share his story and for attending the conference to better himself and his methods. He left me with kind words of excitement for the future because he believes that young people who are motivated to make a difference are going to be the future of agriculture.