Oregon immigrant farmers grow hard-to-find pantry staples

On a hot, dry August day, Mohammad Haji and Ricardo Diaz examined their plots at a community farm in Boring, its fields full of tomatoes, amaranth, corn, peppers, onions, squash, beans and sunflowers.

Haji is raising chickens and cultivating different varieties of eggplant and garlic along with other summer plants. In the adjacent lot, Diaz is nursing greens, cabbage and celery, all winter-season crops, and his summer plants.

They are among the handful of refugee and immigrant growers who in the last year have turned their love of farming into a business and a full-time job. They have access to this farm through a farm accelerator program run by Outgrowing Hunger, a Gresham nonprofit that provides land, agriculture training and business assistance to locals who want to grow and sell fresh foods.

Haji and Diaz grew up farming, feeding their families with foods grown in fields outside their homes and earning an income selling what they harvested from the land. Today, they count on their plots to do much the same.

Dozens of other families count on them, too — particularly other immigrant and refugee families. Both Diaz and Haji grow crops that were staples where they were born but are hard to find in the U.S.

Haji rents a 2-acre plot where he grows produce and raises chickens that are halal — raised and slaughtered in accordance with Islamic law. He’s built a coop on the north end of his plot to house 3,000 chickens and chicks.

Haji has also built a greenhouse, filled with bulbs of garlic he recently harvested, and surrounding that were rows of peppers, amaranth, long beans and roselle — one of the most widely available vegetables in his home country.

Diaz also rents 2 acres from Outgrowing Hunger’s farm in Boring. He said he’s out on the farm every day from 6 a.m. until late afternoon. He has a smaller chicken farm with just over a dozen chickens and grows foods he grew up eating with in Mexico, like papalo, quintonil, romerito, quelite cenizo, epazote and chaya. He also grows produce common in the U.S., like cabbage, lettuce and cucumbers.

Diaz said he made about $35,000 last year growing and selling chilies, green beans, corn, tomatillos and other vegetables. He said most of that income came from a grant that allowed local food pantries to buy directly from his farm. He also grows food for about 10 families that regularly buy their produce from him.

Both Diaz and Haji sell their produce and animal products at the Rockwood People’s Market and other local farmers markets.

Haji and his family uprooted their lives a decade ago to flee Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, and escape to the United States. His long journey took him through Malaysia before he eventually arrived in the Portland area in 2016, where he has held jobs in the hospitality and manufacturing industries.

But the opportunity to start a small farm appealed to him, in part to grow the foods his family and others couldn’t find here.

“In Burma, there’s a lot of farming,” Haji said. “I like doing it because I can make my own schedule and it’s part of my culture.”

Diaz and his family, meanwhile, immigrated from Oaxaca in central Mexico over two decades ago. Like Haji, he’s worked various jobs in different fields, from manufacturing to construction to welding.

Farming, he said, has helped him feel closer to his homeland.

And his harvest has helped others feel the same connection.

Charlotte Davis, hunger relief operations coordinator at the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization in Portland, said the organization bought produce from Diaz last year to distribute to school food pantries.

“He had such a great variety, like different types of peppers, fruit, beans and other greens. He’s such a great resource for anybody who’s looking to get some fresh stuff,” Davis said. “It was wonderful when we got food from him because it’s really difficult to get things that are really culturally specific.”

About 10 miles away, in Gresham near the border with Portland, a 3-acre garden plot is run by refugees of African descent, hailing from Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, among others. The site is one of 10 smaller community gardens run, like the Boring farm, by Outgrowing Hunger.

There, Lucia Ndayihereje and Lukulambo Sekuture were busy checking on the rows of maize, peppers, amaranth greens and varieties of African eggplant, tomatoes and other greens. The land they’re growing on is owned by Portland Parks & Recreation and on loan to Outgrowing Hunger for the garden.

Before arriving in the U.S. from Burundi about a decade ago, Ndayihereje grew up farming and eating mostly food grown in fields outside her home.

“It was a way of life,” she said through a translator. “I am who I am today because of the African food I eat.”

Ndayihereje said she and other gardeners grow crops that are expensive or difficult to find in American grocery stores.

Sekuture was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo but lived for 19 years as a refugee in Rwanda before migrating to Portland in 2010. He said he’d been farming since he was young, including for a time growing food for other families in the Rwanda refugee camp.

Sekuture said he would jump at the chance to work on the farm all day.

“I was born farming, and I wish I was farming full-time today,” he said through an interpreter. “Farming has kept me strong because of the foods that I am able to grow and eat.”

He hopes one day to rent land at the farm in Boring and start his own business. But the lack of capital and transportation to Boring is a barrier.

At the African community garden, roughly 10 refugees and their families plant food for their own dinner tables and for sale. Grants from the East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District and the Portland Clean Energy Fund have covered fees for plots of land, fertilizer, seeds and water, making gardening more accessible to families.

Anne-Marie Urukundo, the African communities coordinator for Outgrowing Hunger, works closely with the growers at the African garden. She said the seeds for many African crops can be hard to come by, but the nonprofit tries to help growers find what they’re looking for.

“Coming out here reminds me of home,” said Urukundo, who was born in Rwanda. “I can find the type of corn and beans and vegetables that I miss.”

Urukundo said many of the growers there want to make farming their full-time job. Outgrowing Hunger has set up a “community table” at the Rockwood farmers market on Sundays where growers can sell the foods they grow without having to pay a vendor fee. While the profits aren’t huge, the entrepreneurial program offers refugees — including those who speak little or no English — a chance to learn how to operate in the local economy.

Adam Kohl, Outgrowing Hunger’s executive director, said the farm accelerator program grew out of the group’s community gardens project.

“It was really the refugees who came to us, and over time and through building relationships, they told us what their needs were,” said Kohl. “They wanted to find the foods that they liked to eat.”

The farm accelerator program supports 40 individual farmers from seven different countries across three farm sites.

Participating growers go through the steps of registering a business, setting up a land lease agreement and purchasing contracts with buyers. The Rockwood Community Development Corporation provides some of the business aid.

The program has also connected growers with nonprofit buyers like the Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization, Rohingya Community Vegetable Distribution and the Sunrise Food Pantry.

Even so, attracting buyers has been challenging, Urukundo said.

“We need more customers who can buy their foods,” she said. “We don’t get enough customers, and there’s so much food here.”

She said many of the African growers have learned to cultivate vegetables and fruit that were new to them in America, like cabbage, celery, green onions, broccoli and cauliflower, so that they could attract non-African customers.

“We have many people who want to be farming full-time, and they come here every day and work hard,” Urukundo said, “even after they work other jobs.”

–Kristine de Leon; kdeleon@oregonian.com