Financial Independence Through Farming

My name is Kristin Selby, and I’m the program manager of the New Roots farmer training program.

At New Roots, we just celebrated our 15 year anniversary. So far we’ve had 46 families graduate from the program and 33 of those are still farming in Kansas City. Some of the original participants are two sisters, and they purchased land together over 10 years ago. They’re still farming and they sell at one of the larger farmers’ markets in Kansas City. And their farm is just beautiful. When you go down there it’s this oasis of their families collaborating and it’s really cool to see them continuing to work together. There is a group of farmers from Congo and Burundi that came together to form an LLC and they purchased land together.

We used to be New Roots for Refugees and then we recently expanded the program, dropping the refugees part, to work with not just people who came to the US as refugees, but any immigrant population! We now have a Mexican family participating, in addition to families from Burma, Karen and Karenni families, people from Burundi and the Congo. The farmers need to have been in the country for a year before they enroll in the program. When they first come here, there’s so much that they’re figuring out, starting a business on top of that is difficult. Most people that enter the program have been here three, four, or five years. It is a requirement that they have a background in agriculture that we can help them build on.

New Roots is a training program for refugees and immigrants who have an agricultural background in their home country. We have an incubator farm in downtown KC, where trainees grow for four years. We give them a plot of land and help them learn how to adapt to growing in the Midwestern climate because there’s a big learning curve growing in the Midwest versus Southeast Asia or Africa. We provide education and support for that, as well as English classes and help setting up at farmer’s markets. The goal of the program is that at the end of the four years farmers can graduate and continue to farm independently.

The farmers have free reign to plant whatever they want in their plot, but we do teach folks what a typical American customer at the farmers market might like. It’s sort of a mix of tomatoes, potatoes, and onions but our farmers will grow culturally relevant crops to them too. So a lot of the Burmese folks grow Chin Bong, which is a sour leaf and different varieties of Asian eggplants, African eggplants, matcha. I think a really big draw for people to participate is being able to grow food that is culturally relevant to them, what they grew up eating and what their families want to eat. Then they’ll sell it to their own communities or find other markets. A couple of summers ago, this person had a van that they were just stuffing full of Ma Chicha(sweet corn drink) and driving up to Michigan to sell.

While there’s a lot of New Roots farmers that speak English very well there’s many that still aren’t proficient in English. There’s a lot of linguistic barriers.

Then there’s a ton of paperwork that goes into applying for those programs, and that can be a big barrier.

A lot of people join the program because they are entrepreneurs. One new family that just joined wants to start a grocery store as well as an African market. There’s also people that are less entrepreneurial and just enjoy farming. They love being outside and love that kind of work.

We use a stair step model to self sufficiency. In their first year in the program, we provide a lot of support to farmers, driving them to their market, paying for seeds, paying for water, paying their market fees etc. Each year we provide a little less support and the farmers are responsible for more. So at the end of four years, they’re doing almost everything independently, and have a really clear idea of what it takes to run a farm. We now have a mixture of 12 farmers-in-training and six graduates at the farm. Those graduates really help the newer, incoming farmers and the new farmers ask them a lot of questions and there’s a lot of exchange there. So we have started to shift and find ways that we can continue to support and work with our graduates. Now that we have a network of 46 graduates, there’s still ongoing support that’s needed for any farmers.

I’ve been with New Roots almost five years now. Previous to that, I was at Catholic Charities for about a year and a half, teaching English for citizenship and their citizenship preparation program. My background is in teaching English, and I didn’t grow up gardening or farming at all, so I’ve learned so much about gardening and farming from the farmers and our partner organization called Cultivate KC. Their staff does all the agricultural side of things. It’s sort of rare for an interorganizational partnership to last so long. I’m grateful that we’re able to share those responsibilities. Our partnership with Cultivate is great because they’re eligible for different pools of funding than we are and us vice versa.

Our funding comes mainly from the USDA and the Office of Refugee Resettlement. We’re also supported by some local private organizations and receive some state funding.

A big challenge is land access. We’re pretty lucky in Kansas City that land has been relatively affordable so a lot of graduates have been able to purchase a house with some land. We’re actively looking for more land to expand for the program. We have been leasing Juniper Gardens from Kansas City Housing Authority for the past 15 years and they sold it to a private developer on January first. We’ve been in talks with that developer and they have no intention of kicking us off the land so we’re just gonna work through a new lease with them. You just never know with farm leases, so I think we’ll feel a lot more secure if we can actually own some land.

There’s many incubator programs that look like New Roots around the country and a lot work with refugees and immigrants. It’s a network of programs, so we learn and get ideas from each other. One in Phoenix is also called New Roots Via the International Rescue Committee. I think they have five smaller sites scattered throughout the country. There’s a big one in Minneapolis called the Emerging Farmers Conference. And their farm originally worked with a lot of Hmong farmers. So they provide interpretation for everything. It’s a really language access friendly conference.

I feel really lucky to do New Roots. You work with farmers, but they bring their families to the farm and you share meals and so personally I’ve built so many beautiful relationships. Meeting at the farm, holding people’s babies, sharing meals together, it’s really enriched my life to get to know the farmers and their stories.