Alejandro Tecum is originally from Guatemala. As a boy, he used to help his father and grandfather on their family farm. He remembers the day when a US Peace Corps volunteer arrived to help his father transition from traditional, sustainable farming practices to more modern conventional methods. He recalls the first harvest using the new methods being plentiful, with healthy, vibrant, flavorful vegetables. But with each consecutive year, the bountiful harvest got smaller and smaller, despite the increase in the synthetic petroleum-based fertilizers. Now, as the Director of the Adelante Agricultura Program at Adelente Mujeres in Forest Grove, Oregon, Alejandro works with and supports Latino immigrant farmers and their families in learning sustainable, organic farming practices.
On La Esperanza Farm, Alejandro provides training and technical assistance to 35 people and families who are interested in learning to farm both to grow food for their families and as a way to provide additional income. Below, Alejandro shares more on the farm and the families there who are growing food and creating new opportunities for themselves and their community.
Adelante Mujeres is a 2012 USDA Community Food Projects Grantee. Click here to learn more about the organization’s work in its home community of Forest Grove, Oregon.
Our partner, David Hanson, crackerjack freelance writer and multimedia producer based in Seattle, WA, is on a nation-wide journey to document and share the stories of innovative USDA Community Food Projects around the country. This is how David describes the Community Food Projects program, the types of projects the program supports and their impact in each community:
There are hundreds of these programs around the country. And exponentially more people who have benefited from them. Trickle down, I guess. But not through the kinds of stratified layers of class that Reaganites applaud. I’ve noticed so far that these grants plug directly into small-scale projects that bring food to people. A few have sputtered and faded since the money flow ran out years ago. I call executive directors who weren’t even on staff when the grant was running and have no idea of its present manifestation, if any. But the majority of the CFP-funded projects are still alive or have evolved into new forms, a luxury of being focused and nimble and directly linked to the communities they are meant to support.
Most of the projects are small. As small as a handful of youth managing twelve shelves of fruit and produce in three corner stores of West Oakland, a community of 25,000 residents with one grocery store and fifty-three liquor stores. Or a parent of elementary school children managing an after-school produce stand at the Martin Luther King Jr School, also in West Oakland. The woman boasted of encouraging a young girl to try an orange for the first time: “It tastes like a Starburst,” she’d told her. The girl tried the pink-flesh orange that grew a few counties away and she was hooked on fresh fruit.
Or as small as Maria and her kids tending, harvesting, and selling the fruit their husband/father planted twenty years ago. Soil Born Farms is a non-profit in Sacramento that supports and encourages sustainable growers and farm education programs throughout the city. In 2006 the farm manager Randy heard about a man selling peaches at a crazy low price at one of the city farmer’s markets. Randy found the man and the man invited Randy to his orchard.
To read the organizational profile, including the full story of Maria, Carlos, Randy and Soil Born Farms, visit WhyHunger’s CFP database. And don’t miss the vibrant portraits and gorgeous photos from his adventures on David’s blog, Meeting People.
I have to be honest, my love of shrimp is deeply rooted as my ‘go to food’ when back in the day I wanted something low calorie and low fat to eat. Of course, this was in the days before we worried about our cholesterol levels. Salad and shrimp cocktail were not going to pack on the pounds.
Back then, I had no idea where my shrimp came from but my guess is that it was wild and lived in the ocean. Now, it’s still a challenge to figure out my shrimp’s origins and on top of that I find my food choices have become more complicated.
So, it’s summer and the perfect time to eat outside, and to eat lots of shellfish. I decided I would try to get a sense of where the shrimp that I order in a restaurant comes from.
Why should you ask where the shrimp (or any animal protein for that matter) is sourced?
Here’s why.
The shrimp we order at a restaurant is most likely farm raised. They are fed antibiotics, GMO feed or some other unnerving food source. According to Food and Water Watch, “Fish-lovers would be horrified to learn that huge quantities of fish and shrimp are now being grown in giant nets, cages, and ponds where antibiotics, hormones and pesticides mingle with disease and waste. These industrialized aquaculture facilities are rapidly replacing natural methods of fishing that have been used to catch fresh, wild seafood for millennia.”
Not sounding good to me.
A 30-million-square-meter shrimp farm in Indonesia
In one high-end restaurant I visited recently, I asked, “Can you tell me where the shrimp is from and if it is wild or farm-raised?” The waiter came back with the answer that the shrimp were wild and from Guatemala.
Another thing to think about is that shrimp are often farm-raised in foreign countries like Indonesia, where the workers rights are questionable and the effects of shrimp farms can be devastating to their ecosystems. And, let us not forget the increased carbon footprint created when shrimp travels hundreds if not thousands of miles to make it to our dinner plate. [read entire article…]
Welcome to the Connect blog, a project of WhyHunger’s Grassroots Action Network.
The Connect blog shares the stories of community-based organizations who are leading by example and working together to build the movement to end hunger and poverty.
Learn more about the Grassroots Action Network here.
A 30-million-square-meter shrimp farm in Indonesia
