More
than half of Arizona's farms are run by Native Americans, and they're
now poised to scale up centuries-old sustainable practices to tap
into global trade.
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Velvet
Button, spokeswoman for Ramona Farms and daughter of the owners,
discusses how the tepary bean grows and is harvested. (Photo
By Tayler Brown/Cronkite News)
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Thirty miles south of
Phoenix, green fields of alfalfa and pima cotton stretch toward
a triple-digit sun. Hundreds of yellow butterflies dance above the
purple flowers that dapple the tops of the young alfalfa stalksto
expert eyes, the flowers signal that the plants are heat-stressed
and should be harvested soon.
Gila River Farms near
Sacaton has been growing alfalfa and high-end cottonwhich
is named after the Pima people who inhabited the Gila and Salt river
valleysfor 50 years. That's a long time by current standards
but merely a flash considering that the roots of Arizona's agriculture
reach back thousands of years.
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A
Gila River Farms worker harvests alfalfa, a main cash crop.
(Photo By Tayler Brown/Cronkite News)
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Today, Native Americans
are the primary operators of more than half of all farms or ranches
in the state, making Arizona's agriculture landscape unique compared
with other states, according to the 2014
national agriculture census. Native American farmers sold nearly
$67 million worth of agricultural products in 2012, about 2 percent
of the $3.7 billion in agricultural products sold in Arizona that
year, according to the Arizona
Farm Bureau.
Native American farmers
grow crops as diverse as tepary beans, olives, and squash, some
for community use and some sent around the world. The Navajo and
Hopi tribes feed their communities by focusing on cultural traditions,
including dryland farming.
Centuries-old
Tradition Expands Internationally
Stephanie Sauceda, interim
general manager for Gila River Farms, said the farm is the original
test site funded by the federal government to grow and harvest
extra-long staple pima cotton, which is considered a superior strain.
Farming extends back
centuries for indigenous people, she said.
"It was just something
that Native American people do, not only in Gila River, but also
in other tribes. That's how we survived," Sauceda said. "We did
the hunting of the animals, we grew our corn and our wheat, and
that's how we actually survivedhow our ancestors survived."
The natural next step,
she said, is to send crops to the rest of the world.
Gila River Farms primarily
grows cotton and alfalfa but in recent years has branched out to
increase citrus production and experiment with olive crops, said
Garcia, the farm's assistant general manager.
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Gila
River Farms will celebrate its 50th anniversary this year.
(Photo By Tayler Brown/Cronkite News)
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Sauceda said alfalfa
and cotton, which are the farm's most profitable products, end up
in such places as the Philippines, Vietnam and China.
"We represent the community
with our products that go out the door," said Sauceda, who's only
the second woman to be general manager. She and her employees take
pride in being able to bring their product into the global market.
"We have a really good
name out there."
The farm is growing crops
on 10,000 acres, rotating alfalfa and cotton on much of that land,
Sauceda said. It generates about $10 million annually.
Planting Seeds
of Native Tradition
In northern Arizona,
members of the Hopi Tribe maintain their cultural and traditional
heritage through farming, said Michael Kotutwa Johnson, a Hopi doctoral
candidate at the University of Arizona's School of Renewable Natural
Resources and the Environment.
"For Hopi, farming is
our way of life," Johnson said.
Hopi farmers own small
plots of 1 to 9 acres and use the traditional technique of dryland
farming, which means crops rely only rainfall, Johnson said. Dryland
farming requires seeds be planted deeper than crops for commercial
use, he said.
Hopi agriculture largely
is subsistence-based, meaning farmers grow food for their families
rather than for commercial sale, Johnson said.
Wrangling Tradition
with Women as Leaders
One hundred miles south
of where the four corners of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado
meet, three members of the Navajo Nation lead a biweekly farm-board
meeting.
The two women and one
man conduct the meeting in both English and Diné to be sure
the older generation can understand policy changes and upcoming
projects.
The farm board discusses
a five-year project to update fencing, irrigation and farm equipment.
On the Navajo Reservation,
farming and ranching work hand-in-hand, said Lorena Eldridge, farm
board president of the tribe's Tsaile Wheatfields-Black Rock Chapter.
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Lorena
Eldridge, farm board president for the Tsaile Wheatfields-Black
Rock Chapter on the Navajo Reservation, explains how the irrigation
systems have been updated in recent years. (Photo By Tayler
Brown/Cronkite News)
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Navajo farmers differentiate
themselves from most U.S. farms in a key way: Nearly half of all
farms on the reservation are operated primarily by a woman, Eldridge
said.
According to the 2012
agriculture census, women represent about 30 percent of the total
number of American farmers, but only 14 percent of farms are operated
by a woman.
Still, younger generations
are moving away from farming on reservations.
One third of all Native
American farmers are older than 65. Eldridge is working to secure
investments from the Navajo Nation government to attract younger
people to farming. The farm board secured $5 million for the five-year
project, which will complete its first year in December.
"For me, the farm board
connects me to my history and culture," Eldridge said.
Savoring Tradition
in Native Crops
Some Native American
farmers carry on crop-based traditions, whether for commercial or
community uses.
Blue corn, beans, and
traditional teas and berries, such as greenthread tea and sumac
berries, are grown on Native American farms across Arizona.
Ramona and Terry Button
pulled the native bavi bean, commonly referred to as the tepary
bean, from the brink of obscurity in the late 1970s, said Velvet
Button, their daughter.
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Gila
River Farms recently planted olive trees on several acres,
which should be ready for harvest this year, said Hector Garcia,
assistant general manager. (Photo By Tayler Brown/Cronkite
News)
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Drought had put many
other local farmers out of business, but Ramona Farms on the Gila
River Reservation survived, in part based on reclaiming a bean that
had been around for centuries.
Native American communities
had "lost touch" with the tepary bean and other traditional native
foods, Velvet Button said.
"We lost our market when
large grocery stores moved in closer to the reservations and took
over the mom and pop shops that were servicing the rural communities,"
she said.
The tepary bean comes
in black, white, blue speckled, and other colors, Button said, and
is an important staple food for several tribes.
Ramona Farms, family
owned and operated, generates 90 percent of its income from such
commercial crops as cotton, wheat and alfalfa, but the Button family's
passion is promoting and educating people about indigenous foods.
Water scarcity, the proliferation
of grocery stores and a lack of agriculture education and policy
have been hurdles to food sovereignty that organizations such as
the Indigenous Food Systems Network and the Native
American Food Sovereignty Alliance are working to overcome.
"The huge food sovereignty
movement has helped connect us once again as indigenous communities
and our traditional food sources," Button said. "Our communities
are so remote that we need to be able to sustain ourselves."
According to 2016 data
published by the Arizona
Department of Health Services, American Indians are disproportionately
affected by chronic diseases, such as diabetes. Native Americans
die at three times the rate to diabetes compared with the state's
average the report said.
Refocusing on traditional
foods and incorporating them in new
recipes has been a stepping stone to improving the community's
health education, Button said.
"When you see the community
growing their own food, being involved in the processit really
makes a difference," Johnson said. "When you give people access
to this, you see rates of diabetes going down and you see everyone's
well-being going up."
This article originally
appeared on Cronkite
News and is reprinted with permission.
For more stories from
Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.
Cronkite News, the news arm of Arizona PBS, is operated by Arizona
State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass
Communications and staffed by students of the school.
Native
American Food Sovereignty Alliance (NAFSA)
NAFSA is dedicated to restoring, supporting and developing Indigenous
food systems through best practices and advocacy that place Indigenous
peoples at the center of national, Tribal and local policies and
natural resources management to ensure food security and health
of all future generations
https://nativefoodalliance.org
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