Building Capacity to Engage Latinos in Local Food Systems in the Heartland

Building Capacity to Engage Latinos in Local Food Systems project was designed to provide Extension educators and other agricultural professionals in Iowa and Kansas with the knowledge and skills to identify and respond to the needs and goals of Latino growers and producers and their families. Through a series of professional development activities over the course of the project, participants have had the opportunity to further develop the knowledge and skills needed to serve their communities.

1. Short-Term Outcomes focusing on awareness, knowledge, attitudes and skills

Project activities for the first year aligned with the short-term outcomes for the project and were mostly focused on the Multicultural Workshops that were delivered in both Kansas and Iowa. The purpose of these workshops was to improve participants’ understanding of how to communicate and build trust across cultural and language differences. It also provided an overview of the need for outreach through Extension, NRCS, FSA, farmer organizations, and NGOs to Latino farmers, and effective methods for reaching this audience. The session was conducted by Diane Finnerty, Director of Cultural Competence Initiatives at the National Resource Center for Family Centered Practice at University of Iowa’s School of Social Work, and Juan Marinez, Regional Director for Outreach with Cooperative Extension at Michigan State University.

Project personnel outlined the content for the sessions and identified Extension educators and other agricultural professionals in both states to invite to workshops. The Iowa workshop took place at Iowa State University on September 27, 2007. The Kansas workshop was held October 18-19, 2007 at Kansas State University. A total of 69 participants attended the workshops in the two states.

Participants in Iowa attended a series of workshops involving hands-on activities, visits to local Latino businesses and opportunities to network with extension educators and others to think strategically about building long-term partnerships between community and agricultural organizations and Latino community members. Sessions also focused on raising participant awareness of what defines a local or regional food system, how these food system alternatives are being developed in communities throughout Iowa, and what steps to take to create a local food system. These workshops continued through the second year of the project and covered topics such as entrepreneurial farm business, value chains, market gardening, and working with Latino producers and consumers.

As a part of these workshops, the participants not only had the opportunity to visit various business and operations, but they were able to take part in discussion and reflection sessions. Working in both small and large groups, participants discussed questions such as:

• Reflecting on the communities where you live and/or work, in what ways are local farmers and/or small/medium-scale food processors connecting to local markets?

  Are Latinos involved in these activities? If not, how could you see them playing a role? What did you learn from your interviews (in October 2007) about how Latinos are or could be involved?

  Name 2-3 things that could make the local-food-system-related activities going on in your community even better.

  What relevant assets (people, institutions, networks, physical space, land, programs, etc.) does your community have to build upon toward this vision?

These discussions allowed the participants to share what they found most useful or intriguing about what they had learned during the day, as well as thinking about what they could do next in their own community.

Participants in the Building Capacity to Engage Latinos in Local Food Systems project were also invited to participate in the USDA-Sustainable Agriculture Research and Extension New American Farm Conference 2008 in Kansas City, Missouri as part of the project’s activities. Nine Kansas participants, with representatives from both Extension and NRCS, attended the conference. Program leaders reviewed the list of conference sessions and highlighted the ones that contributed to the project’s professional development goals for gaining knowledge and understanding of local food systems. The conference also offered a variety of tours to local farms and businesses. The leaders identified three tours for project participants to provide experiential learning opportunities related to local food systems and/or working with minority farmers. As a wrap-up session for these activities, the grant participants met after the tours for discussion to synthesize learning and plan the next steps for a local level engagement project with Latino community members/farm families.

2. Intermediate-Term Outcomes focusing on behaviors, practices and policies

Activities offered in the second year of the Building Capacity to Engage Latinos in Local Food Systems project were designed to support the intended intermediate-term outcomes focusing on behaviors, practices and policies. Two key events were held during the summer.

The first was a meeting in Iowa with Extension Vice-Provost Dr. Jack Payne. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss and propose strategies for strengthening Extension outreach to Latino communities. Feedback collected at a workshop in May was used to develop a proposal for how to move forward with strengthening outreach efforts. This proposal provided the foundation for the meeting with Dr. Payne.
Dr. Payne was supportive of key points in the proposal. These include encouraging recruitment of Latinos to Extension Council positions, offering to co-sponsor a conference (Cambio de Colores), and supporting inter-agency networking around Latino programming. Based on this response, project leaders in Iowa followed up with Dr. Payne in a memo requesting his support for these actionable items:
1) Encourage him to remind County Extension Education Directors (CEEDs) to consider diversity when recruiting candidates for their county extension councils;
2) Find out what would be involved in co-sponsoring Cambio de Colores; and
3) Establish a periodic conference call program involving individuals from a broad range of organizations to discuss issues and ideas related to Latino programming. Dr. Payne was skeptical about Extension’s ability in the near term to fund a fulltime Latino community specialist, although believed this might be a worthy future pursuit.

The second key event from summer 2008 was a two-day immersion event. Based on discussions at the SARE conference in Kansas City, participants indicated it would be useful to organize an experiential visit to a community in which such work was already under way. The visit would provide an opportunity for educators to meet others interested in similar work, see how connections to multicultural communities and organizations were made and developed, to see how projects have been developed, and perhaps most importantly to see how cross-cultural understanding is being fostered. As a result, plans were made to visit Garden City, a diverse community of 26,000 in southwest Kansas.
The community visit took place June 27-29. The overarching goal of the event was to provide an immersion experience that included meeting local people from the immigrant community, the business community, and the agricultural community (educators and others interested in agriculture). Thirteen participants attended the event. Specific objectives for the visit included: developing a greater awareness of characteristics, needs and cultural norms of Latino farmers, families and communities; increasing knowledge of effective methods to reach Latino farmers, youth, families, communities; and improving skills to assist Latino farm families and agricultural workers to identify their needs and access solutions via programs offered by Extension, NRCS, and other organizations. Specific activities during the two-day event included: cultural presentations; panel discussion of farm life in Mexico and the US; ethnic grocery store visits, a visit to a Latino neighborhood community center, stories from immigrants and their families, and presentations by local leaders, including the current Garden City mayor and the former mayor, who is now on the Kansas Board of Regents.

In February of 2009, a group of project participants had the opportunity to take part in a twelve-day experiential learning field trip in Mexican rural communities in coordination with Universidad Autónoma Chapingo. They participated in a hands-on field trip in Mexican rural communities in the states of Oaxaca and Edo. de Mexico. The purpose of this Professional Development Program (PDP) was to enhance the capacity of educators and farm leaders to work with socially disadvantaged Latino farmers by means of an educational model that integrates an Experiential Learning Curriculum that is focused on Mexican cultural values and sustainable farming systems.

Participants were immersed directly into the culture and values of traditional rural Mexican communities, from which many of our new US farmers derive. Under this learning model, extension educators increased their consciousness of the barriers faced by individuals who belong to this demographic farming group, in an environment where the language, values, and traditions are different from their own. Five educators from Kansas participated in this program.

3. Long-Term Outcomes (systemic changes, not within the timeframe of this project).

Long term systemic changes were beyond the timeframe of this project. However, we expect that educators in the various institutions that participated will continue to learn about issues related to engaging Latinos in their communities, and will incorporate these activities into their strategic plans.

After attending the USDA-Sustainable Agriculture Research and Extension New American Farm Conference 2008, project participants were asked to reflect on what they learned in these sessions and how this information relates back to their needs in engaging Latinos in their professional work setting. One of the participants reported,
“The information shared at this conference got to the heart of food systems for a healthier way of living, eating, and leaving a legacy. I thought it would only be about farming, but the social messages incorporated into all the sessions made the conference very well-rounded.”

Other participants also talked about the how they plan to use the information they learned. One extension professional stated, “These resources will be used in my daily life and as I work with the diversity team.” Another had specific ideas, commenting, “[I want to] link Spanish publications to K-State listserv…find local CSA's and their membership needs- if any. Contact local food pantries to determine what produce their Latino clientele want/need. Encourage community gardens to plant a row for the hungry of this produce to donate.” One of the participants summed up the experience by saying, “I am very happy that I got to attend the conference and was shocked at how much I thought I knew. It was very educational and made me see a much larger picture.”

The two-day immersion event in Kansas provided participants with additional awareness, knowledge and skills in working with Latino communities, the experiential learning also helped participants plan for activities in their local communities. Several participants discussed the possibility of having or developing a directory of people/agencies currently working with Latinos in communities such as Garden City that could serve as conduits for information regarding farm loans for new producers. Expanding on this idea, participants went on to suggest that those contacts could be a starting point for outreach and dissemination of information. In general, the participants reported that seeing what was being done in other locations helped them think about projects that could be done in their own communities.

As part of the project evaluation, participants in both states completed a survey to capture baseline information regarding their views, knowledge, and experiences of interacting with members of the Latino community. The participants at the end of the project took the same survey, and the results were reviewed to see if there were any pre-to-post changes. For example, challenges of engaging Latinos in work, outreach and/or educational programs identified by Kansas and Iowa participants at the beginning of the project included:

• Language,

  Cultural Differences,

  Building trust and understanding,

  Identifying needs of the Latino community,

  Immigration status (fear of government,

  Lack of experience (on both sides) of working with each other.

By the end of the project, language was still seen as the major barrier for outreach efforts. However, while more than half of pre-survey respondents indicated that “understanding cultural differences” was or could be a barrier for them in communicating with the Latino community, only about one-third of participants who took the post survey saw this as a barrier. This may be an indication that the activities over the length of the project gave participants a better understanding of cultural differences, thereby removing this perceived barrier to effective communication with Latino community members.

Participants also shared some of the changes they have made to their practice as a result of taking part in this project. These comments included:

• “The project definitely helped me move an existing Latino community outreach project forward, by what I learned and resources/people I was exposed to. This is and will continue to provide assistance to a population that has been in the community for almost 20 years and hasn't received much in the way of service or assistance.”

  “I am more aware of Latinos in my day to day interactions in the community. I am trying to watch and observe where these people are, what they are doing, and what they value. Until I can positively determine a need for food production, I have looked at local food consumption. Calling several area food pantries, I gathered demographics of their clientele and their produce preferences. Latinos often rank high on the user list. I have made profile pages of these different food pantries, providing a list of preferred produce based on their clients’ requests. These have been distributed to local community gardens and were featured in our office newsletter last summer. Even though I am not yet creating programming to engage Latinos in food production, I can at least get local gardeners thinking about this population.”

  “The initial 'homework' assignments involved meeting Latino business owners -I did and have worked much closer with them since the beginning of this project!! Thanks for pushing me!!”

  “Much more engaged with the Latino community in our county! Our focus is on business and economic growth in general, rather than so much on local food systems. We are partnering with the Latino community center to work toward a Latino Chamber of Commerce initiative.”