Expanding Production of African Eggplant in the Red River Valley

View the project final report

Commodities

• Vegetables: eggplant

Practices

• Crop Production: food processing, food product quality/safety, high tunnels or hoop houses
• Education and Training: demonstration, farmer to farmer, on-farm/ranch research
• Farm Business Management: budgets/cost and returns, cooperatives, new enterprise development, value added
• Pest Management: mulching - plastic
• Production Systems: organic agriculture
• Sustainable Communities: new business opportunities

Problem addressed and the project's approach:

Traditional organic cultural methods employed by immigrant farmers for production of African eggplant will be complemented by use of plastic covered raised beds and two different high tunnel season extension methods.  Eggplant will be evaluated for quantity of production in each method comparing and documenting amount of the plant's total season production and comparing quality though appearance.  The increased summer production will be packaged, frozen and sold through a new enterprise, Red River Valley Eggplant, organized by Caliton Ntahompagaze, replacing frozen eggplant in local ethnic groceries currently sourced from Ghana.   African and Asian families seek the lower quality frozen product when fresh or their own home-grown and frozen eggplant is not available.  This project is an example of an African proverb, "When you wash the right hand, the left hand also gets clean" as it accomplishes significant expansion of production skills among all participating New Roots farmers, provides experience in analyzing cost of production among various methods, launches/plans for future growth of an enterprise designed to replace an off-season international market for a culturally significant food thereby assisting these entrepreneurial farmers to realize their dreams of establishing their individual small scale highly productive farms.

Research conclusions and farmer adoption:

Our incubator program regularly provides support for immigrant farmers - but this project allowed us to go into great depth with one farmer as he built his business and graduated out of our program. This experience has inspired us to create a center that will provide "wrap around" services to immigrant farmers as they adapt their knowledge to new growing conditions and marketplaces, and set out on their own.

1. Compare cost of production for traditional production with use of raised plastic covered beds and season extension using Caterpillar moveable high tunnel and Four Season Tool moveable caliton eggplantHigh tunnel methods
2. Evaluate quality through visual comparison of differences in appearance, size and shape
3. Replicate individual farmer preferred methods on their own farm during 2023
4. Assist one farmer in clarifying his business model and building a plan for future enterprise growth
5. Share findings through field days, website, social media, and conference presentations