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Hmong Americans Go to Farming School

By Kiley Russell/AP

Nao Lee Thao takes a break from working in his tomato field, Monday, May 7, in Fresno, Calif. Arriving from a Thai refugee camp, Thao is one of many renting a 20-acre parcel to farm as part of a new California farm school. Photo by Associated Press.

A handful of community activists and agricultural advisers are transforming a prime 20-acre spread in the heart of California’s breadbasket into one of the state’s first truck farmer finishing schools.

A trailer parked in the fields near a housing development along the southwest border of Fresno, Calif., was christened April 20 as California’s latest farm school, an agricultural campus where fledgling farmers — many of them Hmong American refugees — can ply their trade without fear of financial ruin.

Its students will be culled mainly, though not exclusively, from the region’s newly arrived immigrants, minority tenant farmers and farm laborers who are ready to cultivate fields of their own.

“This new training facility gives people who think they may want to get into farming a low-risk way to try it and learn more about it,” said Chuko Thao, director of the Hmong American Community, a nonprofit group formed to help the Central Valley Hmong American population find jobs, schools, housing and health care.

The idea is to recruit several farmers-in-training, rent them a few acres at the going market rate of about $275 annually per acre, and give them intensive field guidance and classroom training.

A tentative course schedule includes classes on pesticide safety, soils and fertilizers, weeds and insects, diseases and nematodes, rodent and bird pests, marketing, computerized record keeping and labor management. Many of the classes also emphasize organic farming techniques.

The Small Farm Resource and Training Center, as it’s been dubbed, already has two tenants, both local Hmong American farmers who have plenty of experience working the land — but precious little managing a farm.

“Many of the Hmong people are here in the Central Valley because of the opportunity to farm, but there are a lot of missing pieces to the puzzle. Because of language barriers, they are not always able to get the services they need,” Thao said.

Many of the 150,000 Hmong Americans came to this country as refugees. Thousands of Hmong men and boys were recruited off their farms in the mountains of Laos by the CIA to fight the North Vietnamese along the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War. When Laos fell to communism in 1975, many fled to Thailand.

With limited English and a farming tradition that dates back centuries, many flocked to agricultural towns in Minnesota, California and North and South Carolina. Roughly 60,000 Hmong Americans live in California’s San Joaquin Valley, the largest concentration outside Asia.

“As you go out through Fresno, you’ll see community gardens and you can tell where Hmong live. It’s a big part of our cultural identity,” Thao said.

When 40-year-old Nao Lee Thao, Chuko Thao’s cousin, first arrived in the valley, fresh from a five-year stint in a Thai refugee camp, he found work as a laborer for other recently arrived Hmong Americans.

“At first, I went to work for people who already had land to learn more about farming. Even back in Laos, I’ve always farmed,” Nao Lee Thao said through an interpreter.

He’s growing cherry tomatoes, sugar peas, green beans, lemon grass and bok choy on two acres at the training center and plans to sell as much as possible to a local packing house. The rest he’ll haul to farmers’ markets in San Francisco or Los Angeles.

“It’s not enough money to support my family, but I’m also working as a farm laborer until I can save enough money to get land of my own,” Nao Lee Thao said.

The student farmers will be allowed to stay at the center for up to three years so they can get a good feel for weather patterns, crop rotation and the vagaries of the market place.

“Farming is a business and we’re here to help [students] understand all aspects of it. We’ll also connect them with business and farm and loan advisers,” Chuko Thao said.

The school was established by a partnership between the Hmong American Community and the University of California’s Small Farm Resource Network, which includes officials from dozens of public and private agencies that provide assistance to small-scale growers in the San Joaquin Valley.

The California Endowment gave the Hmong American Community a $153,326 grant to establish the project and provide pesticide safety and organic farming instruction.

The land is part of a 40-acre site bought by the American Farmland Trust, which acquires farmland threatened by urban development, and leased to the school.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture also contributed $20,000 for start-up costs and is expected to cut another check for almost $69,000 for office expenses and a tractor lease.

Still, the operation is desperate for equipment. The trailer that will serve as office, classroom and conference center has only one desk and three chairs. There are no file cabinets, telephones, shovels, plows or computers.

“We’re hoping [the money] will last for the next year and a half. In the meantime, we’re trying to locate more funding to keep this going,” Chuko Thao said.