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In St. Louis, foreign refugees are farming on city-owned land to earn a few extra greenbacks.
Mang Zam, late of Myanmar, tending his vegetables in St. Louis.(Wayne Crosslin/International Institute of St. Louis)
Raising Crops That Remind Them of Home
By Ted Hesson
National Journal
July 7, 2015
Excerpt:
July 7, 2015 In a city best known for deep-fried ravioli and butter cake, you might not expect bitter eggplant—dubbed “pumpkin on a stick,” for how it looks on the stem—to be a runaway hit.
Yet bitter eggplant, common to cuisine in parts of Africa, Asia, and Brazil, has become one of the most popular crops at two urban farms in St. Louis, bringing in $6 to $7 per pound. Used in a soup or a sauce, it is a favorite among the locale’s most recent arrivals, refugees from such strife-torn lands as Burundi, Myanmar, and Nepal. For the past few years, refugee farmers have raised the exotic crop, and many others, through a program run by the International Institute of St. Louis, a nonprofit organization that helps immigrants adapt to life in a city whose heyday has long passed.
“We provide them the opportunity to be growing produce that you can’t really find in this part of the world,” says Blake Hamilton, a program manager at the institute. “We have folks who maybe made their living as farmers previously and other folks who maybe had a garden nearby their house. … It really kind of runs the gamut.”
Read the complete article here.
Source: http://www.cityfarmer.info/2015/07/18/in-st-louis-foreign-refugees-are-farming-on-city-owned-land-to-earn-a-few-extra-greenbacks/
