Hmong farmers "are a very strong anchor for produce diversity and availability at markets," explains Mao Lee who previously managed the Minneapolis Farmers Market before recently starting a new role managing a suburban market. Selling at up to eight or nine markets a week isn't uncommon for Hmong growers - and the local community and its tastes have adapted to their ubiquitous presence. In the years since, Hmong farmers have grown accustomed to selling produce they harvest from small, often rented plots of land at several Twin Cities farmers' markets throughout the season.
They found a home within our farmers' markets and an avenue for sustainability," Kotsonas says, just as immigrant communities have across the country, from California to Pennsylvania. "We were losing produce growers until the Hmong farmers came in and really revitalized the numbers. In the canned food frenzy that characterized the decades leading up to the arrival of Hmong Americans, "farmers' markets were starting to fail," explains David Kotsonas, director of operations at the Hmong American Farmers Association (HAFA), a nonprofit cooperative dedicated to the prosperity of Hmong farmers in Minnesota.įarmers' markets were shrinking and falling out of favor with consumers. Today the Twin Cities have the highest metro concentration of Hmong people in the country.īoth a desire to stay connected to home as well as a lack of experience with a post-industrial society drove many Hmong Minnesotans to farming, revitalizing the Twin Cities' farmers' market scene in the process. Local and statewide agencies in Minnesota stepped up to welcome the group. After the war ended, the US eventually offered the Hmong people refugee status. Hmong farmers came to Minnesota in droves in the '70s and '80s after the CIA recruited the minority group to assist the US in the Vietnam War. Yet, despite these challenges and more, Hmong farmers like Thao's parents continue to persist through the difficulties that have faced them and are poised to enjoy a farmers' market season that, if the weather cooperates, will hopefully return to pre-pandemic levels. Language barriers keep the group from accessing resources more readily available to English-speaking farmers while their elemental approach to growing can leave them ill prepared to weather catastrophes like the major drought that hit the state last year. Despite their critical role in local food production, the challenges that all growers contend with tend to hit Hmong farmers harder.
Today, Hmong farmers make up roughly 50% of the growers at metro markets. In the decades that have followed, Hmong farmers have found a natural match in the almost 70 farmers' markets that dot the Twin Cities metro area.
The larger Hmong immigrant community that they're a part of has introduced Minnesotans to treats like bitter melon and various Thai chili peppers. While the soil and climate are different from the hills and mountains of Laos and Thailand that they're used to, Thao's parents brought and adapted their traditional subsistence and small-scale agriculture practices to the state, growing lilies and peonies alongside vegetables like Brussels sprouts, corn, asparagus and tomatoes. Shortly after arriving in Minnesota in 1995, William Thao's Hmong parents began farming their new home land just like many Hmong refugees do.
This article originally appeared on FoodPrint.
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