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CHAPTER 1: BACKGROUND FOR THIS DISSERTATION
1.1 RATIONALE
Numerous farm and food related programs strive to alleviate contemporary crises
of sustainability, justice, and equity in our food systems in the United States and globally.
The purpose of this research is to develop holistic impact analyses of the efficacy,
challenges, and opportunities of community food systems initiatives, focusing on sites in
the U.S. states of Vermont and Wisconsin. We intend for these analyses to inform similar
programs, researchers, and policy makers working toward a sustainable and equitable
food system.
Food systems in the United States, and globally, are in dire straits. Over the last
several decades global agricultural reform efforts tied to the green revolution have
destroyed over 70% of terrestrial agrobiodiversity, degraded 52% of agricultural land,
used 70% of fresh water, and emitted 29% of greenhouse gasses (WWF, 2021),
particularly impacting many of the world’s poorest people. Corporations have
consolidated their control over food systems through appropriating formerly independent
smallholder farms and in the process produced immense profit for private investors (Holt-
Gimenez & Altieri, 2013). At the same time conventional agriculture is generating
catastrophic environmental problems for current and future generations (Steffen et al.,
2015). The demographics most severely affected by lack of food security and food
sovereignty tend to be those whose livelihoods are related to agriculture (Holt-Gimenez
& Altieri, 2013). Households with children are also particularly vulnerable to food
insecurity, worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, food insecurity for U.S.
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households with children was 14.8 percent in 2020, up from 13.6 percent in 2019 (Hales
& Coleman-Jensen, 2022). A food system should provide secure, nutritious, and
culturally relevant diets for all into the indefinite future, which may be best achieved by
treating food as a right, not a commodity (Vivero-Pol, 2017). Economic sustainability in
food systems is particularly challenging because of the inelastic demand for food.
Elasticity is a measure of how shifts in demand relate to changing economic factors - if
demand stays constant despite price changes, it is considered inelastic. If farmers produce
too much, prices collapse, and they go out of business. If they produce too little, food
prices skyrocket, which is unsustainable for lower income consumers. Food exhibits the
most inelastic demand of any economic sector. The fact that demand is less inelastic for
the poor than for the rich is a major driver of undernourishment (Daly, 2000). Markets
allocate food and farmland to those with the most money rather than the most need,
resulting in persistent food insecurity and lack of food sovereignty (Farley et al., 2015).
Supporting effective, just, and sustainable food systems requires transdisciplinary
thinking, research, and action. Because of the interdependent nature of social, ecological,
and economic systems, each must be understood as aspects of a whole, interactive
system, rather than as isolated fields – and this approach is central to both
transdisciplinary research and systems thinking. With the extensive interactions among
economic, ecological, and social sustainability, employing systems thinking facilitates
clearer, holistic understanding of sustainability broadly. Moreover, systems thinking may
be an effective way to both understand and encourage a transition toward more
sustainable and equitable food systems (Hinrichs, 2014). A complex problem that
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exemplifies these interactions is when ecological degradation caused by conventional
agriculture’s reliance on non-renewable fossil fuels and synthetic chemicals undermines
food systems’ ecological sustainability, while simultaneously the quality of life enjoyed
by farmers becomes more precarious due to ecological crises affecting farmer attrition
and recruitment, undermining social and economic sustainability. Food and agriculture
tie together the above three fields of sustainability, and food systems can be designed to
satisfy all three aspects in a unified way. Our research employs this integrated, three-part
conception of sustainability as a theoretical foundation for understanding food systems.
Ponisio and Kremen call for increased investment in research that aims to understand
“the full social-ecological consequences of transitioning or not transitioning to more
sustainable food systems (2016).” Integrating systems thinking with participatory action
(PAR) and community-based research approaches allows for collective and collaborative
development of knowledge that leads to action and application in ways that are desired
and guided by needs of the communities concerned (Eelderink, Vervoort, & van
Laerhoven, 2020). PAR principles and practices are central to how we conceptualize and
implement our research described in this dissertation – we discuss participatory action
research and how it relates to this research further below in this chapter.
In addition to PAR, agroecological theory and practice provide important
guidance in how we design and conduct our research with foci on understanding and
supporting sustainable and just food systems. Agroecology is both the practice of
ecologically sustainable and traditional agriculture, as well as a global social movement
that advocates for equitable and fair livelihoods through small scale farming. Anderson,
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et al. (2019) find agroecology in the broad sense (including food systems and ecology but
also “social, cultural, and political dimensions”) is well situated to facilitate transitions to
more sustainable and equitable systems. The evidence that agroecology contributes to
these goals is so compelling that the UN and FAO have prioritized it as a type of
agriculture to support. They emphasize the important role bottom-up agroecological
approaches to community-based food systems initiatives play in working to remedy
socioecological and economic sustainability crises, and that more academic research is
needed in understanding how to enable bottom-up forms of community food systems
organization (Anderson, et al., 2019). A community (based) food system can be seen as
going beyond the typical definition of a food system - all of the interrelated components
from farms to consumers, including growing and processing, retailing, distributing,
eating, and waste management – to also include prioritizing rootedness in a particular
location or region and interconnectedness of people and organizations working
collectively toward goals such as food justice, equity, food sovereignty and security,
resiliency, sustainability transitions, and/or food as a commons (Klavinski, 2012; UCD,
n.d.; Vivero-Pol, 2017). Campbell, et al. (2022) express that while there are many
initiatives working toward the aforementioned goals, there is great need to evaluate these
types of programs both to understand and enhance them. There is an abundance of
organizations and programs that operate at community and regional scales working
bottom-up to enhance food sovereignty and security, while also addressing social
wellbeing and/or ecological economic sustainability. We use agroecological frameworks
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as a theoretical foundation for considering the efficacy and potential of community food
systems initiatives.
This research focuses on a variety of food systems initiatives that can be said to be
part of a community-based food system. Yet, there is inadequate available published
research rigorously studying how these initiatives impact food security, social climate,
quality of life, or broad sustainability. Miewald & Ostry underscore that there is a need
for a more comprehensive examination of the roles that food programing and local food
environments play in alleviating food insecurity and improving quality of life for very
low-income residents (2014). To address this gap, this dissertation empirically studies
community food and farm projects through systems thinking and PAR approaches, with
the mixed-methods research strategy detailed below.
This dissertation brings together systems thinking, agroecology, and PAR
approaches to conduct research in food systems. The dissertation includes three research
projects within two main foci: 1. Analyzing universal free school meal programs in
Vermont, assessing schools’ social climates, student academics and behavior, family–
school relationships, and school finances to understand the broad social and economic
impacts of such meal programs to advise schools and policy makers in supporting
effective policy (chapter two); and 2. Action research conducted with farmers from
diverse and underserved backgrounds at two immigrant and refugee focused community
farm partners in Vermont and Wisconsin, to both develop and implement a self-analysis
toolkit for farms to conduct socio-ecological economic sustainability analysis (chapter
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three), and to investigate and evaluate quality of life (QOL) experiences in order to
support program development, improved QOL, and advise policy makers (chapter four).
This All three of these research projects aim generally to provide actionable information
and materials for our community research partners, other NGOs, researchers, and policy
makers.
Farmers, food production, and distribution play crucial parts in the health of
society, ecosystems, and economies. And yet, in a neoliberal context, which involves the
consolidation of production and ownership of our food systems, farming is increasingly
difficult. The average age of farmers in the U.S. was 59.4 in the 2017 census, an increase
from 50.3 in 1978. 62% of farmer-owners are 55 or older (NASS, 2019). A new
generation of farmers does not appear to be replacing the older generation. Over the last
several decades ownership of smallholder farms in the U.S. has been consolidated and
their economic viability is increasingly tenuous, resulting in a decline from a peak of 6.8
million farms in 1935, to 2.2 million in 2007, and further still to only 2.01 million in
2021. A majority of small farms in the U.S. depend on off-farm income and on average
are not able to generate a majority of their income from farming activities (ERS, 2022a).
At the same time, many small cities and towns in the U.S. that have faced decades of
population and economic collapse have been experiencing population growth due in part
to an influx of immigrants and refugees (Bose, 2018; Parker, Horowitz, Brown, et al.,
2018). Many refugees and other immigrants are filling jobs in agricultural and food
economies in their roles as farmers, producing food and livelihoods for their families,
businesses, and communities – 39% of all workers in agriculture in the U.S. were born
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outside of the U.S. (Parker, Horowitz, Brown, et al., 2018; Wang, 2019; ERS, 2022c).
This research will help support the next generation of farmers, particularly immigrants
and refugees who are involved in agriculture.
1.2 Food security, food sovereignty, and sustainability
Research on community food systems and underserved and vulnerable populations
can be strengthened when research questions are framed by the concept of food
sovereignty. Food sovereignty can be distinguished from food security, in that it is much
broader in scope (moving beyond access, stability, and utilization) to include how food is
produced, by whom, under whose control, where, and at what scales (Mooney & Hunt,
2009), and includes the rights to farm and grow food. As illustrated by the international
farmers’ organization La Via Campesina’s development of food sovereignty practices
and movements, food sovereignty is also connected to agroecological practices,
biodiversity preservation, cultural appropriateness, politics, self-determination, and
justice (Desmarais & Wittman, 2014). Community food security and food sovereignty
are important concepts when studying immigrant food systems because they
acknowledge that food needs are culturally specific; immigrant food needs are
heterogenous and distinct from those of other communities in the United States. The
principle of food sovereignty also places importance on benefits of community food
systems and production beyond basic nutrition and profits, such as the potential to
enhance social cohesion, emotional well-being, environmental quality, and self-
determination. Raj Patel extends Hannah Arendt’s conceptualizing of human rights to
explain that food sovereignty involves the right to have rights. In light of this, for food
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sovereignty to take place and flourish, all people regardless of background or situation
must have agency over their lives, agency which is being eroded through neoliberalism
and deep inequalities due to racism, sexism, patriarchy, and class power (Patel, 2009).
Our research situates food security and sovereignty as central elements of social
sustainability, prioritizing community and individual well-being, satisfaction of needs,
and equal access and opportunity (Buck, Summers, & Smith, 2021). Allen and Sachs
(1991) demonstrate that discrimination based on gender, race, and ethnicity have
profound impacts on social sustainability and well-being. Food insecurity continues to be
a major injustice globally, as well as in Vermont, where “due to lack of affordable
housing, low wages, high unemployment, a decrease in the number of local, affordable
grocery stores, and lack of public transportation…” between 29% and 40% of Vermont
residents are food insecure (Niles, Belarmino, & Bertmann, 2020; Hunger Free Vermont,
2022). Recent immigrants to the United States also experience significant food insecurity
and have low food agency (Greenwald & Zajfen, 2015). If urban and peri-urban
agriculture projects were to focus primarily on engaging with and producing food for
lower-income and vulnerable populations (rather than supplying high-income consumers,
as Burnett (2014) and Crowe et al. (2016) find is frequently the case) major reductions to
food insecurity and its harmful side-effects could be made in ways that are desired by
local communities. In quantitatively analyzing the potential for urban agriculture to
eliminate food insecurity for urban poor globally, Badami & Ramankutty show that in
wealthier countries such as the United States where there are much smaller urban poor
populations, the area required for community farm projects is relatively small, and
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therefore quite feasible (2015). The possibility for urban and peri-urban agriculture to
improve food sovereignty for low-income and underserved populations is additional
justification for the research detailed further below. However, food security and access
for immigrants cannot be accurately understood without considering larger socio-cultural
and economic contexts.
Food security, food justice, and food sovereignty are contested terms, and in
different ways the three research partner organizations (Hunger Free Vermont, New
Farms for New Americans, and the Farley Center) have goals that overlap these concepts.
Food sovereignty is arguably the most holistic of these three concepts, involving primary
concerns of access and quality of food available, while also describing how food system
issues are generated through neoliberalism, capitalism, and larger political and economic
systemic problems and inequalities (Alkon & Mares, 2012; Holt-Giménez & Altieri,
2013). The presence of food security, justice, and sovereignty contribute to overall
quality of life (QOL). Food sovereignty, sustainability broadly conceptualized (as
above), and quality of life are central threads that connect the three research projects, as
they closely relate to childhood nutrition (chapter 2), small farm socioecological-
economic impacts (chapter 3), and immigrant and refugee farmer well-being relating to
community farm programs (chapter 4). Using socioecological impact analysis for each of
these three community food systems initiatives, this research shows the ways that these
sites of study are effective in facilitating just and sustainable transitions for our food
systems. We chose a primarily qualitative, mixed methods approach (Creswell & Plano
Clark, 2018) to emphasize the lived experience of participants in our three studies, using
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quantitative methods where helpful in collection and analysis of data. The research
questions, methods, types of analysis, and results are introduced in brief below.
Following the brief introduction of each chapter, we offer a concise literature review to
contextualize each chapter before a more in-depth discussion of each research project in
the following chapters.
1.3 Research questions & methods overview for each chapter
Chapter 2: Universal Free School Meal Programs in Vermont Show Multi-domain
Benefits
Research question: To what degree do universal K-12 school meal programs in Vermont
produce benefits across multiple domains including readiness to learn, student health,
social climate, reduction in stigma related to poverty, school staff stress, and school
finances?
Research methods & data collection:
• PAR research question development through partnership with Hunger Free
Vermont and local school administrators that participate in universal free meal
programs
• Literature review of school meals and childhood nutrition
• Survey of 240 school teachers, staff, nurses, and administrators at all 57 Vermont
schools that participated in universal free meal programs in 2017
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• In-depth semi-structured interviews with 25 school teachers, staff, nurses, and
administrators at two Vermont schools that participate in universal free meal
programs in 2017 (the analysis of these interviews is part of a separate paper and
is not represented in this dissertation)
Data analysis: Deductive coding using grounded theory. Computer assisted statistical
analysis of survey responses using SPSS (IBM, 2017).
Results: Universal school meals programs in Vermont show benefits across the multiple
domains of inquiry, including improved nutrition, readiness to learn, reduced social
stigma relating to poverty, improved school social environment for both staff and
students, and improved school finances. The results show the strong benefits of universal
school meals, and that increased implementation of them will benefit society broadly in
terms of food security and social justice while being economically feasible.
Barriers and limitations of the research: Our research shows the beneficial impacts of
universal school meals in Vermont and that results of this study have implications
broadly outside of Vermont. However, investigating the student experiences of universal
school meals by interviewing or conducting research with the school children themselves
was beyond the scope of this study. We believe this could be another important area for
future research on universal meal programs.
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Chapter 3: Creating resiliency and enhancing regional food systems sustainability
through integrated analysis of social, ecological, and economic factors on small and
medium scale farms in the United States
Research questions:
To what extent can a transdisciplinary research team construct a broad-spectrum
farm sustainability analysis toolkit that is both comprehensive and simple for farmers
and/or agricultural extensionists to administer? What factors are important to analyze for
creating a comprehensive farm analysis toolkit that prioritizes ecological and social
sustainability while also including economic viability? To what extent can such a toolkit
be used to advocate for increased supports for small and medium scale farms and
appreciation for the ecosystem services they offer the public?
Research methods & data collection:
• Literature review on socio-ecological economic sustainability and agriculture
• Development of a survey-based socio-ecological economic (SEE) sustainability
analysis toolkit for small and medium farms in partnership with two community
farms
• Piloting of the SEE toolkit with our two partner community farms NFNA and the
FC in Vermont and Wisconsin, respectively
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Data analysis: Sustainability analysis of each of the two farm sites using the SEE Toolkit
survey and corresponding review of the implementation of piloting the toolkit including
suggestions for further development, dissemination, and application of the toolkit.
Results: The SEE toolkit survey proved simple to administer and revealed that both farms
have many sustainable practices and offer their communities and the public socio-
ecological and economic benefits including ecosystem services. The toolkit also showed
where each farm has its own areas for improvement in terms of improving their
sustainability, increasing resiliency, and producing more ecosystem service benefits. The
successful piloting of the toolkit showed that it can be an effective means of quickly
analyzing farm sustainability and production of ecosystem services, at low or no cost to
the farmer. It also appears to have strong potential for communicating the public benefits
of supporting agroecologically managed small farms, and is worthy of further larger scale
piloting, development, and roll out.
Barriers and limitations of the research: This study focused on the initial development
and piloting of the SEE farm sustainability analysis toolkit, and as such the pilot has a
small sample size (n=2), and only theoretically compares this new toolkit with existing
farm sustainability analysis toolkits. Future research could benefit from a comparative
investigation into farmers’ own experiences with different toolkits, as well as a much
larger sample size of farms participating in the SEE analysis. Additionally, the two farms
that we piloted the toolkit on are both farms that have substantial elements that are non-
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commercial and focus on creating agricultural opportunities for immigrant and refugee
farmers, which may have different contexts and analytical needs than the average
commercial farm in the U.S. More research and analysis are needed to understand how
the toolkit could be influential for policy makers and community leaders in supporting
sustainable, agroecological farms.
Chapter 4: Quality of life (QOL) impacts, challenges, and possibilities for
immigrant and refugee farmers in community farm programs in the northern
United States
Research questions: How does participation in refugee and immigrant focused
community farm programs affect farmer health and quality of life? To what extent are
immigrant and refugee garden program participants motivated by quality of life benefits?
To what extent are these programs successful in enhancing farmer QOL? And what
suggestions do farmers in these programs have to improve the programs and participants’
QOL benefits?
Research methods & data collection:
• Literature review on immigrants and refugees, QOL, and community farm
programs
• PAR preflection and iterative interview instrument creation
• Document review and analysis: personal research logs and notes, organizational
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records and documents (from the Farley Center and NFNA)
• In-depth, semi-structured, open-ended interviews inspired by WHOQOL-BREF
(WHOQOL, 2004) instrument with 23 farmers in 19 separate interviews
Data analysis: Deductive coding using grounded theory, impact analysis of both
community farm programs for their own development purposes as well as for informing
immigration planning, community development, and similar food systems initiatives.
Results: This research finds that the immigrant and refugee farmers participating in the
two community farm programs in this study experience extensive physical, social, and
psychological health and wellbeing benefits across the fields of inquiry. The results of
this study are in agreement with other literature we found on subjects relating to
immigration, resettlement, and participation in community farm and garden programs.
This research shows that involvement in farm and garden programs aid in immigrant and
refugee resettlement through broadly improving QOL. The farmer interviewees offer
suggestions for strengthening similar programs and demonstrates the potential benefits of
immigrant and refugee community farm and garden programs more widely.
Barriers and limitations of the research: This research inquires into the QOL experiences
for farmers at only two sites in the U.S. and is not necessarily representative of the
experiences or needs of refugee or immigrant farmers in other settings or regions.
Moreover, the farmer participants in this study represent only a limited number of ethnic
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backgrounds and ages, cannot be generalized onto all refugee or immigrant
demographics, and do not speak directly to the experiences of migrant farmers who are
not specifically part of this research. More research into QOL, community farm
programs, immigration and resettlement, and migrant farm worker focused studies are
needed to better understand the nuance and diversity of experience in these settings.
1.4 Excerpted literature reviews from Chapters 2 – 4
Limited existing literature on universal school meal programs in the United States
The goals of our research are to gather information through survey research,
questioning staff about changes in students’ physical and emotional health, nutrition,
academic performance, and school meal finances. Educationalist Weaver-Hightower
calls for this type of research that considers academic and school performance within
larger contexts of nutrition, social climate, and student and staff well-being, identifying
that educational research too seldom takes this systems approach (2011).! As of the
beginning of the 2016/2017 academic year, 57 schools throughout Vermont (18.5%
of 308 schools statewide, 2017) were participating in universal meals, funded mostly
through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), but also through Provision 2
(Hunger Free Vermont, 2016; Vermont Agency of Education, 2018a; Vermont Agency
of Education, 2018b). Fifteen percent of Vermont children live in a household that is
food insecure, meaning that children in these homes experience hunger or
reduced food
consumption due to a lack of family financial resources (Hunger Free VT, 2022).
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School meals for children from low-income backgrounds provide an avenue to combat
the impact of poverty and food insecurity on child development. According to the
Vermont Agency of Education, roughly 41% of Vermont youth receive free or reduced
price meals in school (Vermont Agency of Education, 2018a).! A provision in the
federal Child Nutrition Programs since 2014 makes it financially feasible for eligible
schools to implement universal free school meal programs that provide all children with
school breakfast and lunch at no charge regardless of family income. Chapter 2 in this
dissertation draws on analysis from our 2017 research that surveyed various school-
based stakeholders at 57 K-12 schools in Vermont that have implemented universal free
meal programs; the number of schools surveyed is 18.5% of all schools in Vermont in
2017 (Vermont Agency of Education, 2018a; Vermont Agency of Education, 2018b).
This project partnered closely with Hunger Free Vermont to examine the influence of
universal free school meals on multiple domains of child development. The goal is to
use the data to further strengthen Vermont school food and policy initiatives aimed at
reducing hunger and improving childhood development, especially for Vermont’s most
vulnerable children.
Because of the recent federal implementation of CEP, currently information on
CEP is mostly limited to national results from the CEP pilot (Harkness et al., 2015;
Gruber, 2017), and a state-wide study in Kansas (Henry, 2015), and also Georgia (Davis
& Musaddiq, 2018). Poblacion et al. (2017) and Ralston et al. (2017) study the effects
of CEP and food insecurity, while Altindag et al. (2015) inquire around changes in
student misbehavior correlating with implementing CEP. Information about the
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efficacy of CEP within Vermont is much more limited, primarily available in the form
of reports and fact sheets from Hunger Free Vermont, and raw data from schools and the
Vermont Agency of Education. Prior to this research detailed in Chapter 2, little has
been researched about the effects of implementing CEP and relations to changes in
overall social climate, students’ readiness to learn, or whether schools using the CEP
would recommend it to others.
Limited existing user-friendly socio-ecological economic sustainability analysis
toolkits for farmers and extensionists
Our literature review finds a growing number of farm analysis and evaluation
tools available globally (see Chapter 3, Table 1), many of which require considerable
time and financial costs borne by the farmer. Farmers may be inclined to participate in
these types of analysis for long-term financial benefit, however they may have other
motivations including the broad ecological and social impacts of sustainable farming.
Most of these analytic tools focus on ecologically sustainable farming practices for third
party certification with the purpose of conveying aspects of sustainability to consumers
for commercial gain on the behalf of the farm, such as a variety of organic certifications,
bird-friendly, shade grown, etc. Other certifications focus on third party evaluation of
social factors related to farming, again mostly for the purpose of communicating aspects
of sustainability to consumers for commercial gain on the behalf of the farm or processor.
Some examples of these certifications are multiple types of Fair Trade (Naylor, 2014),
women-owned business (Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, 2022), child
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labor-free certifications (Provenance, 2022), and others (Dube, 2021). Ironically,
certifications such as “organic” are presented as a way for them to remain viable even
though it forces famers to shoulder the costs of proving they are providing public goods.
Additionally, some toolkits are focused on risk management using SWOT type analysis,
such as the USDA Risk Management Agency’s “SWOT Analysis: A tool for making
better business decisions,” which prioritizes understanding risk and obtaining various
types of agricultural and related insurance policies (Kime & McGee, 2008). Ultimately,
the above types of programs are largely focused on the commercial success of the farm as
it relates to financial profitability and gaining a higher price for the farm’s products.
Another toolkit which is motivated more by thinking of the farm as embedded in and
affecting the health of the larger world, rather than commercial profitability is the social-
impact toolkit (The Real Farming Trust, n.d.). While the motivations of the social-impact
toolkit are concern for the farm and its relations to the larger community, it is still
concerned with primarily one area of sustainability (social) and not integrating ecological
and economic sustainability factors. The Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation
(TAPE) (FAO, 2019) from the FAO uses an integrated approach considering all three of
the areas of sustainability and is an in-depth examination of farm operations as they relate
to the SDG’s. Through counting the questions in TAPE, including those that are multi-
part, there are 536 separate questions. While the TAPE survey is very complete in scope
and could be very helpful for farms and their communities, the survey is too long and
requires excessive time commitment for many farmers, and so will greatly limit the
number of farms that would do the TAPE survey on their own (as it is intended). The
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TAPE survey will be a valuable tool for global data gathering to advance the profile and
supports for agroecological farming, however TAPE appears unwieldy as a tool for
farmers themselves. The farms that are part of this research have expressed need for an
easy-to-use sustainability evaluation toolkit. The TAPE toolkit is still in the testing phase,
and while we hope the TAPE working group will eventually produce a more user-
friendly, truncated version, our SEE toolkit can fill the gap at this time. Finally, there is
also the Northeast SARE funded “Reading the Farm: Training Agricultural Professionals
in Whole Farm Analysis for Sustainable Agriculture” program (McAllister, et al., 2015).
This analysis method has much in common with our toolkit objectives, in that it
conceptualizes farm sustainability as broadly including social, ecological, and economic
factors. However, like TAPE, the Reading the Farm program also is time, expertise, and
cost intensive, requiring multiple days of the farmer, as well as engaging a team of
experts in multiple on-site visits. One problem is that many existing toolkits were
designed by and for experts. We have created the SEE farm evaluation toolkit (detailed in
chapter 3, below) inspired by agroecological and ecosystem services frameworks, farmer
experiences, and examples like TAPE and Reading the Farm, focusing on a wide variety
of indicators. We have also designed the SEE toolkit to be short, simple, easy to
administer, with only 66 questions, and with clear yes/no binary answers, for both ease of
response and analysis post survey.
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Limited existing literature on QOL and immigrant and refugee farm programs in
the U.S.
For the research in chapter 4 we partner closely with two community farm
programs that specifically focus on working with immigrant and refugee farmers. It is
important to address the heterogeneity and diversity among these and related groups.
Refugees are those who have fled their country and are forced to seek asylum in another
country because it is unsafe in their country of origin, due to contexts war, violence, or
past persecution or a fear of future persecution based upon race, religion, nationality,
political opinion, or membership in a particular social group (U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services, 2020). Refugees are unable to return home unless the violent and
unstable situation in their country of origin changes. Some asylum seekers are granted
official refugee status, which is determined by a government or group such as the UN
Refugee Agency. Whereas an immigrant is someone who consciously decides to move to
a foreign country with the intent to settle there, and can return to their country of origin at
their own discretion. Migrants (which this research does not specifically involve), on the
other hand, are people moving from place to place, across national borders or within a
country, often for economic opportunities such as seasonal employment, and similar to
immigrants, were not forced to leave their home country. Refugees and immigrants can
become citizens, though the procedures for doing so are different between the two groups
(IRC, 2022). Migrants and immigrants may also have unsafe and precarious situations in
their home country – though they have not been officially recognized as are refugees.
The lived experiences of both immigrants and refugees are diverse and cannot be seen as
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a single group. Experiences in their country of origin, as well as their new home country
can be quite different depending on factors such as race or ethnicity, age, gender, wealth
status, and the situation(s) that drove them to settle in their new home country. Additional
factors in the lived experiences of immigrants and refugees are where and in what
country they resettle, how long they have lived in their resettled country, and whether or
not they become citizens in their resettled country – without citizenship they have fewer
rights and opportunities and may face more discrimination.
While there are experiences that may be common to immigrants in the U.S., there
are differences across ethnicities and regions. For many immigrants and refugees in the
United States, isolation, low food security, disconnection from a familiar landscape,
trauma, unequal access to health care, and other challenges to quality of life may
contribute to other negative effects such as anxiety, depression, and distress (Mazumdar
& Mazumdar, 2012; Cochran, et al., 2013; Hartwig & Mason, 2016; Wertlieb & Smith
2018; Brandenberger, et al., 2019; Ofosu, et al., 2022). These challenges are also
represented in data from our farmer interviews (see “Results,” chapter 4, below). The
2013 CDC report (Cochran et al.) suggested that a variety of refugee community social
support mechanisms could help refugees improve quality of life and promote improved
individual and community well-being for refugees. Community research partner New
Farms for New Americans (NFNA) has also identified QOL as an important challenge
for the populations they serve, and that engagement in farm programs may help engage
participants in ways that promote well-being. Of particular interest for NFNA is
understanding differences of quality of life between summer and winter, the latter season
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in northern climates which demands unique challenges to quality of life – many of our
interviewees share the QOL challenges of wintertime.
Since 1980, the U.S. has resettled over 3.1 million refugees; in 2022, the U.S.
accepted nearly 25,465 refugees (U.S. Dept. of State Refugee Processing Center, 2023).
Using data from the U.S. Department of State, Burge and Dharod (2018) find that
refugees resettled in the U.S. commonly experience issues of declining health, limited
access to essential services, and food. While QOL studies on immigrant and refugee farm
programs in the U.S. are very limited, a review of international literature found research
on this topic from Australia, which may be a different situation but can still inform this
research. Based on a small qualitative study done in an Australian university-based
community garden, researchers interviewed six refugee gardeners revealing myriad
benefits to participants, though the sample size is limited (Cummings, Minniss, Harris,
Neil, & Somerset, 2008). Also in the context of refugees in Australia, some of the same
authors in the previously mentioned article, Harris, Minniss, and Somerset, found that
community food gardens for migrants appear to increase social connectedness
corresponding with improved individual quality of life (Harris, Minniss, and Somerset
2014). There does not yet exist similar data on quality of life benefits for immigrants or
refugees participating in community gardens in the United States with the exception of
Jean’s 2015 report, which focused on placemaking for resettled refugees in Utah (Jean
2015). Searching the literature beyond the specific terminology of “quality of life” more
broadly to look for studies focusing on inquiry into the wellbeing of refugees or
immigrants combined with involvement in gardens, we find several peer-reviewed
24
papers, including one based in Minnesota concerning community gardens (Hartwig &
Mason, 2016), and in California regarding home gardens (Mazumdar & Mazumdar,
2012). The study in Minnesota reveals that respondents identified their community
gardens as “a healing space for their depression or anxiety… [and] expressed receiving
physical and emotional benefits from gardening, including a sense of identity with their
former selves. Gardens may serve as a meaningful health promotion intervention for
refugees and immigrants adjusting to the complexity of their new lives in the U.S. and
coping with past traumas” (Hartwig & Mason, 2016). Mazumdar & Mazumdar find that
home gardens create important spaces for immigrants to root into a new landscape, find
cultural and religious meaning, and socialize the next generation (2012). A systematic
literature review looking for linkages between cultural ecosystem services, landscapes,
and refugee wellbeing similarly finds little overlap in academic literature between
refugee experiences, wellbeing, and community garden programs, though the authors
show that refugees broadly experience wellbeing benefits from interactions with natural
ecosystems (Gladkikh, Gould, & Coleman, 2019). No published studies appear to
specifically study quality of life benefits for refugee or immigrant community garden
programs in Northern states (such as Vermont and Wisconsin) where there is a unique set
of challenges, including a shorter growing season with a prolonged winter. Both Jean
and Harris et al. express that while refugee garden and farm programs are proliferating,
they remain understudied, particularly in terms of qualitative research that studies quality
of life impacts and other well-being benefits (Jean 2015; Harris, Minniss, and Somerset
2014).
25
Immigrants, labor, and community development
The future vitality of agroecological smallholder farms in the U.S. depends on
understanding and improving QOL for farmers. At the same time, an increasing number
of farmers in the U.S. are immigrants. Parker, Horowitz, Brown, et al. (2018) reported in
a Pew Research Center report that in the U.S. immigrants were responsible for a
significant and rising share of overall population growth, in which immigrants accounted
for 37% growth in rural counties, 38% urban counties, 26% suburban counties. Parker,
Horowitz, Brown, et al. as well as Wang (2019) suggest that immigrants are filling many
jobs in agriculture and food production that have been vacated by U.S. born residents,
even though immigrants are often exploited and abused in the workplace and have “little
power to improve their situation due to the lack of farmworker labor rights. 56% of hired
farm workers generally (and 73% of hired crop workers specifically) were born outside
of the U.S., and only 53% of them are U.S. citizens (ERS, 2019). Anti-immigrant
sentiments also pervade many rural communities, often giving rise to a misconceived fear
of foreigners (Wang 2019).” In spite of the challenges immigrants face in the United
States, both aforementioned reports suggest the significant role immigrants play in
revitalizing rural and urban areas, and that we need better information on what
community driven measures support immigrants particularly in their communities and in
filling gaps in agricultural production. Studying QOL in these specific communities will
also help to identify and recognize practices of resilience on the behalf of immigrant and
26
refugee farmers, to be shared among broader efforts in Agroecology and immigrant
community food systems.
Community based research approaches, PAR, and preflection
This research applies Participatory Action Research (PAR) approaches, to engage
with schools, local immigrant and refugee farmer organizations, and small scale farmers
more broadly, and be driven by their needs and preferences through community
participation and consultation (Mendez et al., 2017). Wilson & Young (2008) identify
that too little peer-reviewed research in North America uses community-based research
methods including partnerships and consultations with food programming organizations.
They also argue strongly for future research to be done with communities, driven by
community needs and preferences, to be better informed and work toward building long-
term research capacity and practical applications. PAR methods can be powerful ways to
build understanding of a problem through in-depth, long term involvement with a
community. While PAR methods can contribute to knowing intimate details of a
situation, a downside is that it can be very time consuming (and therefore also
expensive), and may get derailed by changing community concerns or engagement. PAR
methods require extensive community buy-in, which can be challenging, but also produce
well-informed and mutually beneficial research. To this end, the research questions and
methods were reframed in multiple iterations by active participation with the
communities concerned over the multiple years of preflection. Mendez et al. (2017)
describe preflection as a “period of preparation and planning that is critical for building
27
trust, establishing expectations, and refining the research questions.” Because the
development, implementation, and writing of this research has been deeply collaborative,
while also being a Ph.D. dissertation of an individual, the lead author has chosen to use
both “I/my” and “we/our” to refer to the work and research team. By putting emphasis on
the team rather than the individual, this dissertation works to reduce the inaccurate
emphasis that this research is primarily the work of an individual. As you will see below,
our period of preflection has deeply influenced the direction of this research and also
facilitated in building meaningful working relationships with research partners.
Moreover, the strong working relationships established through PAR in this project are a
robust foundation for future research with these groups.
1.5 Personal background and PAR preflection narrative
In this section I will provide detail on how I have come to develop research with
community partners through reflection on personal background, the development of
working relationships, and preflective volunteering.
I arrived at UVM in 2016 to start Ph.D. course work and research in food systems.
My initial research project was guided by Dr. Bernice Garnett to partner with Hunger
Free Vermont to study the recent implementation of universal free meal programs at K-
12 schools in Vermont. In collaboration with Hunger Free Vermont we initiated
discussions with Vermont Agency of Education staff as well as school administrators
(particularly in Winooski and St. Johnsbury) to understand the questions schools had
regarding meal programs, funding mechanisms, and the broad impacts universal meal
28
programs were having on the experiences of school staff and students. Working with
Hunger Free Vermont and Vermont schools helped us to gauge how to design our
research so that it would be both effective in responding to the needs of schools and
policy makers, while reducing the burden for school staff of participating in the study.
We repeatedly heard that staff were already feeling overworked and had limited
availability for any additional work. Guided by this concern for the staff, we did multiple
iterations of survey design to create a simple and relatively short survey instrument and
used our connections with the Vermont chapter of the National Education Association to
get the survey sent out to hundreds of school staff at schools participating in universal
school meals.
In addition to the survey, our research team initiated in-person and phone
discussions with school administrators to determine which schools were willing to
support in-depth interviews with school staff from a variety of staff positions. We again
heard from many schools that their staff were already overburdened and that the
administrators understandably wanted to protect their staff from additional overwork.
However, we found administrators at two schools (Winooski and East Berkshire) that
wanted to support an additional interview phase of the research to complement the survey
component. We then worked with these schools to schedule interviews with staff on site
at the schools according to schedules that were easiest for the staff to participate in. Post-
fieldwork we continued to use PAR approaches working with Hunger Free Vermont to
write up and publish the results, while Hunger Free Vermont took on the role of using the
29
research to advocate at local, state, and national levels for support of universal meals in
schools.
While I was starting the work with Vermont schools and Hunger Free Vermont,
and beginning Ph.D. studies at UVM Fall 2016, I attended a lecture by Dr. Ernesto
Mendez on his PAR work in Central America and was motivated to talk with him
afterward. Then, in summer 2017 I was inspired by taking the International Summer
Agroecology course with Dr. Ernesto Mendez (as well with Dr. Steve Gleissman, Martha
Caswell, Dr. Vic Izzo, and other guest instructors). In addition to experiential learning
about agroecological practices, we also discussed agroecology as a science and as a social
movement to address social and environmental injustices. In the context of academics
attempting to do meaningful work to address agroecology and inequalities, we considered
strengths and challenges of using PAR methods in research. We deliberated on the
potential for empowerment by using PAR approaches, while also debating whether PAR
approaches demand too long of a time scale to complete research or to attract funders and
sustained academic institutional support. What would research look like that aspired to be
deeply integrated with the community of research while also moving to produce
actionable and accessible results more quickly? Is that even possible? At the end of the
agroecology course I had initial talks with Dr. Mendez & Martha Caswell about
partnership with them and the Agroecology Livelihoods Collaborative (ALC) to research
using PAR approaches.
After initially meeting Dr. Pablo Bose in 2015, we reconnected in November
2017 so I could update him where my studies were going, hear his reflections, and
30
brainstorm about possible collaboration or research ideas to develop into my dissertation
research. Following this meeting, Dr. Bose shared about our meeting with his partner,
Alisha Laramee, who is Program Director with New Farms for New Americans (NFNA,
part of the Association for Africans Living in Vermont, AALV). Expressing excitement
upon learning of my work interests, Laramee suggested that she and I meet to discuss
potential for me to assist by volunteering, getting to know about NFNA, and possibly
doing collaborative research. I felt much encouragement, and that I’d like to work at
growing this relationship to learn, help local community flourish, and further my own
action-oriented research. It felt like there was an opportunity to do something meaningful
in fields of agroecology and social justice while contributing to completing my doctoral
program.
Following the initial meeting with Alisha Laramee, we had follow-up emails
throughout late winter 2018. I followed her suggestions of ways that I could be involved
in assisting NFNA in ways that would be helpful to the organization and also take
advantage of my background farming and working across cultures. I agreed to help
another volunteer create, pilot, and maintain a pollinator and beneficial insect attracting
garden at the Ethan Allen Homestead site in Burlington, Vermont. This gave me a chance
to observe the organization, build a presence in the NFNA community, and better
understand some research topics that would benefit NFNA and similar organizations. At
this point I began helping in other areas, such as field preparations and irrigation set-up,
assisting with spring farmer orientation, and attending meetings to represent NFNA (Such
as at the Winooski Valley Park District community partners Spring planning meeting).
31
As I began working with Alisha, she and I started the roughly yearlong iterative process
of brainstorming research topics for NFNA that would be mutually beneficial and work
with my strengths and interests.
Also summer 2018, in June, I returned to Wisconsin to present on our universal
meals research at the combined Association for the Study of Food and Society and
Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society conference. While attending the
conference and for an additional week I stayed at the Linda and Gene Farley Center
for Peace, Justice & Sustainability (denoted as the Farley Center, or FC for the rest of the
dissertation), an immigrant focused farm incubator program, to do preflection. Director
Shedd Farley expressed interest in exploring our possible collaboration in research on
issues relating to immigrant farming, farm incubators, and agroecology. This provided
me with many opportunities to meet farmers, walk the fields, and build relationships.
While there, to reciprocate for the support I was being given and to better understand the
organizational and farmer needs of the Farley Center I worked with the Director to assist
with invasive species removal in the green cemetery, farm road repairs, and general
cleaning and plant care at the center. Through my active presence there I was able to
have conversations with the director, other workers, and some of the farmers regarding
what types of research and development would be beneficial to the community at the
Farley Center. I left with strong support from the Director to build toward doing research
with them over the following year, and that working with NFNA in Vermont would help
deepen the study and provide ways for NFNA and the Farley Center to cross-pollinate
and mutually benefit. Over the following months I continued occasional communications
32
with both Shedd Farley and Dr. Josh Farley regarding working with the Farley Center as
part of my dissertation research.
I continued my volunteer work with Alisha Laramee and NFNA, helping in the
fields, and continuing to help represent NFNA when she was not available for events,
such as for fundraising and publicity events. Concurrently, with encouragement from
Alisha, Dr. Mendez, and Martha Caswell, I began added volunteer duties for NFNA as a
liaison with the ALC and Urban and Peri-urban Agroecology (UPA) research project. At
this point we had multiple rounds of meetings to think through NFNA programmatic
needs. We then worked to see which of these research questions also align with Farley
Center needs. Some of the themes that continued coming up involved inquiring into
studying and supporting wellness and quality of life for farmer participants, as well as
doing a socio-ecological economic analysis of the programs and their overall
sustainability. Alisha expressed specific interest in a comparative analysis with the
Farley Center because the overlap of the two programs.
Fall through Winter 2018 I worked with Alisha Laramee and Ben Waterman (of
UVM agricultural extension) to develop and co-teach workshops to assist NFNA farmers
during wintertime. Additionally, Alisha expressed concern for farmers’ emotional and
social wellness in the depths of winter, and she and I began discussions of including a
simple survey on wellness and quality of life in the workshops. In trying to balance my
progress through my PhD program and complete my dissertation research proposal,
winter 2019 was too early to include a survey in the NFNA winter workshops which we
co-taught along with a Nepali interpreter in March 2019. The workshops provided
33
another experience to connect with NFNA farmers (this workshop series specifically
targeted Bhutanese farmers). After we completed the three-workshop series, I assisted in
writing up a basic evaluation of farmer learning through the workshops to be submitted
by Alisha as part of funder reporting required of NFNA. While doing this work I learned
from discussions with her that NFNA has a significant collection of current and past
surveys, and that I would have access to these data. Basing novel field research in the
context of meta-analysis of existing data would help my research be better informed, and
avoid asking questions that have already been answered.
Spring 2019 I was asked by Alisha if I would assist in working with NFNA,
another student worker, Dr. Bose, and the ALC to create a research repository for all
known research completed with and for NFNA. I developed this repository over the
course of 2019. This aids NFNA by reducing the workload of communicating with the
many academic researchers who want to learn about research concerning NFNA and
possibly propose to undertake further research. Additionally, this provided me the
opportunity to find and centralize all information on NFNA and to use relevant data for
meta-analysis to guide original field research that we did with NFNA to achieve greater
depth and breadth in this collaborative research. I did similar meta-analysis of past work
at the Farley Center where I also had access to past documents and research. I continued
discussions with Dr. Bose regarding other ways of collaborating, and given his extensive
work with NFNA, refugees, and food systems, this was very helpful to improve the
research, reduce unnecessary duplication of work, and make it more meaningful to
NFNA and other similar organizations. To dovetail with his research team and assist
34
NFNA at the same time, I agreed to help with a variety of NFNA farm operations,
including but not limited to once or twice weekly field visits to assist farmers and make
observations. With the prolonged period of preflective volunteering with both NFNA
and the Farley Center (detailed above), we arrived at the point where we were well
aligned to begin for research on the topics and questions as introduced here, and further
detailed in chapters three and four.
The research questions are designed based on perceived needs from reviewing
both academic and grey literature as well as discussions and volunteer work with New
Farms for New Americans, the Farley Center, the Agroecology and Livelihoods
Collaborative, and the Farley lab group. To make this research more actionable and
attainable within the limited time-frame and budget of a doctoral student researcher, it
aimed to be inspired by PAR, though unlike full PAR methods, did not ask for full
community approval at every stage, but rather relied on the directors of the programs
(Alisha Laramee and Shedd Farley) to represent and respond to the overall needs of the
programs and their participants. In addition to the academic analysis and write-up of the
results from this research, I will also make reports directly to the partner organizations in
accessible layperson language. Each organization will also receive actionable reports
from the socio-ecological economic analysis detailing their sustainability to guide each
organization’s future and advocate for more support for their farmers and programs.
These reports will also be valuable to policy makers and funding organizations to
influence how community farming projects and immigrant-focused farm projects can be
better recognized for the contributions they make to food sovereignty, ecosystem
35
services, and improved quality of life. Lastly, the partner organizations and future
researchers also benefit from volunteer work that is also part of the study, such as the
research repository. Other volunteering including farm fieldwork, enhancement of
beneficial insect gardens, fundraising, publicity, grave digging, and leading of tours and
service-learning classes also benefit NFNA, the Farley Center, and local communities.
The following chapters (two through four) describe in detail the contexts,
methods, and results of these research projects. We show that food systems initiatives
that focus on social justice and agroecology can facilitate transitions to more sustainable
communities. We discuss how these food systems initiatives work though impact
analysis, and what they have to offer sustainable food systems and community
development more broadly. Finally in Chapter 5 we conclude by discussing contributions
from all three research projects and how they interrelate as a whole within this
dissertation.
36
CHAPTER 2: UNIVERSAL FREE SCHOOL MEAL PROGRAMS IN VERMONT
SHOW MULTI-DOMAIN BENEFITS
Josiah Taylora, Bernice Garnettb, M. Anore Hortonc, and Ginger Farineauc
aNutrition and Food Science, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA;
bCollege of Education and Social Services, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT,
USA; cHunger Free Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA
Abstract
Background: School meals help combat consequences of poverty for child
development. Universal school meal programs provide all children free meals
regardless of income; outcomes are under-studied.
Methods: This paper analyzes the impacts of universal school meals on
multiple domains of child development, including schools’ social climates, student
academics and behavior, family–school relationships, and school finances. In total,
240 staff at 57 K-12 universal meal schools in Vermont were surveyed in 2017.
Results: Universal meals yield positive results for Vermont children and
schools. Policymakers and researchers will find this data relevant, as it represents an
early statewide study of K-12 universal meal programs.
2.1 Introduction
This research article is informed by work collaborating with Hunger Free
37
Vermont to study the recent and ongoing implementation of universal school meal
programs in Vermont schools. The lack of state-wide studies on the Community
Eligibility Program’s (CEP) effectiveness and also Vermont specific information
provided impetus for the research. Additionally, our research team hopes to better inform
policymakers, school administrators and staff, and the general public, through this
original, state-wide study of CEP and universal school meals in Vermont.
The goals of our research are to gather information through survey research,
questioning staff about changes in students’ physical and emotional health, nutrition,
academic performance, and school meal finances. Educationalist Weaver-Hightower
calls for this type of research that considers academic and school performance within
larger contexts of nutrition, social climate, and student and staff well-being, identifying
that educational research too seldom takes this systems approach (2011). As of the
beginning of the 2016/2017 academic year, 57 schools throughout Vermont (18.5%
of 308 schools statewide, 2017) were participating in universal meals, funded mostly
through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), but also through Provision 2
(Hunger Free Vermont, 2016; Vermont Agency of Education, 2018a; Vermont Agency
of Education, 2018b). Fifteen percent of Vermont children live in a household that is
food insecure, meaning that children in these homes experience hunger or
reduced food
consumption due to a lack of family financial resources (Hunger Free VT, 2022).
School meals for children from low-income backgrounds provide an avenue to combat
the impact of poverty and food insecurity on child development. According to the
Vermont Agency of Education, roughly 41% of Vermont youth receive free or reduced
38
price meals in school (Vermont Agency of Education, 2018a). A provision in the
federal Child Nutrition Programs since 2014 makes it financially feasible for eligible
schools to implement universal free school meal programs that provide all children with
school breakfast and lunch at no charge regardless of family income. This chapter
draws on analysis from 2017 research that surveyed various school-based stakeholders
at 57 K-12 schools in Vermont that have implemented universal free meal programs; the
number of schools surveyed is 18.5% of all schools in Vermont (Vermont Agency of
Education, 2018a; Vermont Agency of Education, 2018b). This project partnered
closely with Hunger Free Vermont to examine the influence of universal free school
meals on multiple domains of child development. The goal is to use the data to further
strengthen Vermont school food and policy initiatives aimed at reducing hunger and
improving childhood development, especially for Vermont’s most vulnerable children.
The specific research questions guiding this project include: In what ways has
the implementation of universal free school meals influenced school climates, student
academics and behavior? How have universal school meals changed the relationship
between families and schools? and What are the implications of universal free school
meals on school finances and school food programs? The data is derived from an online
survey sent to 240 school principals, assistant principals, school nurses, food service
workers, business managers, and special and para-educators.
39
2.2 Background
Adequate nutrition is a crucial part of human development and health. Being
well-nourished enables students to be prepared to learn. The following literature review
situates the political, economic, and historical contexts of U.S. school meal programs,
particularly the recent addition of the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which
can support the implementation of universal free meals for all students in schools,
clusters of schools, or whole districts.
Within the federal school meal program, students with families living within
130–185% of the federal poverty rate qualify for reduced price meals, and those
living at or below 130% of the poverty rate qualify for free
meals.
Schools
are
reimbursed
by
the
USDA
for
meals
served
to free eligible students at $1.79 for
breakfast and $3.37 for lunch, while they reimburse for meals served to reduced price
eligible students at $1.49 for breakfast and $2.97 for lunch, and they reimburse for
“full-price” students at $0.31 for breakfast and $0.37 for lunch.
With the CEP all students in qualifying schools receive breakfast and lunch,
and in some cases afterschool and summer meals, all at no charge. At least 40% of
students attending a school or group of schools must be directly certified (identified) as
low income because they are homeless, orphan, migrant, in foster care, participating in a
Head Start kindergarten, part of a household receiving SNAP benefits, part of the Food
Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, or part of a household receiving
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (Gruber, 2017; Hunger Free, VT 2018). The
40
USDA reimburses CEP schools based on a formula, which depends on the
number of identified students in a school. The students in both of these groups are
categorized as “low- income” for purposes of Title I funding. The formula multiplies the
percentage of students that are identified to receive free meals times 1.6. The resulting
total represents the percentage of meals served to students in the CEP school that USDA
will reimburse at the free rate. The USDA will reimburse the remaining meals served to
students at the paid rate, ultimately roughly covering the schools' food program costs to
provide meals to all students for free (Gruber, 2017; Hunger Free VT, 2018).
Additionally, participating in CEP automatically makes schools eligible for after school
meals and summer meal programs, though they are separate federal Child Nutrition
Programs, and are funded separately from CEP. Once a school is certified to start the
CEP, these free and paid rate percentages remain in place for four consecutive years,
after which the school is required to recertify its eligibility to continue CEP. If a school
increases its percent of students who are direct certified the USDA will correspondingly
increase the school’s funding following the above formula; however, if it decreases in
the percentage of direct-certified students in the funding cycle the school’s funding will
not decrease (Hunger Free, VT 2018).
Because of the recent federal implementation of CEP, currently information on
CEP is mostly limited to national results from the CEP pilot (Harkness et al., 2015;
Gruber, 2017), and a state-wide study in Kansas (Henry, 2015), and Georgia (Davis &
Musaddiq, 2018). Poblacion et al. (2017) and Ralston et al. (2017) study the effects of
CEP and food insecurity, while Altindag et al. (2015) inquire around changes in
41
student misbehavior correlating with implementing CEP. Information about the
efficacy of CEP within Vermont is much more limited, primarily available in the form
of reports and fact sheets from Hunger Free Vermont, and raw data from schools and the
Vermont Agency of Education. Prior to this research detailed here, little has been
researched about the effects of implementing CEP and relations to changes in overall
social climate, students’ readiness to learn, or whether schools using the CEP would
recommend it to others.
History of School Meals
Before presenting literature analyzing CEP and present school meal program
contexts, first, we provide an overview of the history of U.S. school meal programs. The
earliest school lunch programs began just prior to the beginning of the 20th century with
pilot programs in cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Cleveland (Gunderson, 1971;
Institute of Child Nutrition; 2018). United States federal government sponsored meals
in public schools have a history dating back to at least 1946 and the start of the National
School Lunch Program. The National School Lunch Program developed out of post
World War II agricultural surpluses that became heightened at the end of the war.
Rather than decrease production, or end agricultural subsidies for unnecessarily high
yields, it was determined that schools could be a major outlet to use the surplus
commodities. This was meant to continue incentives for agri-businesses and keep
American agricultural production levels high while maintaining stable levels of
employment for farmers and processors (Levine, 2010).
42
In addition to the political and economic incentives for the federal government to
support the American agricultural economy, the National School Lunch Program also
developed in the wake of nutrition reformers spreading ideas and knowledge about how
to best balance calories, vitamins, and other nutrients. Also, in the 1930s during the
Great Depression childhood malnutrition and related diseases were identified as serious
threats to America’s development
and
stability.
The
National
School
Lunch
Act
was
also a response to the high number of young men disqualified from military
service in WWII due to nutritional deficiencies and malnutrition. It was in part passed as
a national security measure (Levine, 2010). Though many decades have passed since
the beginning of the school meals program, once again today, nationally we have
serious health epidemics, now from nutrition-related diseases such as diabetes and
obesity.
School Meals and Contemporary Contexts
Understanding the origins of United States school meal programs helps to explain
the complexities of the present state of school meals in America.
Prior to the newer
universal school meal provision, the National School Lunch Program subsidized some or
all of the cost of lunch and eventually breakfast for students depending primarily on the
income of each student’s family. Eligibility for school meal programs depends on
families knowing of the program and then correctly submitting an application annually
for their child to receive benefits. An option in the federal law, Provision 2, has
funded universal meals in some high poverty school districts for a longer period of time
(Ralston, et al., 2008). However, Provision 2 can be complicated to use and does not
43
work
financially
for
many
schools,
even
when
they
do
have
high percentages of
low-income students. To further expand the availability of universal meals the
Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) was developed and then initially funded by
Public Law 111–296, section 104(a) of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, passed
December 13, 2010 (USDA FNS, 2017; National School Lunch Program, 2016). More
recently, after a pilot of the CEP in 10 states, in 2014 the CEP was rolled- out
nationally to provide an additional pathway to universal meals for individual schools or
whole districts (Gruber, 2017). Universal (free) school meals mean
that all students
within a school or school district have breakfast and lunch provided in school at no
additional cost to the student, regardless of family income. CEP is a federal government
legislated and funded program to provide meal service for children in high poverty school
districts – without requiring household applications. As discussed earlier, qualifying
districts need to have at least 40% of students directly certified as low income or as
having membership in a specified vulnerable group. By universalizing school meals as
free to all without application forms, or identifiers of who is low income, CEP and
Provision 2 increase rates of meal consumption within schools, reduce stigma (by not
labeling any students as low income), and can help increase school meal budgets,
increasing the potential to serve higher quality and more nutritious food (Hunger Free
VT, 2018).
Stigma is a significant barrier to eligible students and families participating in
school meal programs. In 1970 Congress added a provision to the NSLP stating that
participating children should not be identified as being part of free or reduced price
44
meal program, so as not to stigmatize the children (Stein, 2008). Stein writes that
stigmatization of students because of poverty has continued to be a problem in accessing
meals and that universal meals could be the answer – but that more study is needed
(2008).
Although CEP universal school meal programs are quite new, having been
piloted in 2010 and available to all states only in 2014, studies by researchers with
expertise in health sciences, biostatistics, and nutrition already show positive effects,
showing that students in CEP schools are eating more of
what they are served (Cohen,
et al., 2014; Henry, 2015; Segal, et al., 2016). Cohen et al. conducted original research
using
plate analysis (measuring individual students’ food remains) at a sample of
elementary and middle schools in urban parts of Massachusetts to understand how
students’ food choices have changed since the implementation of CEP, and also to
reveal what students are actually eating through examining plate waste (Cohen, et al.,
2014). The authors’ findings argue against common media reports that claim recent
changes to the nutrition requirements and structures of school meal programs have
increased waste without increasing the amount of healthy foods students eat, that more
students getting meals does not mean they are eating significant portions of them
(Cohen, et al., 2014). Cohen et al. confirm that on average implementing universal meal
programs has not significantly increased students’ food waste overall, even though
more students are eating the meal, suggesting that programs are successful in that
more students are being served, and eating more of what they are served (2014). While
CEP has increased accessibility of universal meals for eligible school districts, many
45
more schools could apply and have yet to realize the benefits of the program (Segal, et
al., 2016).
Although there have been few studies to date on CEP, initial research suggests
that CEP brings benefits to schools that use it. Drawing on research based in Kansas,
Henry’s 2015 findings from the first known statewide study on the effects of CEP
confirm the results of Segal et al. as well as Cohen et al. – that implementing
universal meals through CEP has positive effects (Cohen, et al., 2014; Henry, 2015;
Segal, et al., 2016). Furthermore, Henry reports that CEP is successful at increasing
student participation in both breakfast and lunch programs, as well as effectively
increasing reimbursements participating schools receive per meal, boosting program
budgets (2015). In terms of students’ well-being, school meal programs correlate with
positive impacts on children’s mental health, including reductions in behavioral and
emotional problems, bullying, aggression, anxiety, and depression (Kleinman, 2002).
There is no literature currently available measuring whether CEP and universal meals
affect the social climate of schools, and Gruber’s (2017) study was inconclusive about
changes in stigma
in school climate. Davis and Musaddiq (2018) suggest that stigma
and broader social implications of universal meals need to be studied in greater depth.
While the above studies have shown that CEP correlates with increases in student
participation in meal programs and a corresponding improvement in student nutrition,
the authors here have not located research that inquires about changes in students’
readiness to learn. Also, while numerous studies find a variety of benefits from
universal meals and CEP, none focus on the experiences and perceptions of school staff
46
and administrators with CEP, and whether they would recommend it.
Many researchers express concern for the possibility of losing national public
and political support and funding for quality, accessible school meal programs. Cohen et
al. (2014), Gurley (2016), and Pew (2016) ask lawmakers to not weaken the nutritional
standards for school meal programs as is being discussed by lawmakers and some
lobbyists. Pew (2016) argues that the currently ongoing legislative review and changes
being made to school meal funding and administration will severely reduce the efficacy
of CEP and school meal programs. The apparent success of CEP but also a lack of data
combined with cuts to these programs shows the need for further research, and the high
relevancy of the study reported in this article.
2.3 Methods
This research was guided by action research principles, in which the goal is to
implement a study that is motivated by needs identified by the community being
studied, and that shares results in ways that are useful and meaningful to community
partners (Lawson, et al., 2016). The research proposal completed an Institutional
Review Board process at the University of Vermont to ensure ethical practices.
Research design and questions were developed in partnership with Hunger Free
Vermont and Vermont school administrators, to conduct research that would hopefully
be informative and useful for Hunger Free Vermont, Vermont schools, other
organizations, and policymakers at the local, state, and national levels. The original,
guiding research questions were:
47
(1) How has the implementation of universal free school meals influenced the
school climate?
(2) How has the implementation of universal free school meals influenced student
academics and student behavior within each school?
(3) What are the implications of implementation of universal free school meals on
school finances and school food programs?
Primary Data Collection
In order to answer the research questions, this study utilized a mixed methods
nested case study, in which multiple staff in all 57 schools participating in the universal
school meal program in Vermont were contacted and invited to fill out a short survey
via e-mail with questions pertaining to the school climate, attitudes and norms
surrounding participation in the universal school meal program and perceived benefits
of participation. Of 240 staff from 57 schools invited to the survey 116 participated, for
a total participation rate of 48.3%. Participants responded to the survey from February
24 – May 15, 2017. The survey used an online platform, with 26 questions including
basic demographics, utilizing both a 5-point Likert scale and an open-ended response
option for each question, as well as one question which was only open-ended. Five of
the 26 questions uniquely targeted respondents who identified as nurses, to hear their
experiences in observing students’ health and behavior issues. For the distribution of
survey participants by school role, see Table 2.1.
48
Table 2.1. Demographics from the survey of schools in Vermont which participate in
universal school meals.
School Role
Percent
Assistant principal
8.74
Business manager
4.85
Food Service staff
8.74
Nurse
22.33
Para-educator
7.77
Principal
28.16
Other
17.48
No Answer
1.94
Note: survey participants N = 118 staff from 57 different schools statewide.
Recruitment
For this study, the only inclusion criterion is that a school has to be implementing
universal school meals. According to Hunger Free Vermont, at the onset of research in
2016, 57 Vermont middle and elementary schools were implementing universal school
meals. The PI and research assistant contacted staff at each school via e-mail and/or
telephone. For the case study schools, the PI and research assistant contacted the school
principal and other administrators via telephone calls and e-mails to assess their interest in
participating in the nested case study. Preliminary sampling criteria include recruiting
schools in both rural and urban towns, and also schools that have been implementing a
universal meal program for longer and shorter periods of time.
Analysis
The following charts and quotations were produced from survey responses from
staff at 57 elementary, middle, and high schools in Vermont which operated universal
(free) school meal programs in 2016/17. The data is derived from an online survey sent
to 240 school principals, assistant principals, school nurses, food service workers,
business managers, and special and para-educators. Teachers were not included in the
49
survey after initial inquiries with multiple schools’ administrators did not support their
teachers partaking in the survey, which would be another demand on top of teachers
existing heavy workload. Of those invited to the survey, 116 took part in the survey for a
total response rate of 48.3%. From the 116 responses, 90 responses were complete
enough to contain useable data. The survey responses were recoded using SPSS (v. 23)
to collapse “strongly agree” and “somewhat agree” into a single “agree” group, and
similarly, to collapse “strongly disagree” and “somewhat disagree” into “disagree.” The
below charts use some of this recoded data, and in the narrative we include selected
corresponding open-ended responses to contextualize the data in staffs’ lived
experiences. Open-ended responses represented here were selected using purposive
sampling to find comments that were clearly written, corresponded closely the results in
general, and are evocative of how universal school meals can be empowering for
individuals and communities.
2.4 Results and Discussion
This survey inquires to what degree universal school meals benefit multiple
domains of childhood development and school efficacy. The data comes from the
survey respondents who were distributed across different staff roles as seen in the
demographic breakdown shown in Table 1.
Aside from demographics, the complete survey results are shown (recoded to a
3-point scale) below in Table 2.2. For more in-depth analysis we return to our focus on
three topics that developed as priorities with our community research partners as novel
50
areas of inquiry regarding universal school meal correlation with students’ readiness to
learn, changes in school climate, and if school staff recommend universal school meals.
Table 2.2. All survey questions in shorthand except for demographics. In Vermont schools surveyed
which participate in Universal school meals.
Question
Agree
Disagree
Neutral
Nurses give less food to students
61.9
9.5
28.6
Nurses: Hunger related health complaints reduced
47.6
33.3
19.0
Nurses: students’ behavior issues declined
33.0
55.0
10.0
Nurses: students’ stress levels reduced
52.4
42.9
4.8
Nurses: more time for students’ non-hunger health needs
47.6
38.1
14.3
Student behavior improved
59.1
37.5
3.4
Student academic performance Improved
64.4
34.5
1.1
Students more ready to learn
83.0
14.8
2.3
School climate improved
72.4
25.3
2.3
Staff recommend univ. meals to other schools
92.0
5.7
2.3
Financial stress on students & families reduced
97.7
2.3
0.0
Stress on admin related to family financing reduced
82.8
14.9
2.3
School meal finances improved
52.4
40.5
7.1
School meal program deficit reduced
44.0
48.8
7.1
Students go hungry
31.8
7.1
61.2
Differences in family income less visible
80.5
10.3
9.2
Students get along better at lunch
44.2
51.2
4.7
School community is more inclusive
60.5
37.2
2.3
Family & student feedback occurs re: univ. meals
41.9
50.0
8.1
Meals are more nutritious
60.5
27.9
11.6
School now more able to purchase local foods
63.9
27.7
8.4
More time to cook from scratch
48.8
35.7
15.5
Para-educators have more time for other school work
23.8
54.8
21.4
Figure 2.1 shows the results of questions targeting the aforementioned three
themes, while the narrative below complements Figure 1 with open-ended qualitative
responses corresponding the three themes of readiness to learn, school climate, and
whether school staff recommend universal meals.
51
Figure'2.1.'Percent'of'respondents'who'agree,'are'neutral,'or'disagree'that'implementing'universal'
school'meals'have'made'students'more'ready'to'learn,'improved'school'climate,'and'would'recommend'
universal'school'meals.'N'='118.'Nb.'Responses'have'been'recoded'from' a' 5-point'to' a' 3-point'scale.
This research found overwhelmingly that the implementation of universal free
school meal programs in Vermont correlates with increased readiness to learn for
students. Eighty-three percent of school staff surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that
universal school meals make students more ready to learn. One Vermont principal
commented that “we have numerous students without food security in their home, and
hunger has interfered with their readiness in the past. This program has absolutely
improved student readiness to learn.” Another principal agreed, stating the logic that
“they can’t be attentive if they are hungry.” Voicing further connections between
universal school meals and readiness to learn, an additional principal shares that “all of
our students have access to at least two healthy meals a day. With such a high level of
poverty in our school, this ensures equal access for all students without the social
stigma of being one of the ‘poor’ kids. These meals ensure that our students have full
bellies and therefore the energy to focus on learning.” Related to readiness to learn,
52
64.4% of respondents agreed that students’ academic performance has improved with
universal meals, while 34.5% disagreed with this statement, indicating that respondents
see increased readiness to learn affecting academic performance.
Regarding the perceived influence of universal school meals on school climate,
over 72% of school staff surveyed report that serving universal
school meals has
improved social climate, while only 2.3% of respondents disagreed with this statement.
A school lunch coordinator in Vermont experienced the improved climate from
beginning universal meals, “since there is no payment and all children can go through
and get meals without the stigma attached to whether they are paying for meals
children feel more relaxed and therefore the atmosphere and participation at lunch is
much better.” An assistant principal echoes the lunch coordinator above in terms of
seeing greater equality and reduced stigma, “the cafeteria is a level playing field and not
one child feels embarrassed about their family’s income level.” Other survey questions
about factors relating to school climate also found strong confirmation of the social
benefits of universal meals, including questions asking about student stress, family
financial stress, administrator stress, income difference being less visible, and the school
community feeling more inclusive. These results show a broad range of benefits that
contribute to an improved social climate.
The survey question with the second highest level of respondents in agreement
regards staff recommending universal meals to other schools. Ninety-two percent of
school staff surveyed would recommend implementing universal school meals to other
schools. This result is not unexpected, viewed in light of the other survey results that
53
show staff consistently view universal meals as benefiting their schools and students
across multiple domains. An assistant principal strongly recommends universal school
meals, commenting that “providing students with a meal and other healthy choices
during the day is
a positive thing for many students and I recommend universal school
meals to all schools.” A principal in the survey states unequivocally that “[universal
meals] is one of the best things we have ever done for a high poverty school.”
Remarking on the benefits of universal meals, a school food service staff person
appreciates that “it really does allow for a better forecasting model in terms of staffing,
purchasing, and production. Our lunch lines also move more quickly in the schools that
do not require payment for meals.” Poignantly, a principal shares that “we used to have
multiple students per year whose parents would not pay their lunch balances. The
families did not qualify for the Free and Reduced Lunch program. Eventually, we would
have to stop serving these students food. It was always difficult for students and staff
when this occurred. Further, we now have the ability to ensure that every child eats
breakfast and lunch. This has allowed for a smoother morning and mid-day transition as
every child can eat.”
Overall, in 74% of the survey questions, at least a majority (often many more) of
respondents agreed that universal meals are beneficial. While all but one of the 26
survey questions were answered primarily on a 5-point Likert scale, the one open-ended
question, “how have you seen universal school meals impact students and the school?”
generated many responses which were strongly and passionately identifying the
benefits of universal school meals and recommending the program to all schools. For
54
example, a school nurse states they “have seen that there is less hunger, missed meals,
and stress on parents about affording meals at school. All of these have a positive
impact on child, learning, families and health.” A Vermont school principal further
confirmed the multi-domain benefits of universal meals, saying “food security is a big
deal for those students who don’t feel secure. If we can provide this as a school, it
impacts all aspects of a student’s experience.”
2.5 Conclusion
The results of this research consistently confirm that universal school meals are
beneficial across multiple domains of childhood development and for school efficacy.
These outcomes provide a deeper understanding of the perceived effects of the
community eligibility provision option supported by federal legislation to increase access
to school meals for all students, including students from low-income households.
Showcasing the impact of universal school meals and the community eligibility provision
is critically important in the current socio-political environment as many federal social
support and educational programs are at risk of reductions in spending. It is crucial to
recognize that childhood nutrition is foundational to a nation of healthy adults and that it
is much cheaper and economically efficient to budget for nutrition programs for children
than to pay for a lifetime of much higher medical and other costs due to malnutrition-
related chronic disease. Supporting CEP and universal school meal programs reduces the
financial burden on our health-care system by reducing the risk of diet-related chronic
disease and mental illness, which are some of the most expensive and long-term health
55
problems to treat. If we reduce spending on federal, universal school meal programs, we
should expect to have greater costs later in time as students become adults with far
greater lifetime health-care costs and less economic productivity.
These factors make it all the more imperative to understand potential problems
as well as what are clear benefits from CEP and universal meal programs. Hopefully, this
can forward open dialogue, further research, and improved knowledge of utilization and
impact of the implementation of CEP on student health and academic success. Future
research in this field is needed, such as a longer-term study that explicitly includes
teachers and that not only conducts surveys, but also directly documents data related to
attendance, nurse visits, behavior referrals, etc. Also a study that interviews parents, and
measures their interactions with the school when there is no longer a financial transaction to
pay for school meals could be helpful. Additionally, it would be valuable to inquire how
universal meals could be expanded and made available to all schools given the strong
benefits. A final important question that demands inquiry is to what degree does
participation in universal school meal programs change the financial sustainability of school
meal program budgets, which could be analyzed through quantitative research methods by
doing a comparative study of school meal budgets. With ongoing legislation changes
regarding these issues, it is important that we can provide information that promotes
decisions that are supportive of healthy childhood development as well as fiscally
responsible and efficient.
56
Acknowledgments
The authors give thanks to the schools and staff participants who made this
research possible, the Vermont Department of Health, the Vermont Child Health
Improvement Program and UVM’s Food Systems Graduate Program.
57
CHAPTER 3: CREATING RESILIENCY AND ENHANCING REGIONAL FOOD
SYSTEMS SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH INTEGRATED ANALYSIS OF
SOCIAL, ECOLOGICAL, AND ECONOMIC FACTORS ON SMALL AND
MEDIUM SCALE FARMS IN THE UNITED STATES
Josiah Taylor, Megan Egler, Sam Bliss, Shashank Poudel, and Joshua Farley
Abstract
Industrial agriculture is currently among the greatest threats to local and global
ecosystems and the economic sector most dependent on ecosystem services (ES).
Redesigning agriculture to focus on the provision of both food and ecosystem functions
promises to be among the most cost-effective ways to restore and enhance ES in the
future. Researchers have found that small farms can generate extensive ecosystem
services at the farm, community, regional, and global scales. Certifications (such as
“organic”) are currently the dominant approach to assessing agricultural sustainability,
which requires the provider of ecological and social benefits to pay for certification, the
opposite of “the polluter pays principle.” Yet there are no toolkits designed with and for
farmers and extensionist agents to quickly evaluate the social ecological and economic
sustainability and ecosystem services generated by a farm. To be most effective and
accessible to the largest number of farms, the costs of disseminating and applying this
toolkit should be borne by the public sector, which would also reward farms for ES they
provide. This survey based social-ecological-economic (SEE) sustainability analysis
toolkit will help small farm operators score their degree of sustainability and better
58
understand their strengths as well as the easiest to achieve changes in terms of bolstering
the sustainability, resiliency, and broad ecosystem services of the farm. This research
investigates sustainability and resiliency factors for small farms, and pilots the novel SEE
analysis toolkit in a case study working with two NGOs that support immigrant-focused
community farms in Vermont and Wisconsin. The SEE sustainability analysis toolkit
will also be useful in communicating to policy makers the myriad of ecosystem service
benefits from agroecologically managed agriculture lands and will support existing policy
efforts to promote enhancing ecosystem services on farm. Developing and piloting a
survey-based small-farm sustainability toolkit emphasizing agro-economic resiliency
within socio-ecological boundaries, this research also provides a freely accessible toolkit
for community research partners, other NGOs, small to medium scale farms, and
agriculture extension agents. By piloting the SEE sustainability analysis toolkit, this
research provides fertile ground for further research and development of ecosystem
service assessment and sustainability evaluation for small and medium scale farms.
Additionally, the researchers intend for the toolkit to increase awareness of the
widespread benefits of better supporting small and medium scale farmers using
agroecological methods. Farms that participate in using the SEE toolkit will be able to
both use the toolkit to analyze and improve their operations’ sustainability, as well as
educate policy makers and their communities to increase support for the arduous and
frequently precarious work of small-scale farmers.
59
3.1 Introduction
The larger research project this article emerges from investigates quality of life
and resiliency factors for farmers and conducts socio-ecological-economic (SEE)
sustainability analysis to bolster organizations that support immigrant-focused
community farms and farm incubators, as well as small farms more broadly. This
research finds gaps in the availability of simple, open access evaluation toolkits that
farms and extension agents can use to think about farm sustainability in broad ways that
bolster the overall resiliency of the farm and communicate to its community the values
the farm creates for the wider world. Using participatory action research approaches, this
research provides a freely accessible toolkit for community research partners, other
organizations, and small and medium scale farms more generally. This toolkit will also
give communities and policymakers valuable information to support farms to best
recognize and provide ecosystem services for their communities. With the results of this
more inclusive analysis, this research endeavors to facilitate better communication
regarding the ecosystem service benefits that sustainably managed farms offer their local
communities and the wider world.
Due in part to agricultural reform efforts tied to the green revolution, from 1970
to 2014 over 60% of invertebrate biodiversity was lost, largely through clearing and
conversion of land for unsustainable commodity agriculture (WWF, 2018). Land
ownership consolidation and conversion to high-input monocrop agriculture has
increased the loss of smallholder farms with particularly detrimental impacts on many of
the world’s poorest people. Industrial agriculture is the biggest contributor to exceeding
60
many planetary boundaries including biodiversity loss, climate change, land use change,
nitrogen and phosphorous emissions, and freshwater use - generating catastrophic
environmental problems for current and future generations (Steffen et al., 2015).
Agriculture currently accounts for 70% of global freshwater use and 80% of deforestation
(Campbell, et al., 2017). Based on existing data from 2000 and projecting to 2050, global
agricultural nutrient emissions will continue to increase, rising an estimated 23% for
nitrogen and 54% phosphorous, over this period (Bouwman, et al., 2013).
These issues have been made worse by shifts in farm ownership and a focus on
profit. In the 1980’s and 1990’s neoliberal restructuring encouraged the rolling back of
state regulations – and related to agriculture these changes effectively resituated the
responsibility for the security and risk management of farms onto the individual farmer,
heightening the precarity of agricultural producers and food workers (Clapp & Isakson,
2018). Within the contexts of neoliberalism, including the rising consolidation of
production and ownership of our food systems (Howard, 2021), farming in the United
States is increasingly difficult for small and medium-scale farmers. Ownership of
smallholder farms has been increasingly consolidated by corporations that control food
systems nationally and globally (Holt-Gimenez & Altieri, 2013). High land prices due in
part to speculation and financialization of farmland are also pushing land access and
ownership out of reach for many farmers (World Bank, 2014; Ashwood, et al., 2022).
Family-owned farms have declined from 2002 to 2017 from nearly 90% of farms in the
U.S. to about 85%. Except for the very smallest farms (1-9 acres) which includes many
hobby farms, there has been a consistent decline in the number of small and medium
61
scale farms, with only the very biggest acreage farm category in the census (2,000 acres
or more) showing growth in number of farms over the period 2002 to 2017 (NASS,
2019). More than half (54%) of all cropland in the U.S. is rented (Bigelow, Borchers, &
Hubbs, 2016) – and renters have less incentive to invest in long term productivity through
sustainable agricultural methods. Furthermore, because of continuing increases of
automation in industrial agriculture (with labels such as “digital agriculture,” “precision
agriculture,” and “smart farming”) it requires less labor, it contributes to rural
outmigration and social decay (Carolan, 2020; Barrett & Rose, 2022). The average age of
farmers in the U.S. is nearly 60, an increase of almost 20% from 1970 to 2012 and 62%
of farmer-owners are 55 or older (NASS, 2019); a new generation of farmers does not
appear to be replacing the older generation. This loss of family-owned farms has
consequences - small and medium farms in the U.S. play culturally, ecologically, and
economically important roles in their communities and recruiting and supporting a new
generation of farmers is crucial to resilient food systems.
Small farms account for the majority of an estimated 570 million agriculture
operations globally (Lowder, et al., 2016), providing the possibility of sustainable
livelihoods, community food provisioning, and ecosystem management. Per area
cultivated, small farms (under 2 hectares) produce more food than large farms, and have
much greater species richness, and devote larger percentages of their production to food
crops (rather than crops for animal feed or industrial usage) (Ricciardi, et al., 2018).
Smaller farms have greater agricultural diversity, biodiversity, and more nutrient
diversity (Herrero, et al., 2017). At the same time, industrial agriculture contributes to
62
several large wedges of sustainability crises transgressing planetary boundaries, including
major contributions to climate change, biodiversity loss, and water pollution, to name a
few (Campbell, et al., 2017). Conversely, sustainable methods of agriculture such as
agroecology hold the potential to remedy and reduce some of these crises.
The most severely affected by a lack of food security, access, and sovereignty
paradoxically tend to be those whose livelihoods are related to agriculture (Holt-Gimenez
& Altieri, 2013). Historically and contemporarily in the United States, Black and other
“socially disadvantaged” farmers have had the most difficulty in accessing financial
supports and technical assistance because of a complex set of factors relating to long term
and ongoing systemic discrimination and racism (Russel, et al., 2021). 56% of hired farm
workers generally (and 73% of hired crop workers specifically) were born outside of the
U.S., and only 53% of them are U.S. citizens (ERS, 2019). There are 2,614,526 farms
with White principal producers, versus only 38,447 farms with Black principal producers
and 46,210 farms with Native American principal producers, revealing major disparities
in control of farms and farmlands nationally (NASS, 2019). At the same time, many
small cities and towns in the U.S. which have faced decades of population and economic
decline have been experiencing population growth due in part to influx of immigrants and
refugees (Bose, 2017; Parker, Horowitz, Brown, et al., 2018). Many refugees and other
immigrants are filling jobs in agricultural and food economies in their roles as farmers,
producing food and livelihoods for their families, businesses, and communities (Parker,
Horowitz, Brown, et al., 2018; Wang, 2019), simultaneously bringing both opportunities
and concerns about social justice for these New American farmers. The abundance of
63
immigrants in U.S. agriculture shows they are a great potential pool for recruiting our
next generation of farmers - however, they typically have less access to resources and
hence even more difficulty paying for certification, making a free to use toolkit such as
the SEE analysis even more useful.
Our goals in this chapter are to provide background on sustainability crises as
they relate to agriculture and farm labor, and to support the next generation of farmers in
sustainable agriculture, including immigrant farmers (detailed above). With this context
we then review existing tools and programs that provide analysis of agricultural
sustainability, describing the gaps that we fill with our own agricultural sustainability
analysis toolkit and introduce our sites of study including the two farm partners with
which we piloted the analysis toolkit. Our article is organized as follows:
1. Introduction of our study sites
2. Description of development of our theoretical frameworks including
agroecology and ecosystem services
3. Review of other existing agricultural sustainability analysis programs
4. Description of the selection of indicator metrics as they correspond to the
theoretical frameworks.
5. Pilot of our SEE sustainability analysis with our research partner farms
6. Interpretation of the results and discussion of future directions for the SEE
toolkit and this research.
In the “Results” section we share the process of completing the survey, as well as
the data gleaned from the responses for each farm.
64
3.2 Methods
Small farms generate and rely on extensive ecosystem services at the community,
regional, and global scales (Power, 2010; Palm, et al., 2014), however our research finds
that there are no ecosystem service and agricultural sustainability evaluation toolkits that
farms (including non-profit and community farms) can quickly administer on their own
or in concert with agriculture extension agents. Moreover, we have found no such toolkits
that are free of cost to the farmer and moreover compensate the farmer for their time in
analysis and for the public good ecosystem services that they produce. With most
agricultural sustainability analysis programs, such as “organic” or “fair trade,” the farmer
must pay for such recognition and evaluation, a perverse disincentive for sustainable,
public-benefitting agricultural practices. This article details our research in which we
endeavored to work with farmers to combine their knowledge and experiences with
relevant literature to create the SEE sustainability analysis toolkit, the rollout of which we
intend to be supported by governmental agricultural service providers.
Farmers and food production play crucial parts in the health of society,
ecosystems, and economies. However, farmers in the United States and globally
experience financial precarity due to unpredictable weather, volatility in commodity
prices, climate change, and social justice issues (Kuipers, 2021). Farmers need better
supports to reduce the economic precarity of their livelihoods while also improving their
ecological and social sustainability. Our novel SEE sustainability analysis toolkit,
described below, gives farmers and extension agents an accessible way to analyze and
understand a farm’s impact on ecosystem services. Having clarity on a farm’s overall
65
sustainability and interactions with ES benefits both the farm itself as well as the larger
community in terms of understanding how agroecologically managed farmland provides
much more than just food (i.e., communicating benefits of best practices) – such as
wildlife habitat, water filtration, and cultural use and non-use values.
To inform the ‘socio-’ aspect of our SEE toolkit, we were primarily guided by
concepts of food justice and food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is particularly focused
on access and quality of food available, and sees inequities in food systems as generated
through the systemic political economic logic(s) of neoliberal capitalism (Alkon &
Mares, 2012; Holt-Giménez & Altieri, 2013). Food Sovereignty has close alignment with
agroecology in terms of concern with justice, agency, and access. Both concepts of food
justice and food sovereignty are important to building an understanding of interplay of
factors important for social and ecological resiliency and sustainability, and they can
therefore contribute to individual and community resiliency and wider social
sustainability. Small, socially engaged farms preserve the working landscape, creating
jobs, maintaining farming traditions, and sustaining cultural identities—synergizing and
positively promoting three dimensions of ecological, social, and economic sustainability
(Chase, et al., 2021).
As Boström et al. (2015) note, “social sustainability refers to a variety of aspects
such as quality of life, inter- and intra-generational justice, local populations’ access to
natural resources, citizens’ access to green urban spaces, cultural diversity, gender issues,
workers’ rights, broad stakeholder participation, and development of social capital.”
Given the breadth of considerations, many conceptualizations exist in how to categorize
66
the concept of social sustainability, often converging in substance if not in language. We
have drawn from these various frameworks, settling on three dimensions of
sustainability: ecological, social, and economic, in that order of descending importance
based on the doughnut economics model which places economy within social limits and
then both social and economic within ecological boundaries (Raworth, 2017). This aligns
with the ecological economic goals of ecological sustainability, social justice, and
economic efficiency (Daly, 1992; Daly and Farley, 2011). We also consider the interplay
among three dimensions of sustainability. For example, ecological resilience affects
social resilience - we are entering an era of unprecedented climate change which is bound
to disrupt agriculture. Farmers as a group typically do better financially during bad years
since the price of food increases, but high food costs have devastating impacts on the
poor. Essential resources such as food have highly inelastic demand, meaning that an
individual farmer earns more by producing more, but for all farmers, revenue moves in
the opposite direction of output. Inelastic demand is a basic concept in introductory
economics, yet one that even Nobel Laureates unfortunately forget, leading them to claim
that climate change will not have large economic impacts because agriculture is such a
small share of GDP (Daly, 2000). This is a type of social dilemma for farmers where the
three dimensions of sustainability interact. It is important to note that many fields within
the three dimensions overlap and affect one another in their impacts on sustainability and
resiliency.
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Agroecology, ecosystem services, and small-scale farms
Agroecology is a combination of agricultural techniques, a social justice
movement, as well as an area of scientific research and development, which is practiced
around the world. In the United States generally, agroecology is not yet commonly
practiced or recognized, though the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) and numerous national governments now promote agroecology (Montenegro de
Wit & Iles, 2016). The increasing recognition of agroecology shows its potential to guide
deep and long-term change toward making food systems more equitable and sustainable
socially, ecologically, and economically. Agroecology as an agricultural practice has
been shown to build soil fertility, enhance ecological resilience and biodiversity, and
reduce resource use and energy inputs through working with natural systems and at
human rather than industrial scales. As a social movement, it also focuses on
empowerment of women and other marginalized demographics (Anderson et al., 2020).
Because of the ways that agroecology integrates sustainability and resiliency across
economic, social, and ecological fields, it guides the approach we take in developing the
small farm analysis toolkit. Growing out of these agroecological frameworks, we use
ecosystem services to consider crucial indicators to develop effective proxies for the farm
analysis toolkit survey. Agroecology and ecosystem services are closely aligned in how
broadly inclusive they both are in terms of conceptualizing sustainability not just
ecologically or economically, but also socially (Caswell, et al., 2021; Chase, et al., 2021).
The Ecosystem Services framework (Sukhdev et al., 2010) provides useful
language to characterize the natural world in which societies and economies are
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embedded. Ecosystem services (ES) concepts acknowledge that ecosystems and humans
function interdependently, and that the complexity of these systems cannot all be
quantified or represented economically with monetary values. ES can also be thought of
as nature’s benefits to the biotic community, of which humans are a part (Farley, 2020;
Farley and Kish, 2021). Cultural ecosystem services can be understood to focus on the
social, cultural, and spiritual values of nature, and there is significant room for working to
include non-material values, further including the unquantifiable (Chan, et al., 2012).
While industrial agriculture has deleterious effects on surrounding ecological and social
communities, redesigning agriculture offers opportunities for increasing the provision of
critical ecosystem services (ES) which benefit the local community and the wider world
(Lal, 2001 & 2010; Pretty et al., 2006). Critical or essential ES are those which are
necessary for human survival (Farley, Schmitt-Filho, Burke, & Farr, 2015). Agriculture
provides essential nutrition and livelihoods, and it is the economic sector most dependent
on ES (DeClerck et al., 2016; IPCC, 2022; Steffen et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2007).
Reforming agriculture to focus on the provision of both food and ecology promises to be
among the most cost-effective ways to restore and enhance ES in the future (Heal and
Small, 2002; Power, 2010) as well as support small farms.
Because ecosystem services evaluation methods can be used with whole
ecosystem management in mind, it is helpful in considering the types of indicators small
farms would find useful in evaluating their own sustainability and resiliency. Moreover,
using an ecosystem services perspective to analyze small farms’ sustainability allows for
their local community and policy makers to understand the benefits a well-managed
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agroecological farm offers to its region, for example in the forms of cleaner water,
increased biodiversity, resilient food provisioning, recreational and aesthetic value of
landscape, and the intrinsic worth of healthy wild flora and fauna. Grounded in the
combination of agroecological and ES frameworks, this farm SEE sustainability analysis
toolkit is both beneficial for the farm as a form of SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities, and Threats) type analysis showing the farm what areas it excels in and
where it can improve, and it also importantly showcases to the larger community and
policy makers essential ecosystem services that farms and farmland are currently
providing at their own expense and to the benefit of all. Enhanced knowledge of the
ecosystem services that farms provide will be useful to develop and implement policies
that incentivize provision of ecosystem services and support sustainable small farms,
possibly including some form of payment for ecosystem services (PES). PES programs
are mechanisms that transfer resources to farmers for activities that better align farmer
and societal goals (Muradian et al., 2010). While there is growing criticism of these
schemes as market-based solutions that reinforce capitalism and reify profit maximization
as a primary goal, Co-investment in (environmental) stewardship (CIS) has recently
developed out of PES and it considers that many low-income farmers do not own their
land and so are ineligible for most PES programs. PES in the form of CIS offers promise
for bolstering agroecological and sustainable farmers that need support the most (van
Noorwijk & Leimona, 2010). Characterizing the natural world through ES and
agroecology frameworks provides opportunities to view the environment in more
nuanced ways than only through a human lens based in self-interest, and more closely
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adheres to a core tenet of strong sustainability that human actions and potential are
constrained by an ecological ceiling (Raworth, 2017; Caswell, et al., 2021). Combining
agroecology and ES frameworks as the theoretical foundation for the SEE sustainability
analysis toolkit allow for multidimensional, multi-scalar analyses of sustainability
generally and how agricultural enterprises contribute (or not) to sustainability.
A basis for understanding our small and medium farm sustainability metrics is
that society and economy are embedded within, and constrained by, the natural world (so
called “planetary boundaries”). As Raworth (2017) states in her framework “Doughnut
Economics,” justice and equity are situated within an ecological ceiling. This perspective
rejects the position of weak sustainability, whereby depletions of natural resources can be
rectified through technological innovation (i.e., natural capital is substitutable with other
forms of capital such as human), in favor of strong sustainability which recognizes that
social and economic wellbeing are nested within and dependent upon the natural world
(i.e., opportunities for substituting natural capital are limited, even at the margin). While
the Doughnut Economics model is helpful in guiding our framework, its focus has
primarily been at global and national levels and researchers have only recently begun to
consider its application at smaller scales such as cities and rural communities (Doughnut
Economics Action Lab [DEAL], 2020). In Vermont and Wisconsin, our focus on
community agricultural programs and their linkages with their communities means that
our efforts are even more localized, leading us to prioritize the identification of additional
indicators designed for analyzing small-scale dynamics. Further below in the subsection
“Broad-spectrum farm scale ecosystem service and sustainability evaluation,” we
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describe other existing agricultural sustainability analysis tools, from which we draw
inspiration. To develop the framing for farm sustainability analysis, we begin by using
agroecology and ecosystem services to understand the overall context and to consider the
fields needed to understand broad spectrum sustainability.
Broad-spectrum farm scale ecosystem service and sustainability evaluation
Our literature review finds a growing number of farm analysis and evaluation
tools available globally (see Table 1), many of which require considerable time and
financial costs borne by the farmer. Farmers may be inclined to participate in these types
of analysis for long-term financial benefit, however they may have other motivations
including the broad ecological and social impacts of sustainable farming. Most of these
analytic tools focus on ecologically sustainable farming practices for third party
certification with the purpose of conveying aspects of sustainability to consumers for
commercial gain on the behalf of the farm, such as a variety of organic certifications,
bird-friendly, shade grown, etc. Other certifications focus on third party evaluation of
social factors related to farming, again mostly for the purpose of communicating aspects
of sustainability to consumers for commercial gain on the behalf of the farm or processor.
Some examples of these certifications are multiple types of Fair Trade (Naylor, 2014),
women-owned business (Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, 2022), child
labor-free certifications (Provenance, 2022), and others (Dube, 2021). Ironically,
certifications such as “organic” are presented as a way for them to remain viable even
though it forces famers and consumers to shoulder the costs of proving they are providing
public goods. Additionally, some toolkits are focused on risk management using SWOT
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type analysis, such as the USDA Risk Management Agency’s “SWOT Analysis: A tool
for making better business decisions,” which prioritizes understanding risk and obtaining
various types of agricultural and related insurance policies (Kime & McGee, 2008).
Ultimately, the above types of programs are largely focused on the commercial success of
the farm as it relates to financial profitability and gaining a higher price for the farm’s
products. Another toolkit which is motivated more by thinking of the farm as embedded
in and affecting the health of the larger world, rather than commercial profitability is the
social-impact toolkit (The Real Farming Trust, n.d.). While the motivations of the social-
impact toolkit are concern for the farm and its relations to the larger community, it is still
concerned with primarily one area of sustainability (social) and not integrating ecological
and economic sustainability factors. The Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation
(TAPE) (FAO, 2019) from the FAO uses an integrated approach considering all three of
the areas of sustainability and is an in-depth examination of farm operations as they relate
to the SDG’s. Through counting the questions in TAPE, including those that are multi-
part, there are 536 separate questions. While the TAPE survey is very complete in scope
and could be very helpful for farms and their communities, the survey is too long and
requires excessive time commitment for many farmers, and so will greatly limit the
number of farms that would do the TAPE survey on their own (as it is intended). The
TAPE survey will be a valuable tool for global data gathering to advance the profile and
supports for agroecological farming, however TAPE appears unwieldy as a tool for
farmers themselves. The farms that are part of this research have expressed need for an
easy-to-use sustainability evaluation toolkit. The TAPE toolkit is still in the testing phase,
73
and while we hope the TAPE working group will eventually produce a more user-
friendly, truncated version, our SEE toolkit can fill the gap at this time. Finally, there is
also the Northeast SARE funded “Reading the Farm: Training Agricultural Professionals
in Whole Farm Analysis for Sustainable Agriculture” program (McAllister, et al., 2015).
This analysis method has much in common with our toolkit objectives, in that it
conceptualizes farm sustainability as broadly including social, ecological, and economic
factors. However, like TAPE, the Reading the Farm program also is time, expertise, and
cost intensive, requiring multiple days of the farmer, as well as engaging a team of
experts in multiple on-site visits. One problem is that existing toolkits were designed by
and for experts. We have created the SEE farm evaluation toolkit inspired by
agroecological and ecosystem services frameworks, farmer experiences, and examples
like TAPE and Reading the Farm, focusing on a wide variety of indicators. We have also
designed the SEE toolkit to be short, simple, easy to administer, with only 66 questions,
and with clear yes/no binary answers, for both ease of response and analysis post survey.
Table 3.1. Types of existing farm sustainability analysis programs including SEE analysis
toolkit.
Type!of!
analysis!
How!
implemented!
Primary!
fields!of!
inquiry:!
Ecological,!
Social,!
and/or!
Economic!
Designed!by!
whom?!
How!long!in!
#!of!
questions!
and/or!time!
to!
implement?!
Financial!
cost!to!
farmer?!
Organic,!
Shade!grown,!
bird!friendly!
Third!party!
Ecological!
Third!party!
and/or!
federal!gov’t!
Questions!
vary,!
moderate!
time!
commitment!
Yes,!varies!
Fair!Trade,!
woman!
owned!
Third!party!
Social!
Third!party!
Questions!
vary,!
moderate!
Yes!
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time!
commitment!
USDA!Risk!
Management!
Agency’s!
SWOT!
Analysis!
Farmer/producer!
Economic!
Gov’t:!USDA!
4!fields!
(SWOT),!
short!time!
commitment!
No!
Social-impact!
toolkit!
Farmer/producer!
Social,!then!
Economic!
Centre!for!
Agroecology,!
Water!and!
Resilience,!
the!Real!
Farming!
Trust,!and!
Community!
Food!
Businesses!
!
Questions!
vary!
depending!on!
producers’!
goals,!
possible!
extensive!
time!
commitment!
No!
The!Tool!for!
Agroecology!
Performance!
Evaluation!
(TAPE)!
Scientists,!
extension!
professionals,!
farmer/producer!
Social,!
Ecological,!
and!
Economic!
UN’s!FAO!
536!
questions,!
extensive!
time!
commitment!
Possible!
costs!due!to!
extensive!
scientific!
analysis!
Reading!the!
Farm:!
Training!
Agricultural!
Professionals!
in!Whole!
Farm!
Analysis!for!
Sustainable!
Agriculture!
Scientists,!
extension!
professionals,!
farmer/producer!
Social,!
Ecological,!
and!
Economic!
SARE!team!of!
scientists!and!
extension!
professionals!
Extensive!
time!
commitment!
No!
Socio-
Ecological!
Economic!
(SEE)!
analysis!
toolkit!
Farmer/producer,!
extension!
professionals!
Social,!
Ecological,!
and!
Economic!
Scientists,!
farmers,!
extension!
professionals!
66!questions,!
short!time!
commitment!
No!
In the section that follows we further explain the synthesis of these theoretical
frameworks and the experiences of farmers we have worked with as the foundation for
considering methods, metrics, and indicators that will effectively measure social,
ecological, and economic sustainability at the farm-community nexus for small and
medium scale farms. We then detail the specific questions included in the SEE toolkit
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and present the findings from our piloting of the toolkit with our two partner farms.
Lastly, we share recommendations for strengthening the toolkit and making it more
widely available.
To conduct this research and create the farm sustainability analysis toolkit we
partnered with two distinct small community farm and farm incubator programs: i) The
Linda and Gene Farley Center for Peace, Justice & Sustainability (Farley Center for
short, or FC) in Verona, Wisconsin and ii) New Farms for New Americans (NFNA) in
Burlington, Vermont. Both focus on supporting farming opportunities for immigrants,
refugees, and others with difficulty in accessing farmland, and are focused on social and
ecological sustainability rather than an emphasis on profit. While the organizations have
generally similar goals of providing community farm opportunities for New Americans,
they have distinct funding and program models. The Farley Center is uniquely funded
primarily through a “green burial” or “green cemetery” program – green cemeteries
provide an alternative to highly toxic and greenhouse gas intensive conventional ways of
dealing with the deceased and are compatible with our overall focus on sustainability
(Harris, 2007; Condos, 2017). NFNA is funded in ways more conventional to many
community and not-for-profit food projects, through on-going application and
competition for short term grants. Program directors at the FC and NFNA have
expressed ongoing interest and support for this type of research to better understand their
current and future farm and program strategic plans. The FC owns its land and provides
farming opportunities and land access to about 15 small scale commercial and homestead
farmers, home garden space for Hmong refugees, a green cemetery, and extensive
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community outreach programming about food, environment, and justice for urban and
peri-urban populations. NFNA is a program within the organization Association for
Africans Living in Vermont (AALV, now serving New Americans broadly). AALV has
land use agreements with a local park system providing about 80 families with large plots
for homestead farming as well as opportunities to grow farm businesses when desired.
NFNA and AALV also offer other social supports for New Americans, such as
translation services, and extensive assistance adapting to life and work in a new country.
We chose to focus on these populations because of continued systemic injustices
experienced by people in these demographics, as well as the large and increasing
numbers of aspiring farmers from immigrant, refugee, and BIPOC backgrounds.
Moreover, as the study sites are in Vermont and Wisconsin, the farms are also
representative of trends in their respective states and across the United States where
farms increasingly struggle to stay viable and maintain access to land. The number of
farms declined from 2012 to 2017, in Vermont from 7,338 to 6,808, and in Wisconsin
from 69,754 to 64,793, both of which are indicative of national trends (NASS, 2019).
By designing the toolkit in partnership with immigrant and refugee farmer populations,
we can be more certain of the toolkit’s cross-cultural usefulness and validity than if we
tested it with more frequently represented and supported White farmers in Vermont and
Wisconsin. Improving supports for all farmers, but especially those who have been
underrepresented and marginalized, is crucial to cultivating more just food systems as
well as increasing the resiliency and sustainability of farming and food provisioning for
all. Moreover, by developing this ecosystem service analysis toolkit with these farms,
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and piloting it with them, we have created the toolkit with input from farmers with a
diversity of backgrounds and ways of farming. This will give the toolkit applicability to a
wider range of farms, and therefor available and relevant to farms globally.
Community based research approaches, PAR, and preflection
This research applies Participatory Action Research (PAR) approaches and ethics,
to engage with local immigrant gardeners (“New Americans”) and related organizations,
allowing this research to be driven by their needs and preferences through community
participation and consultation (see Mendez et al., 2017). The lead author has been
embedded as a volunteer in both organizations for the last four years, assisting each in
different capacities with activities like farmland management, developing a pollinator
garden, offering farm safety education workshops, discussing farmer and organizational
needs, creating an internal informational database, fundraising, and taking part in
celebrations. Wilson & Young (2008) identify that too little peer-reviewed research in
North America uses community-based research methods including partnerships and
consultations with food programming organizations. They also argue strongly for future
research to be done with communities, driven by community needs and preferences, to be
better informed and work toward building long-term research capacity and practical
applications. PAR methods can be powerful ways to build understanding of a problem
through in-depth, long-term involvement with a community. This long period of
engagement has produced meaningful relationships and deeply informed and guided the
content and function of the SEE toolkit.
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Conducting this research across programs at two distinct sites provides
comparability and diversity in demographics, location, and programmatic focus. Basing
the research in Northern States (Vermont and Wisconsin) may yield unique results due to
differences in growing season, food costs, demographics, and cultural values compared
with warmer and coastal states such as California. While piloted in Vermont and
Wisconsin, the SEE toolkit is intended for use throughout the United States, and other
countries, and through additional testing of the toolkit, may be adapted to other regions
and ways of farming.
Small farm socio-ecological economic sustainability analysis:
Our pilot of the socio-ecological economic (SEE) sustainability inquiry offers
internal and comparative analysis between the Farley Center and NFNA through self-
evaluation grounded within ecological and planetary boundaries and social limits. We
used internal knowledge of the farm operations to conduct the SEE analysis on behalf of
NFNA and the FC. A variety of ecological and social practices from serve as proxy
indicators for understanding the sustainability and resiliency of each farm across SEE
fields (see the full sustainability toolkit survey in the Appendix).
We have conducted a pilot of this self-assessment toolkit with both farm
organizations, evaluating frequently ignored social and ecological factors, such as
biodiversity benefits, soil and water health, carbon sequestration/production, just labor
conditions, cultural diversity, and other values important to local community members.
Improving communication about sustainable agriculture and ecosystem service
provisioning will be useful to grow stronger supports for farmers including possibility for
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payment for ecosystem services (PES) and other programs. Other research delves into
strengths and weaknesses of PES (Midler, et al., 2017), and how to effectively construct
PES schemes (Kemkes, Farley, & Koliba, 2010).
Building the toolkit / farmer self-survey indicators and questions
The first step of our approach focused on theoretical frameworks that identify
components of a strong social foundation and prosperous economy that can exist within
planetary boundaries (Raworth, 2017). We utilized these models to consider social,
economic, and environmental aspects of the farm-community nexus, allowing for a
categorization of different types of experiences and an accounting for the dimensions of
sustainability and their interactions. Discussion and debate among research and writing
team members from different disciplines regarding the theoretical framework,
methodological approach, and unit of analysis inform the metrics and guide the analysis
presented in this article.
The second step of the approach examined known and potential sources of data,
assessed their relevance to the conceptual framework developed in step one, and assessed
their completeness with attention to scale. The result of this process is a set of necessary
indicators and questions that serve as proxies for these indicators, believed to be key
sustainability metrics for broadly sustainable agriculture in Vermont, Wisconsin, and
beyond.
The third step incorporated stakeholder input on priority metrics. A USDA ARS
project team related to this research solicited stakeholder input via a one-hour webinar on
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December 4, 2020. Twenty-five participants joined the webinar representing a range of
interests and organizations including: Senator Patrick Leahy’s office, Vermont Farm to
Plate Network, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Vermont Fresh Network, multiple
Vermont farmers, and faculty and students representing a range of departments and
disciplines from UVM, St. Michael’s College, and University of Maine. Throughout the
webinar, online polls collected participant feedback on key metrics related to
sustainability dimensions of the farm-community nexus. Poll questions sought to assess
the aspects of environmental, economic, and social sustainability that stakeholders
perceive as most important to agricultural businesses, and to the people and communities
where agricultural operations are located. Participants were asked to select their top three
answers for each question and to share additional answers and ideas via the webinar chat
feature (Chase, et al., 2021). This stakeholder feedback step also involved conducting
semi-structured interviews with small scale commercial and non-market farmers from
diverse backgrounds at two farm-incubator operations, one in Vermont (NFNA) and one
in Wisconsin (the FC), as well as five commercial farm operations in Vermont to glean
their perspectives on what makes them sustainable and what factors would help improve
their success in creating broad resiliency. We interviewed 14 adult male and female
Nepali/Bhutanese farmers from NFNA, mostly in their homes and some at the AALV
office, in individual interviews though three interviews had other family members
present. At the FC we interviewed all 10 primary farmers that work at the organization,
male and female adults who are immigrants from Mexican, Russian, Tibetan, Hmong,
and South Indian, backgrounds, as well as two Americans who are not immigrants. For
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the Nepali/Bhutanese and Mexican farmers we used interpreters to ensure clear
communication. Our interview questions inquired into experiences with sustainability,
resiliency, risk management, quality of life, and ways to better support farmers. We then
synthesized the stakeholder input with the theoretical framework and prior research on
key sustainability metrics. We created these sub fields (below) and the metrics
themselves influenced by the feedback from farmers, as well as based on the literature,
including other sustainability assessments, such as TAPE, described in the introduction
above. We categorized priority metrics under primary sustainability dimensions:
Ecological impacts and sustainability – building healthy soil (cover crops, rotation, poly
cropping, compost/nutrient cycling, erosion reduction, equipment usage, pesticide and
fertilizer usage); risk mitigation (floodplain proximity, perennials cropping, disaster
preparedness, water reducing practices, crop diversity); resource usage (energy
conservation, renewable energy, usage of biocides/toxics, sustainable sourcing of inputs,
climate change planning); and biodiversity (pollinator habitat, crop diversity, other
wildlife habitat, native species management, invasive species management, open
pollinated/heritage crops).
Social impacts and sustainability – labor opportunities and conditions, social and
informational infrastructure, sense of community & engagement, demographic and
cultural diversity, inclusive governance, health and wellbeing, Indigenous peoples’
engagement, local food provisioning, transparency and self-determination.
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Economic impacts and sustainability –farm profitability, farm labor, farmland access and
tenure, PES participation, financial stress & stability, usage of agricultural insurance, and
economic diversification.
The fourth step developed specific indicator questions for the metrics described in
step three, using a 5-point Likert scale, so that farms can do their own self-assessment to
highlight sustainability strengths and weaknesses (akin to SWOT analysis). We then
workshopped this draft version of the sustainability evaluation survey within our
ecological economics lab at the University of Vermont to ascertain strengths and
weakness of the survey instrument. There were nine members of the lab present, with
backgrounds in agriculture, ecological economics, natural resources, food systems, and
community development and applied economics. After completing initial construction of
our survey instrument for the SEE analysis toolkit, and testing it within our lab group for
feedback, we incorporated suggested changes to simplify the questions for easier
implementation of the self-survey. Changes made from lab group suggestions included
simplifying the survey further by clarifying questions and reducing possible survey
answers from a five-point Likert scale to a binary scale to make it much easier for
farmers to use, and therefore make the toolkit more accessible, useful, and simpler to
interpret results. We then undertook our final step – to pilot the toolkit with our two
partner farms: NFNA and the FC. The final result is a tool that farmers can apply and
score their operations to highlight their strengths (for enhancing marketing, community
recognition and engagement, sponsorship, etc.), as well as recognize opportunities for
improving sustainability and resiliency (for targeting development projects, applying for
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grants, tracking progress in broad spectrum sustainability, etc.). Optional for farms who
apply this toolkit in the future would be to anonymously submit their analysis to a
database that will allow farmers and researchers to continue improvement of the toolkit
as well as study patterns in the data that will further transdisciplinary agricultural
research.
Much work has already been done creating economically and financially focused
analysis tools (See Table 1) – in this self-assessment toolkit we put particular weight on
social and ecological fields (the “floor” and “ceiling” that economic systems rely on and
are constrained within), while still including economic analysis. Some of these fields
within the economic section are beyond the farm-scale scope of this toolkit, however, are
nonetheless important to acknowledge and possibly incorporate in in future versions of
the SEE toolkit. The goal is to provide an essential foundation for future research that
will place farmers and agricultural communities in rural regions such as Vermont and
Wisconsin at the forefront of this critical transdisciplinary area.
To develop the self-survey instrument, we broke down the overall evaluation into the
three categories discussed above, focusing on ecological and social categories, as the
economic factors must work within socio-ecological boundaries to be sustainable. What
is defined as a desirable outcome is contextual, value-oriented, and normative (Long,
2001; Scoones, 2009).
We have sub-divided the three main fields into sub-fields, which have finally
been parsed out into single questions to represent each sustainability indicator. It is
important to note that many sub-fields overlap, interact, and could be placed in one of the
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other two primary fields because of their far-reaching impacts: for example, crop
diversity reduces risk, while pesticides and fertilizers can be bad for soil health as well as
human health. See Appendix A for the full toolkit survey containing all the questions
farmers can use to analyze their farm’s sustainability.
Table 3.2. Summary of Socio-Ecological Economic Sustainability Analysis Key Metrics
Ecological
Building Healthy Soil
Cover crops
Rotation
Poly cropping
Makes/applies compost
Erosion reduction
Hand tool usage vs. power equipment
Risk mitigation
Farms in floodplain
Perennials
Disaster preparedness/plan
Water reducing practices
Resource usage
Energy conservation
Renewable energy
Usage of biocides/toxics
Sustainable sourcing of inputs
Climate change footprint/plan
Biodiversity
Pollinator habitat
Crop diversity
Other wildlife habitat
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Native species management
Invasive species management
Open pollinated/heritage crops
Social
Labor opportunities and conditions
Social and informational infrastructure
Sense of community, community network engagement
Demographic and cultural diversity
Good governance
Health, safety, and wellbeing
Indigenous peoples’ recognition/engagement
Creates food security for participants/community
Transparency and self determination
Economic
Economic impacts
Farm profitability
Farm labor
Farmland
PES participation
Stress experienced related to ongoing financial instability
Subscribe to crop insurance
Economic diversity
3.3 Results
To reduce the work for our research partners at NFNA and the FC, we used our
knowledge of the farm operations to answer the survey questions we knew well. In a
small number of cases where we were unable to answer the questions, we communicated
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with the farm organizations’ directors for follow up which provided the additional
information needed to complete every question. In total it took us about one hour to
complete the toolkit survey for each farm, then about one hour of additional follow up by
email with the farm directors for clarification. The two farms had much in common
regarding their responses to the survey, however there are also several unique answers to
the survey, which we detail below.
For New Farms for New Americans (NFNA), based in Burlington Vermont, the
SEE analysis showed that the farm scores well regarding their sustainable agroecological
practices, while there are also areas in which the farm can focus on making
improvements. In the “Ecological” factors section, “Healthy Soils” subsection NFNA
indicated sustainable practices for five of seven fields, showing possible room for
improvement in that they do not currently make their own compost, and they believe
organic matter in their soils is not increasing. Whereas for the Farley Center (FC) they
scored positively in all seven of seven fields regarding healthy soils.
For the “Risk Mitigation” subsection within the ecological analysis, NFNA scored
favorably in five of seven fields. NFNA shows significant risks in their susceptibility to
damaging floods more often than once every five years, because of their location low on
a riverine floodplain. NFNA also does not have a drought emergency action plan. The
FC scored six out of seven for “Risk Mitigation,” because they could focus improvements
on developing a comprehensive emergency action plan for floods.
In the “Resource usage” subsection of ecological analysis, NFNA scored
favorably in six of eleven fields, while revealing that it could do an assessment of itself
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and what parts of the farm produce the most greenhouse gases (GHG) and then
implement a GHG reduction plan, and could partner with other local producers to take
advantage of “waste products” from other farms that would be beneficial for building
organic matter and fertility. The FC also scored favorably in six of eleven fields,
showing that it could improve in areas such as reducing frequent tractor usage, reducing
use of mined inputs for soil fertility (they rarely but occasionally use lime and phosphate
that are NOP compliant), and undertaking an in-depth GHG assessment. While it is not
considered by the current version of the SEE toolkit, the FC has begun charging a carbon
tax on burials of cremations which is contributing to a fund to electrify farm equipment
that are currently run on fossil fuels, working toward long term reductions in greenhouse
gas emissions. Two of eleven questions in this subsection regard sustainable animal
production did not apply to either farm, because neither raises farm animals.
NFNA showed sustainable practices in the “Biodiversity” subsection of
ecological analysis, scoring positively in six of seven fields, only showing possible room
for improvement in that they do not have a policy against planting invasive species. The
FC revealed good practices regarding biodiversity in all seven fields.
The next main section is concerned with socially sustainable practices. Of the 15
questions, NFNA responded favorably to 13. NFNA could grow more socially
sustainable practices by inviting the larger community outside the farm for events or
celebrations, and while they make acknowledgments of local Indigenous peoples, they do
not actively engage with or invite them to participate in the farm operations. The FC
scored well in 14 of 15 questions. The FC could improve here in that they do not
88
currently grow a majority of their produce for internal farmers and staff consumption –
however while not a majority, FC farmers, staff, and their families do consume
significant amounts of produce that is grown on site, and a majority of the produce is
consumed locally – see the discussion section below for further critique of this indicator.
The last section on factors important to economic sustainability has 14 questions.
NFNA showed economically sustainable practices in seven fields but did not have strong
enough data to determine their financial solvency over the next five years. In addition to
an uncertain financial outlook, the survey revealed that NFNA experiences challenges in
six other areas, including long term land access or ownership, the inability to expand land
access or move to a new site if needed, frequent experiences of stress relating to financial
insecurity, the farm does not subscribe to any type of disaster insurance for farmers, and
lastly NFNA does not have funding diversified into three or more major streams of
funding. While NFNA does not participate in or receive payments for ecosystem services,
this could be an opportunity for the future. The FC showed economically sustainable
practices in twelve of fourteen fields, and room for improvement in two areas, because
they do not currently subscribe to any type of disaster related farm insurance, and do not
have funding diversified into three or more major streams of funding. Because of the
major impact of the cost of farmland on economic sustainability, one area in which the
economic section of the survey could be improved would be through designing a simple
way to analyze a farm’s cost of land, which could possibly be done through evaluation of
cost per acre for the region in which a farm is located. Including analysis regarding cost
89
of land could be complicated because farm prices fluctuate wildly, due in part to rampant
speculation.
For the full survey and all responses for each farm, see the pilot of the survey in
Appendix A.
3.4 Discussion
Our pilot application of the Socio-Ecological-Economic analysis toolkit proved
straightforward and took only one hour per farm initially, with an additional hour of
follow-up with each farm to ensure accuracy of responses and clarify several questions
that were more challenging to answer given our research team’s data and existing
knowledge of the farms. It is possible that the farmers themselves may have been able to
complete the survey more easily than our research team. We intend the toolkit to be used
by individual farmers or NGOs, and we treat NFNA and the FC as single farms in the
analysis. We designed the toolkit survey to require only a short time commitment. This
allows the assessment to be easy and quick for farmers and management teams to
administer, consequentially, increasing the potential number of farms that will use the
SEE toolkit. We needed the follow-up to clarify questions regarding engagement with
Indigenous peoples, staff access to healthcare, existence of emergency action plans for
drought and flood, change in soils organic matter over time, usage of mined inputs for
soil fertility, usage of agriculture extension services, and the projected five-year financial
solvency of the farm. Some of the follow up with NFNA was unable to produce
unambiguous yes/no responses, so we answered to the best of our ability given the
90
available data and knowledge. Two questions, in the “Resource Usage” subsection of
Ecological analysis did not apply to the two farms we partnered with because they
inquired about animal feed and pasture practices and these two farms do not have farm
animals. While these two questions did not apply to the farms in this pilot of the SEE
toolkit, we believe that they will be helpful in making the toolkit applicable and relevant
to small and medium farms more broadly, including farms that have animal-based
agriculture operations.
New Farms for New Americans and The Farley Center overall scored similarly in
the social factors section, though the FC excelled in the economic and ecological analysis
sections. Our analysis shows that both farms have agroecologically sound practices in a
majority of the fields of inquiry. Additionally, both farms have several areas where their
practices could use improvement as indicated by non-ideal responses in the survey as
shown in Table 3: “Areas for follow up from SEE analysis.”
Table 3.3: Areas for follow up from SEE analysis
Areas!for!follow!up!
NFNA!
FC!
Ecological(
Develop!compost!production!plan!
Develop!flood!emergency!
action!plan!
!
Increase!organic!matter!content!
Reduce!tractor!use!
!
Develop!flood!mitigation!strategies,!
search!for!less!flood!prone!land(s)!
Reduce!use!of!mined!
inputs,!such!as!aragonite!
and!rock!phosphate,!
replace!with!local,!
renewable!options!
!
Develop!a!drought!emergency!
action!plan!
!
!
Synergize!farm!with!other!land!
users!nearby!to!use!"waste"!
products!from!other!nearby!
producers!such!as!animal!feed!or!
compost!
!
!
Assessed!what!parts!of!your!farm!
operation!are!most!GHG!intensive!
!
91
(including!water,!field!work,!
processing,!storage,!delivery,!etc.)!
!
Develop!a!strategy!to!begin!
reducing!the!climate!change!
footprint!of!your!farm!
!
!
Develop!a!policy!against!planting!
any!invasive!species!
!
Social(
Host!events/celebrations!for!the!
local!community!in!which!the!farm!
is!situated!
Retain!a!greater!amount!
of!produce!to!feed!your!
farmers/farm!workers!
and!related!families!
!
Engage!with!or!invite!local!
Indigenous!peoples!to!participate!
with!or!benefit!from!your!farm!
!
Economic(
Conduct!financial!planning!and!
development!to!increase!the!
likelihood!of!positive!financial!
outlook!over!the!next!5!years!
Review!types!of!crop!and!
disaster!insurance!and!
apply!for!relevant!
programs!if!possible!
!
Further!develop!long!term!land!use!
agreements!and!seek!land!
acquisition!to!stabilize!land!tenure!
Diversify!funding!streams!
to!be!less!reliant!on!a!
small!number!of!large!
revenue!sources!
!
Continue!search!for!access!or!
acquisition!of!additional!nearby!
land!of!sufficient!quality!to!expand!
or!move!if!needed!
!
!
Consider!participation!in!payment!
for!ecosystem!services!(PES)!
programs!
!
!
Examine!financial!instability!and!its!
impact!on!experiences!of!stress!for!
staff/!participants,!search!for!
assistance!with!stress!and!finances!
!
!
Review!types!of!crop!and!disaster!
insurance!and!apply!for!relevant!
programs!if!possible!
!
!
Diversify!funding!streams!to!be!less!
reliant!on!a!small!number!of!large!
revenue!sources!
!
We note that the Farley Center leads each category in agroecological best
practices that generate ecosystem services. This does not necessarily imply that one
operation is better than the other overall, simply that NFNA may have more areas for
improvement in practicing sustainable agriculture and generating increased ecosystem
services. NFNA has many strengths, not all of which can be represented in this self-
92
assessment with only binary responses possible. There are some substantial differences
between the two farms – for example the FC is primarily an incubator and home for small
commercial farms with farmers also growing for personal home production, while NFNA
is the inverse: most farmers are growing primarily for home production, and a small
number are also commercial growers. The SEE question that asks whether the farm
produces a majority of their food to feed the farm’s workers, families, and immediate
community gives the FC a poor rating on that indicator – we believe this question may
warrant being removed or changed in future versions of the SEE toolkit because it does
not take into account the importance of feeding people beyond the immediate farm
community and therefor unnecessarily favors community farms involved in primarily
home-scale production, such as NFNA.
Also, a substantial difference that requires further inquiry is that the FC owns the
land they farm on, and has been able to expand, whereas NFNA has a land use agreement
with municipal parks and has had challenges in finding available affordable land for
permanent expansion. The difference of land ownership versus leasing affects several
aspects of sustainability. Some of the fields that NFNA received a negative score for that
may be linked to lack of ownership include challenges of developing infrastructure
(composting systems, minimal storage space for equipment including more extensive
water efficient irrigation systems, renewable energy systems), as well frequent financial
stress for staff, land access/tenure issues (inability to move to a site less susceptible to
flooding, inability to expand area farmed, challenges in participating in PES). Overall,
NFNA is less capital intensive in terms of their assets and expenses, and so is making a
93
more efficient use of financial resources to support farmers-in-need. However, the FC
experiences less precarity and has been able to build and maintain more long-term
infrastructure to support farmers – such as produce wash/pack house, refrigeration and
storage space, bathrooms for farmers near fields, and an extensive collection of tools and
equipment. On the other hand, with its less capital-intensive approach, NFNA has a
minimum of equipment, and only borrows a tractor once or twice a year for field
cultivation, making it more reliant on hand tools and less GHG intensive as a result. The
FC operates a green burial cemetery in the forest surrounding its farmland, and charges a
carbon offset fee for cremations, which funds solar electric generation and electrification
projects to reduce GHG production.
3.5 Conclusion
Future sustainability data collected through SEE analysis surveys could be stored
at UVM and managed through the UVM-ARS Center in conjunction with the Center for
Rural Studies (CRS). UVM has access to the Qualtrics package of survey tools, which
could be used for digitally administering SEE analysis farmer surveys and could easily
and directly allow farmers who use this toolkit to opt-in to report their on-farm
sustainability findings. This type of open access database would facilitate future applied
research focusing on agriculture and sustainability. Vermont is pursuing work, led by
researchers at the Gund Institute for Environment, on Payment for Ecosystem Services
(PES). If this work gets fully developed and supported by policy, these PES programs
would pay farmers to reduce phosphorus loading from their farms (Posner, Ricketts, &
94
Roy, 2019), and other PES programs are in development. Our metrics for sustainability
may be natural links with the ARS Center, agriculture extension, and developing
additional types of PES.
Developing a PES system (particularly like CIS, Co-investment in
[environmental] stewardship (van Noorwijk & Leimona, 2010)) or some type of other
compensation for farms who participate in SEE analysis would increase the number of
farms who are able to commit the temporal and financial resources required to maintain
and improve their overall sustainability and ecosystem services provisioning.
Additionally, payment to farmers would be needed for persistent longitudinal
engagement with SEE analysis and resulting agroecological improvements, to deepen the
long-term usage of the SEE toolkit and dissemination of agroecological methods that
support ecological, social, and economic sustainability. Moreover, it is only fair to
compensate/incentivize farmers for providing ecosystem services that benefit the broader
community, region, and world. It would be crucial to determine what types of
compensation or incentives would be most effective because cash payments are not
always the most effective method to change how farmers operate. We also believe it
would be valuable to explore the possibility of SEE analysis becoming a publicly funded
alternative to other existing types of certification which have narrower and therefore less
complete conceptualizations of sustainability, and tend to have moved from being
grassroots and farmer focused to becoming more driven by corporate, large scale food
systems interests (Dube, 2021).
95
This research expands ecosystem service and agroecology knowledge and
practice and is replicable for future study and use by farm extension services and
outreach as well as longitudinal continuity with the communities researched.
Additionally, using methods combining long-term community involvement and PAR
techniques to develop the research in tandem with community research partners’ needs
generates comprehensive analysis of immigrant community farm and food programs
sustainability across ecological, social, and economic fields. The novel SEE analysis will
be useful for advising program development and enhancing ecosystem services
provisioning. Additionally, using PAR approaches is a type of research that is identified
as a valuable way of research that is underutilized, as well as more attractive to
communities and some funding organizations. Through the combination of this research
being community driven, rigorously examining broad ecosystem service impacts related
to participation in community focused farm and food projects, this research also
contributes to filling major gaps in community food systems literature and actionable,
accessible tools. This research will help inform future food and agricultural research and
policy discussions, and initiatives focused on enhancing long term farm sustainability and
provisioning of ecosystem services in the U.S and globally. Moreover, the research
partner organizations benefit from detailed information on innovative ways to understand
their socio-ecological economic sustainability and resiliency.
Broader impacts & recommendations
The farm partner organizations have expressed that data generated from the above
research is instrumental in better understanding and ultimately improving the impacts of
96
the programs and the visibility of their benefits, as well as impacting the quality of life
for farmers. Further products of this research will take useful and accessible forms of
infographics, executive reports, and policy documents to advise these and other related
community food projects. Each partner organization will receive reports detailing socio-
ecological economic ecosystem service and sustainability analysis which also offers
suggestions and plans to diversify revenue sources through ecological alternatives such as
green cemeteries and payment for ecosystem services. These reports and analyses will
help to better support immigrant-focused farm programs and farms more generally so that
they can recruit and retain the next generation of farmers, and bolster community food
system development initiatives.
One of the largest factors for the economic sustainability of small farms which we
cannot overstate is access to land - it is especially a top challenge identified by young and
beginning farmers (Ackoff et al., 2017). It is estimated that 70% of US farmland will
change hands in the next two decades (Cargill, n.d.), so that this is a particularly crucial
time period to support small farmers in securing land tenure. While most farmland in the
U.S. is rented, not owner operated, insecure tenure undermines ecological stewardship,
long-term investment, and community-building – affecting all three dimensions of
sustainability. Agriculture is impacted by the availability of affordable farmland, but also
provides opportunities for land conservation by allowing visitors to connect to rural
amenities and food production, which can improve the public’s view of farming and
provide support for conservation of agricultural land (Schilling et al., 2012). Programs
such as land trusts and agrarian commons are working to make land tenure more
97
accessible, particularly for new farmers and those from diverse backgrounds, as well as
developing land tenure strategies for future generations (Agrarian Land Trust, 2022).
Economic benefits also come from the ecosystem services that open space and
agricultural land can provide, as discussed previously in the environmental sustainability
section. With these considerations in mind, the SEE toolkit could be improved to have
more attention to farmland access and cost. The SEE toolkit will be easy to adjust to
emerging problems in agriculture including changing agricultural economies and
concerns like rising invasive species such as the jumping worm. Beyond the scope of the
SEE toolkit, we suggest that increasing policies and programs that support access to
farmland will be a major leverage point to bolster small farm sustainability and the
ecosystem services that they produce for the wider world.
We propose that the SEE toolkit pilot be broadened to a significantly larger
number of farms, with high diversity of the types of farms that participate to further test
the toolkit, while beginning to make the toolkit and supporting services available to all
farms that want to engage in their own sustainability analysis. Partnering with agriculture
extension services would be a natural fit for this work, with their complementary farm
related education and supports. The SEE toolkit could also develop to include some of
the practices that the SARE Reading the Farm program uses to engage agriculture
extension service providers with follow-up to farm sustainability analysis to facilitate
implementation of sustainability improvements. We also propose using the Delphi
method as follow up to the initial pilot to produce more feedback to strengthen and refine
the SEE toolkit for future, wider implementation (Sheng-Hshiung, et al., 2006; Lanndon,
98
et al., 2018) This phase would engage with farmers, extension agents, and other experts
in agriculture to make the toolkit more effective and easier to implement.
Conflicts of Interest: None
This article and the corresponding research was supported in part by the USDA National
Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch project 038725, under Dr. Joshua Farley and Dr.
Josiah Taylor.
Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank New Farms for New Americans and
Alisha Laramee; The Farley Center, Shed Farley, and all staff; all farmers involved
whose names remain confidential; Ella Mighell, the Farley Lab group; UVM Faculty of
Food Systems; the Gund Institute for the Environment, Dr. Pablo Bose, Dr. Teresa
Mares, Dr. Ernesto Mendez, Jake Jacobs, and the Agroecology Livelihoods
Collaborative.
3.6 APPENDIX A:
Table 3.4: full SEE toolkit pilot with responses
Demographic,(5!questions),
Ideal!
answer!
NFNA!
FC!
Where!is!your!farm!located?!
N/A!
Burlington,!
VT!
Verona,!
WI!
Approximately!how!many!acres!is!your!farm?!
N/A!
5!
50!
What!are!the!five!main!products!or!services!your!farm!produces?!
N/A!
Providing!
farmland!
access!
Providing!
farmland!
access!
How!many!people!are!paid!employees!of!your!farm!(annually)?!
N/A!
1!
5!
How!many!people!work!on!your!farm!unpaid!(e.g.!volunteer,!or!
access!their!own!farm!or!garden)?!
N/A!
~160!
55!
99
!
!
!
!
Ecological,
,
!
!
Healthy(soil(practices:!(7!questions)(
(
!
!
Do!you!covercrop!annually?!
Y!
y!
y!
Do!you!rotate!crop/animal!varieties!at!least!annually?!
Y!
y!
y!
Do!you!have!more!than!5!contiguous!acres!in!a!single!species!of!crop!
(i.e.!monocrop)?!
N!
n!
n!
Do!you!make!your!own!compost?!
Y!
n!
y!
Does!all!of!your!cultivated!land!have!a!winter!covercrop?!
Y!
y!
y!
Does!your!farm!use!hand!tools!when!possible!to!minimize!use!of!
power!equipment?!
Y!
y!
y!
Is!the!organic!matter!content!of!your!soils!increasing?!
Y!
n!
y!
!
!
!
!
Risk(mitigation:!(7!questions)(
(
!
!
Do!your!cultivated!fields!have!damaging!floods!once!every!five!years!
or!more?!
N!
y!
n!
Does!your!farm!have!perennials!as!part!of!its!managed!crops?!
Y!
y!
y!
If!your!farm!has!riparian!areas,!do!you!have!perennials!(wild!or!
managed)!as!buffers!in!the!riparian!zone?!
Y!
y!
y!
Do!you!have!a!flood!emergency!action!plan?!
Y!
y!
n!
Do!you!have!a!drought!emergency!action!plan?!
Y!
n!
y!
Do!you!use!water!efficient!practices!(such!as!mulch,!efficient!
irrigation!technology!and!timing?!
Y!
y!
y!
Does!your!farm!experience!water!shortages!lasting!multiple!days!
more!often!than!every!five!years?!
N!
n!
n!
!
!
!
!
Resource(Usage:!(11!questions)(
(
!
!
Does!your!farm!use!tractor(s)!every!day!of!farm!operation?!
N!
n!
y!
Do!you!produce!or!use!renewable!energy!for!your!farm!and/or!
offices?!
Y!
y!
y!
Have!any!of!your!buildings!had!any!type!of!energy!audit!to!reduce!
HVAC!and!other!energy!usage?!
Y!
y!
y!
Do!you!prohibit!use!of!biocides!on!your!farm!(in!accordance!with!
organic!standards)?!
Y!
y!
y!
Do!you!annually!use!mined!inputs!on!your!farm,!such!as!aragonite,!
rock!phosphate,!or!petroleum-based!fertilizers?!
N!
n!
y!
Do!you!make!your!own!inputs!such!as!wood!ash,!fermented!plant!
juices,!mycelial!inoculants,!mulch,!or!other!organically!allowed!pest!
and!disease!treatments?!
Y!
y!
y!
If!you!have!farm!animals,!do!you!grow!half!or!more!of!your!own!feed?!
Y!
n/a!
n/a!
If!you!have!farm!animals,!do!you!rotate!them!on!pasture!or!
silvapasture!when!there!is!adequate!grass?!
Y!
n/a!
n/a!
Are!you!able!to!use!"waste"!products!from!other!nearby!producers!
(50!miles!or!less)!such!as!animal!feed!or!compost?!
y!
n!
y!
100
Have!you!assessed!what!parts!of!your!farm!operation!are!most!GHG!
intensive?!(including!water,!field!work,!processing,!storage,!delivery,!
etc.)?!
Y!
n!
n!
Do!you!have!a!strategy!in!place!to!begin!reducing!the!climate!change!
footprint!of!your!farm!operation?!
Y!
n!
y!
!
!
!
!
Biodiversity:!(7!questions)(
(
!
!
Do!you!have!diverse!habitat!with!native!species!for!pollinators!and!
beneficial!insects!on!farm!property?!
Y!
y!
y!
Do!you!have!wildlife!habitat!buffers,!such!as!for!birds?!
Y!
y!
y!
Do!you!maintain!native!species!for!commerce!or!consumption?!
Y!
y!
y!
Do!you!maintain!native!species!for!ecological!resiliency!(i.e.!flood!
protection,!wind!abatement,!eco-niche!diversification,!drought!
reduction…)?!
Y!
y!
y!
Do!you!have!policy!against!planting!any!invasive!species?!
Y!
n!
y!
Do!you!have!a!program!to!remove!invasive!species!and!replace!them!
with!native!species?!!(This!can!be!in!collaboration!with!conservation!
organizations)!
Y!
y!
y!
Do!you!grow!open!pollinated!or!heritage!crops,!culturally!traditional!
varieties,!or!animal!breeds?!
Y!
y!
y!
!
!
!
!
Social,(15!questions),
,
!
!
If!your!farm!has!paid!labor,!do!they!receive!a!living!wage?!
Y!
y!
y!
Do!farmers!and!staff!have!safe,!affordable,!and!adequate!housing?!
Y!
y!
y!
Does!your!farm!have!events/celebrations!for!your!community!of!
farmers/farm!workers,!and!their!families!at!least!annually?!
Y!
y!
y!
Does!your!farm!have!events/celebrations!for!the!local!community!in!
which!the!farm!is!situated?!
Y!
n!
y!
Do!you!have!programs!in!practice!to!foster!demographic!and!cultural!
diversity!at!your!farm!at!least!annually?!
Y!
y!
y!
Does!your!farm!have!systems!for!farmers!and!other!farm!workers!to!
participate!in!administrative!and!management!decisions?!
Y!
y!
y!
If!your!farm!has!paid!labor,!do!they!receive!health!insurance!or!other!
access!to!health!care?!
Y!
y!
y!
Does!your!farm!have!an!emergency!communication!system!in!place!
(e.g.!phone!on!site,!emergency!contact!"phone!tree"!for!individuals!
and!first!responders)?!
Y!
y!
y!
Does!your!farm!have!health!emergency!supplies!easily!available!
(such!as!first!aid!kit,!AED,!epi-pen,!heat/cold!exposure!treatments,!
potable!water)?!
Y!
y!
y!
Does!your!farm!recognize!local!Indigenous!peoples’!territory!and!
historical!land!rights!in!any!internal-farm!or!public!
acknowledgements?!
Y!
y!
y!
Does!your!farm!engage!with!or!invite!local!Indigenous!peoples!to!
participate!with!or!benefit!from!your!farm?!
Y!
n!
y!
Does!a!majority!of!your!farm!product!feed!your!farmers/farm!
workers!and!related!families?!
Y!
y!
n!
101
Does!the!farm!have!a!program!to!provide!subsidized!or!free!produce!
for!low!income!or!otherwise!less!privileged!community!members?!
Y!
y!
y!
Does!a!majority!of!your!farm!product!feed!your!local!community!
(w/in!100!miles)?!
Y!
y!
y!
Does!your!farm!have!informational!systems!to!engage!farmers!and!
staff!with!major!management!decisions!and!strategies,!and!well!as!
financial!planning!and!distribution!of!resources?!
Y!
y!
y!
!
!
!
!
Economic,(14!questions),
,
!
!
Based!on!all!farm!revenue!minus!all!quantifiable!expenses,!is!the!
farm!net!positive?!
Y!
y!
y!
Does!the!farm!expect!a!positive!financial!outlook!over!the!next!5!
years?!
Y!
n!
y!
Does!the!farm!have!unquantified!losses,!such!as!major!soil!erosion,!
high!farmer/worker!attrition,!uncontrolled!invasive!species!spread?!
N!
n!
n!
Does!the!farm!try!to!rely!on!purchasing!products!and!services!from!
local!businesses?!
Y!
y!
y!
Does!the!farm!divert!any!financial!surplus!to!support!farm!workers!
with!new!or!updated!infrastructure!or!farmer!wellness!or!health!
programs?!
Y!
y!
y!
Is!the!farm's!land!ownership!or!access!secure?!
Y!
n!
y!
Can!the!farm/farmers!access!additional!nearby!land!of!sufficient!
quality!to!expand!or!move!if!needed?!
Y!
n!
y!
Does!the!farm!receive!any!payments!for!ecosystem!services!(PES)?!
Y!
n!
y!
Does!the!farm!participate!in!other!conservation!programs?!
Y!
y!
y!
Does!the!farm!access!any!agriculture!extension!services!(consultation!
of!any!type,!soil!or!veterinary!analysis,!etc.)?!
Y!
y!
y!
Do!the!farmers!or!farm!staff!experience!high!levels!of!stress!related!
to!financial!instability!on!a!monthly!basis?!
N!
y!
n!
Does!the!farm!subscribe!to!any!types!of!crop!or!disaster!(flood,!
drought,!etc.)!farm!insurance!programs?!
Y!
n!
n!
Does!the!farm!have!more!than!two!streams!of!revenue!or!funding?!
Y!
n!
n!
Does!more!than!30%!of!the!farm’s!revenue!or!funding!go!to!servicing!
debt!annually?!
N!
n!
n!
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CHAPTER 4: QUALITY OF LIFE (QOL) IMPACTS, CHALLENGES, AND
POSSIBILITIES FOR IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE FARMERS IN
COMMUNITY FARM PROGRAMS IN THE NORTHERN UNITED STATES
Josiah Taylor, Alisha Laramee, Pablo Bose, Teresa Mares, and Joshua Farley
Abstract
Farmers in the United States experience economic and emotional precarity at rates
greater than the population in general, while at the same time they are providing nutrition
and other essential services to their communities and regions. Farmers from immigrant
and refugee backgrounds face even greater challenges than the average farmer in the
United States, in part because of xenophobia, racism, and reduced access to social and
economic assistance. This research interviews 23 farmers from a variety of ethnic
backgrounds at two immigrant and refugee focused community farm programs in the
northern states of Vermont and Wisconsin. Drawing on data from semi-structured
interviews, we use deductive coding and grounded theory to analyze the interviewees’
responses to determine impacts of these immigrant and refugee focused farm programs.
This research finds that these programs successfully create social, ecological, and
economic environments that bolster participants’ quality of life (QOL). Additionally,
farmer-interviewees share adverse experiences they have had involving racism, lack of
access to resources, and other challenges to farming and QOL more generally.
Furthermore, the data reveals numerous suggestions on how to better support these
farmer populations, increasing their QOL and personal resiliency.
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4.1 Introduction
This research investigates quality of life (QOL) factors for immigrant and refugee
farmers who participate in immigrant-focused community farms and farm incubators.
Through this inquiry we produce actionable information to bolster QOL for farmers and
support NGO’s that operate community farms and farm incubators that support refugees
and immigrants. Furthermore, we intend the results of this research to inform NGO’s and
governmental agencies that support refugees and immigrants as well guide agricultural
policy to support the next generation of farmers. Using participatory action research
approaches, this research provides actionable information for community research
partners, other NGOs, and policy makers. More specifically, through a multi-sited case
study of two distinct immigrant and refugee focused farming and food programs
representing two different regions in the Northern United States we investigate and
evaluate motivations for farming and quality of life experiences of farmers in terms of
social and individual wellness.
To conduct this research we partnered with two distinct small community farm
and farm incubator programs, the Linda and Gene Farley Center for Peace, Justice &
Sustainability (the Farley Center, for short, or the FC) in Verona Wisconsin and New
Farms for New Americans (NFNA) in Burlington, Vermont. Both focus on supporting
farming opportunities for immigrants, refugees, and others with difficulty in accessing
farmland and supportive resources. The FC owns its land and provides farming
opportunities and land access to about 15 small scale commercial and homestead farmers,
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home garden space for Hmong refugees, a green cemetery, and extensive community
outreach programming about food, environment, and justice for urban and peri-urban
populations. NFNA is a program within the organization Association for Africans Living
in Vermont (AALV, now serving New Americans broadly). AALV has land use
agreements with a local park system providing about 80 families with homestead-sized
plots for farming as well as opportunities to grow farm businesses when desired. NFNA
and AALV also offer other social supports for New Americans, such as translation
services, and extensive assistance adapting to life and work in a new community. We
chose to focus on these populations because of continued systemic injustices experienced
by people in these demographics, as well as the large and increasing numbers of aspiring
farmers from immigrant and refugee backgrounds. 56% of hired farm workers generally
(and 73% of hired crop workers specifically) were born outside of the U.S., and only 53%
of them are U.S. citizens (ERS, 2019). Improving supports for all farmers, but especially
those who have been underrepresented and marginalized, is crucial to cultivating more
just food systems as well as increasing the resiliency and sustainability of farming and
food provisioning for all.
Farmers and food production play crucial parts in the health of society,
ecosystems, and economies. And yet, within the contexts of neoliberalism, including the
increasing consolidation of production and ownership of our food systems (Howard,
2021), farming is increasingly difficult for small and medium-scale farmers. A new
generation of farmers does not appear to be replacing the older generation. Smallholder
farms are being consolidated and/or being made economically unviable. The average age
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of farmers in the U.S. was 59.4 in the 2017 census, an increase from 50.3 in 1978, and
62% of farmer-owners are 55 or older (NASS, 2019), indicating the need to support the
next generation of farmers. At the same time, many small cities and towns in the U.S.
which have faced decades of population and economic collapse have been experiencing
population growth due in part to influx of immigrants and refugees (Bose, 2017; Parker,
Horowitz, Brown, et al., 2018). Many refugees and other immigrants are filling jobs in
agricultural and food economies in their roles as farmers, producing food and livelihoods
for their families, businesses, and communities (Parker, Horowitz, Brown, et al., 2018;
Wang, 2019).
4.2 Background
Local control of smallholder farms is being appropriated through ownership and
profiting by increasingly consolidated corporations that control food systems nationally
and globally (Holt-Gimenez & Altieri, 2013). In the U.S. between 2001 and 2016 eleven
million acres of farm and ranch land were lost to development, about 2,000 acres a day
(Freedgood, Hunter, Dempsey, & Sorenson, 2020). This trend in loss of farmland has
particularly affected socially disadvantaged farmers, which the USDA describes as “those
belonging to groups that have been subject to racial or ethnic prejudice,” which includes
many immigrants and refugees, depending on their race or ethnicity (ERS, 2022b). The
most severely affected by lack of food security, access, and sovereignty tend to be those
whose livelihoods are related to agriculture (Holt-Gimenez & Altieri, 2013).
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Food insecurity continues to be a major injustice globally, and increasingly so in
Vermont, where due to lack of affordable housing, low wages, high unemployment, a
decrease in the number of local, affordable grocery stores, and lack of public
transportation. Hunger is almost never the result of too little food production, but rather
of a lack of entitlements, such as income (Sen, 1981). Food insecurity has increased
substantially for Vermont residents due to the COVID-19 pandemic. By one measure,
just prior to the pandemic ten percent of Vermont residents were food insecure,
increasing to forty percent in 2022 (Hunger Free Vermont, 2023), and another study
found that by the end of 2020 twenty-nine percent of Vermont residents were food
insecure (Niles, Belarmino & Bertmann, 2020). Recent immigrants to the United States
also experience significant food insecurity and appear to have low food agency
(Greenwald & Zajfen, 2015). Food insecurity studies among resettled refugee
populations in the US and other high-income resettlement countries have found food
insecurity rates as high as 85 percent (Wang, Min, Harris, Khuri, & Anderson, 2016).
Stokes (2017) suggests that the indexes used to measure food insecurity are not validated
on immigrant and refugee populations, likely underrepresent actual food insecurity, and
only count extreme lack of quantity of food (i.e., calories), without regard to quality of
food. If urban and peri-urban agriculture projects were to focus primarily on engaging
with and producing food for lower-income and vulnerable populations (rather than
supplying high-income consumers, as Burnett (2014) and Crowe et al. (2016) find is
frequently the case) major reductions to food insecurity and its harmful side-effects could
be made in ways that are desired by local communities. In quantitatively analyzing the
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potential for urban agriculture to eliminate food insecurity for urban poor globally,
Badami & Ramankutty show that in wealthier countries such as the United States where
there are much smaller urban poor populations the area required is relatively small, and
therefore quite feasible (2015). The possibility for urban and peri-urban agriculture to
alleviate food insecurity and improve QOL for immigrant and refugee populations is
additional justification for the research proposed further below. However, food security
and access for immigrants cannot be accurately understood without considering larger
socio-cultural and economic contexts.
Food security, food justice, and food sovereignty are contested terms, and in
different ways the two research partner organizations have goals that address these
challenges. Food sovereignty is arguably the most radical of these three concepts and
involves primary concerns of not just focusing on access and quality of food available,
and to whom, but also sees these inequities generated through neoliberalism, capitalism,
and larger political and economic systemic problems and inequalities (Alkon & Mares,
2012; Holt-Giménez & Altieri, 2013). All three concepts of food security, justice, and
sovereignty affect overall quality of life (QOL).
It is important to note some of the heterogeneity and diversity among these and
related groups. Refugees are those who have fled their country and are forced to seek
asylum in another country because it is unsafe in their country of origin, due to contexts
of war, violence, or past persecution or a fear of future persecution based upon race,
religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group (U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services, 2020). Refugees are unable to return home unless
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the violent and unstable situation in their country of origin changes. Some asylum
seekers are granted official refugee status, which is determined by a government or group
such as the UN Refugee Agency. An immigrant is someone who consciously decides to
move to a foreign country with the intent to settle there and can return to their country of
origin at their own discretion. Migrants (which this research does not specifically
involve), on the other hand, are people moving from place to place, across national
borders or within a country, often for economic opportunities such as seasonal
employment, and similar to immigrants, were not forced to leave their home country.
Refugees and immigrants can become citizens, though the procedures for doing so are
different between the two groups (IRC, 2022). Migrants and immigrants may also have
unsafe and precarious situations in their home country – though they have not been
officially recognized as are refugees. The lived experiences of both immigrants and
refugees are diverse and cannot be seen as a single group. Experiences in their country of
origin, as well as their new home country can be quite different depending on factors
such as race or ethnicity, age, gender, wealth status, and the situation(s) that drove them
to settle in their new home country. Additional factors in the lived experiences of
immigrants and refugees are where and in what country they resettle, how long they have
lived in their resettled country, and whether or not they become citizens in their resettled
country – without which they have fewer rights and opportunities and may face more
discrimination.
While there are experiences that may be common to immigrants in the U.S., there
are differences across ethnicities and regions. For many immigrants and refugees in the
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United States, isolation, low food security, disconnection from a familiar landscape,
trauma, unequal access to health care, and other challenges to quality of life may
contribute to other negative effects such as anxiety, depression, and distress (Mazumdar
& Mazumdar, 2012; Cochran, et al., 2013; Hartwig & Mason, 2016; Wertlieb & Smith
2018; Brandenberger, et al., 2019; Ofosu, et al., 2022). These challenges are also
represented in data from our farmer interviews (see “Results,” below). The 2013 CDC
report (Cochran et al.) suggested that a variety of refugee community social support
mechanisms could help refugees improve quality of life and promote improved individual
and community well-being for refugees. Community research partner New Farms for
New Americans (NFNA) has also identified QOL as an important challenge for the
populations they serve, and that engagement in farm programs may help engage
participants in ways that promote well-being. Of particular interest for NFNA is
understanding differences of quality of life between summer and winter, the latter season
in northern climates which demands unique challenges to quality of life and many of our
interviewees share the QOL challenges of wintertime.
Since 1980, the U.S. has resettled over 3.1 million refugees; in 2022, the U.S.
accepted nearly 25,465 refugees (U.S. Dept. of State Refugee Processing Center, 2023).
Using data from the U.S. Department of State, Burge and Dharod (2018) find that
refugees resettled in the U.S. commonly experience issues of declining health, limited
access to essential services, and food. While QOL studies on immigrant and refugee farm
programs in the U.S. are very limited, a review of international literature found research
on this topic from Australia, which may be a different situation but can still inform this
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research. Based on a small qualitative study done in an Australian university-based
community garden, researchers interviewed six refugee gardeners revealing myriad
benefits to participants, though the sample size is limited (Cummings, Minniss, Harris,
Neil, & Somerset, 2008). Also in the context of refugees in Australia, some of the same
authors in the previously mentioned article, Harris, Minniss, and Somerset, found that
community food gardens for migrants appear to increase social connectedness
corresponding with improved individual quality of life (Harris, Minniss, and Somerset
2014). There does not yet exist similar data on quality of life benefits for immigrants or
refugees participating in community gardens in the United States with the exception of
Jean’s 2015 report, which focused on placemaking for resettled refugees in Utah (Jean
2015). Searching the literature beyond the specific terminology of “quality of life” more
broadly to look for studies focusing on inquiry into the wellbeing of refugees or
immigrants combined with involvement in gardens, we find several peer-reviewed
papers, including one based in Minnesota concerning community gardens (Hartwig &
Mason, 2016), and in California regarding home gardens (Mazumdar & Mazumdar,
2012). The study in Minnesota reveals that respondents identified their community
gardens as “a healing space for their depression or anxiety… [and] expressed receiving
physical and emotional benefits from gardening, including a sense of identity with their
former selves. Gardens may serve as a meaningful health promotion intervention for
refugees and immigrants adjusting to the complexity of their new lives in the U.S. and
coping with past traumas” (Hartwig & Mason, 2016). Mazumdar & Mazumdar find that
home gardens create important spaces for immigrants to root into a new landscape, find
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cultural and religious meaning, and socialize the next generation (2012). A systematic
literature review looking for linkages between cultural ecosystem services, landscapes,
and refugee wellbeing similarly finds little overlap in academic literature between
refugee experiences, wellbeing, and community garden programs, though the authors
show that refugees broadly experience wellbeing benefits from interactions with
ecosystems (Gladkikh, Gould, & Coleman, 2019). No published studies appear to
specifically study quality of life benefits for refugee or immigrant community garden
programs in Northern states (such as Vermont and Wisconsin) where there is a unique set
of challenges, including a shorter growing season with a prolonged winter. Both Jean
and Harris et al. express that while refugee garden and farm programs are proliferating,
they remain understudied, particularly in terms of qualitative research that studies quality
of life impacts and other well-being benefits (Jean 2015; Harris, Minniss, and Somerset
2014).
Immigrants, labor, and community development
The future vitality of smallholder agroecological farms in the U.S. depend on
understanding and improving QOL for farmers. At the same time, an increasing number
of farmers in the U.S. are immigrants. Parker, Horowitz, Brown, et al. (2018) reported in
a Pew Research Center report that in the U.S. immigrants were responsible for a
significant and rising share of overall population growth, in which immigrants accounted
for 37% of growth in rural counties, 38% in urban counties, and 26% in suburban
counties. Parker, Horowitz, Brown, et al. (2018) as well as Wang (2019) suggest that
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immigrants are filling many jobs in agriculture and food production that have been
vacated by U.S. born residents, even though immigrants are often exploited and abused in
the workplace and have “little power to improve their situation due to the lack of
farmworker labor rights. Anti-immigrant sentiments also pervade many rural
communities, often giving rise to a misconceived fear of foreigners (Wang 2019).” In
spite of the challenges immigrants face in the United States, both aforementioned reports
suggest the significant role immigrants play in revitalizing rural and urban areas, and that
we need better information on what community driven measures support immigrants
particularly in their communities and in filling gaps in agricultural production. Studying
QOL in these specific communities will also help to identify and recognize practices of
resilience on the behalf of immigrant and refugee farmers, to be shared among broader
efforts in Agroecology and immigrant community food systems.
Community based research approaches, PAR, and preflection
This research applies Participatory Action Research (PAR) approaches, to engage
with local immigrant and refugee gardeners (“New Americans”) and related
organizations, and be driven by their needs and preferences through community
participation and consultation (see Mendez et al., 2017). Wilson & Young identify that
too little peer-reviewed research in North America uses community-based research
methods including partnerships and consultations with food programming organizations.
They also argue strongly for future research to be done with communities, driven by
community needs and preferences, to be better informed and work toward building long-
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term research capacity and practical applications (2008). PAR methods can be powerful
ways to build understanding of a problem through in-depth, long-term involvement with
a community. While PAR methods can contribute to knowing intimate details of a
situation, a downside is that it can be very time consuming (and therefore also
expensive), and may get derailed by changing community concerns or engagement. PAR
methods require extensive community buy-in, which can be challenging, but also produce
well-informed and mutually beneficial research. To this end, the research questions and
methods have been reframed in multiple iterations by active participation with both
communities concerned over four years of engagement. Mendez et al. (2017) describe
preflection as a “period of preparation and planning that is critical for building trust,
establishing expectations, and refining the research questions.” As you will see below,
the period of preflection has deeply influenced the direction of this research and
facilitated in building strong working relationships with both research partners.
During the preflection period with NFNA I volunteered with farm field
management, co-founded a pollinator garden, co-led classes on sustainable farming and
safety, created a digital research repository and annotated bibliography to organize past
years of documents and research, helped with fundraising, and co-wrote a grant that won
funding for a shade structure for the farmers. In volunteering with the Farley Center I
assisted with removal of invasive species, farm maintenance and cleaning, assisting
farmers in their fields, and helped in the natural burial cemetery. With this prolonged
period of preflective volunteering with both NFNA and the Farley Center, we arrived at
114
the point where we are well aligned for research on the topics and questions as described
in this article.
The research questions are designed based on perceived needs from reviewing
both academic and grey literature as well as ongoing discussions and volunteer work with
New Farms for New Americans, the Farley Center, the Agroecology Livelihoods
Collaboration. To make this research more actionable and attainable within the limited
timeframe and budget of a doctoral student researcher, it aims to be inspired by PAR,
though unlike full PAR methods, does not ask for full community approval at every
stage, but rather relies on the directors of the programs (Alisha Laramee and Shedd
Farley) to represent and respond to the overall needs of the programs and their
participants. Our research ultimately makes the results available in ways that are
meaningful and useful to community partners and beyond. In addition to the academic
analysis and write-up of the results from this research, I will also present the results
directly to the partner organizations in accessible layperson language, highlighting both
the strengths of their programs from the perspective of the farmers as well as the
suggestions the farmers make for improving their experiences in the farm programs and
their QOL generally. Rooted in the strong relationships we have formed through several
years of working together, I look forward to continuing research and program
development with both the Farley Center and New Farms for New Americans. This
research will be valuable to policy makers and funding organizations to influence how
community farming projects and immigrant-focused farm projects can be better
115
recognized for the contributions they make to food sovereignty, ecosystem services, and
improved quality of life.
4.3 Methods
Using semi-structured interviews contributes to deep qualitative understanding of
the experiences and knowledge of farmers and the programs in which they participate.
Utilizing existing NFNA farmer intake surveys and FC internal reports from past years
has guided the creation of the interview survey instrument to build on past research,
eliminate redundancies, and reduce unnecessary burdens on the organizations and their
farmers. Building on the meta-analysis of internal documents, the interview instrument
was also inspired by the World Health Organization’s Quality of Life survey
(WHOQOL), which originally contained 100 questions in areas of 1. Overall quality of
life and general health; 2. Physical Health; 3. Psychological Health; 4. Level of
Independence; 5. Social Relations; 6. Environment; and 7. Spirituality/religion/personal
beliefs (SEAQOL, n.d.). The WHOQOL was developed, tested, and validated in 15
research centers globally, specifically to produce comparability across cultures and is
available in over 20 different languages (Harper, 1996; Feder et al., 2015) and is being
actively translated into other languages through on-going research and application. The
WHOQOL Group defines quality of life as “individuals’ perceptions of their position in
life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to
their goals, expectations, standards, and concerns (Harper, 1996).” To reduce the time
burden of the survey, WHO researchers abbreviated the WHOQOL to a 26-question
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instrument, the WHOQOL-BREF. Doing interviews based on the WHOQOL-BREF
instrument helps to build on other QOL research and increase the potential for future
replication of this research for longitudinal analysis and comparability. Recent research
with Somali refugees in the U.S. has found that the WHOQOL-BREF provides a valid
measure with cross-cultural comparability and is well suited to surveying refugees in the
U.S (Redko, et al., 2015).
Table 4.1. Interview Questions
Why do you farm?
1. Do you call what you do farming or gardening?
2. What do you like about farming with NFNA/FC? What keeps you participating with
NFNA/FC?
3. Did you farm in your home country before coming to the United States? If yes, then were
you a full time farmer in your home country?
4. What would a full year of farming look like? Could you describe each season?
5. Would you like to farm year round here?
What supports would make it easier or more enjoyable to farm?
6. What do you need to make farming more enjoyable?
7. What challenges are there to farming here in Burlington VT/Verona WI?
8. Would you like to be able to live and farm in the same location? Would you prefer to live
in a city or a village? Do you think it is a good idea to get land as part of resettlement?
9. Do you want to keep farming? Do you want your children to farm?
10. What do you see as the benefits of being on the farm vs being in city?
What personal and social benefits do you experience from farming?
11. How does farming make you feel? What do you think about farming?
12. What benefits do you get emotionally or spiritually from farming and gardening?
13. How do you feel in the winter when you are not able to farm? Do you miss being at the
farm in the winter?
14. How do you look forward being with friends or family while you farm? Have you made
new friends at the NFNA farm?
15. How was farming important to feeling at home when you immigrated to the United States?
Extra questions if there is time:
16. Could you describe your ideal farm?
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17. When did you start with NFNA/FC, and how has farming with NFNA/FC changed your
resettled life?
Question added for Farley Center:
18. Have you experienced racism in the region in which you live and farm? If so, how?
Interpreters were needed to communicate with some participants, as well as to test
the survey, as this research worked with two sites that include farmers from diverse
cultural backgrounds and speak a variety of languages, including Nepali, Hmong,
Swahili, Spanish, French, and English. We conducted the interviews with NFNA farmers
in their homes or at the NFNA office, while all the FC interviews were done at the center
in the fields or in the FC office. We paid the interpreters and the farmers for their time
spent doing and setting up interviews. All interviews were confidential, and we made
efforts to protect the interviewees’ privacy by deidentifying all data and keeping data
secured from unauthorized access, as required by our UVM IRB for doing research with
human participants.
Table 4.2. Demographics of farmer-interviewees, breakdown by organization.
!
NFNA!
FC!
Female!
6!
3!
Male!
7!
6!
Non-Binary!
0!
1!
Self-identified!country!or!
ethnicity!of!origin:!
!
!
Nepal/Bhutan!
13!
!
Mexico!
!
3!
USA!
!
3!
Tibet!
!
1!
India!
!
1!
Russia!
!
1!
Hmong!
!
1!
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Once we completed the interviews and transcriptions, we used grounded theory,
deductive coding practices, and frequency analysis to determine what issues within the
interview topics emerge as most significant and representative of the study and the
farmers experiences (Saldaña, 2016; Freeman, 2017). We coded across interview
questions for the themes that are represented in tables 3-7, so that frequencies found for
each theme generally relate to multiple interview questions. We use this analysis to
develop overall themes and guide construction of the results and discussion sections.
4.4 Results
In the results section that follows, we present data gleaned from coding all
interviews from each site, as well as total counts summed from both sites together. We
tallied the frequency counts by number of interviews (n=19), rather than number of
farmers reporting (n=23) because a small number of the interviews had two farmers
within the same family who generally expressed the same experiences and shared at their
preference in responding to the questions, so in this way we weight the household rather
than the individual farmer. Table 3 shows the breakdown of different health benefits that
participants reported from being involved with their community farm. Table 4 details the
reasons why the farmers interviewed participate with their refugee and immigrant
focused community farm. Table 5 shows the analysis for the most frequent challenges to
quality of life that our farmer participants face in their lives as individuals and farmers.
Table 6 represents the most frequent suggestions from farmers for how their lives could
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be improved including modifications to their community farm programs and other
supports. Below we describe the results shown in each table. To complement and deepen
the prose descriptions of each table, we also include selected quotes from interviews with
the farmer participants pertaining to every field within the tables that are representative of
farmer responses. Quotations have been edited for clarity, and in cases where the farmer
spoke a language other than English during the interview, they have been translated or
interpreted into English.
The areas of health benefitted for farmers participating in the immigrant focused
community farm programs we studied are shown in table 3, in descending order from
most common to least. These themes relate especially to interview questions 11-15 (see
table 2), though draw on all interview question responses. While we divided health
benefits into seven different categories, there is significant overlap among the categories
because of the interactive nature of different types of human health. The only field of
health benefit all nineteen interviews shared they experience was improvement in
physical health, including from better nutrition from eating their own fresh food and
getting exercise while farming. An elderly male Bhutanese NFNA farmer states
positively, “I have all this leg, joint pain, and sickness, and in winter I am unable to walk
much. But in the summer farming season I feel a better.” A middle-aged female Hmong
FC farmer shares “truly, I don’t eat processed food. I cook my meals, on a daily basis. So
I don’t have any processed food. So I try to eat fresh, not healthy, but fresh [from my
garden].” Multiple farmers discussed how farming improves their physical health by
helping their sleep: an elderly male Russian FC farmer says, “I sleep better too because in
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my experience, I feel like if I stay home all day, I feel like everything’s tightening up. I
won’t sleep, I won’t fall asleep… I’m one of those people who’s a light sleeper, I lay
there for 3 hours…. I come here, I do what I need to and I go home happy and I go to
sleep happy.” Movingly, an elderly male and female Bhutanese couple from NFNA
jointly shares the powerful health benefits of farming, “if there is no NFNA down there,
we have to stay home, and then we have to stay cooped up and heart failure will happen.”
Just below physical health benefits, farmers report in all but one interview that they
receive psychological or emotional support and social benefits such as seeing friends and
making new ones. Speaking to the emotional and psychological benefits of farming at
their community farm, a young adult White American-born male FC farmer says that
“farming makes me feel like alive, rejuvenating me and really got me back to feeling my
sense of purpose here.” Other farmers speak of similar benefits, a middle-aged Bhutanese
male NFNA farmer says, “gardening makes people more healthy, more powerful, less
aggressive, and more peaceful…. I feel relaxed, and active… staying home I’m thinking
too much and become sick, and when I go there to farm I feel fresh, I forget all of the
stress and sickness …from farming I feel fresh and relaxed.” Many farmers also share in-
depth about the social benefits they get from participating in their community farms, a
middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer exclaims, “the summer comes, I see people
walking around and gardening (laughs) and I feel happy! And in gardening we’ve met a
lot of people, and then we introduce, and we get to know each other.” And a young adult
non-binary mixed-race American-born FC farmer says, “everyone’s in one place, so I can
see everyone, I can talk to everyone… so many amazing farmers here and I can learn
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from them. And it’s like a community. So I really like that. Cuz I think farming, unless
you’re part of like a collective or something, it’s very isolating.”
Table 4.3. Number of respondents/total respondents confirming health benefits from
farming with an immigrant or refugee focused community farm by area of health
benefitted, in descending order of frequency, split by organization.
# of NFNA
interviews
reporting/n=10
# of FC
interviews
reporting/n=9
total
count/n=19
Physical (nutrition or exercise)
10
9
19
Psychological/emotional
9
9
18
Social: see friends, make new ones
10
8
18
Family engagement on farm
10
7
17
Connection to nature
8
9
17
Creates sense of home or belonging
7
9
16
Spiritual wellbeing
5
8
13
All the interviews with NFNA farmers reveal appreciation for the farm being a
place that supports family engagement, while 7 of 9 FC interviews report this, with a total
count of 17 of 19 interviews. A middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer says, “so I
share with my family members, they enjoy real vegetables, the fresh vegetables that we
grow in our own field. And the other thing is I enjoy more when I am able to just give it
to my friends and neighbors… I have a couple of neighbors - I just call them: ‘I have
vegetables, come and take it.’ And once the parents are enjoying with me it’s a lot of
happiness that the garden brings into our life.” A middle-aged male Mexican FC farmer
shares, “sometimes when I need a lot of help my sister will close the restaurant and
everyone will come and help me on the farm… everyone comes to help me and spend
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time here, and we sell together too.” A young adult non-binary mixed race American-
born FC farmer who doesn’t have family nearby but thinks of the next generation and
social justice when asked about family shares, “I think it’s really important, especially for
kids of color to be connected to land, because it’s been intentional that people of color
have been cut off from land.”
Also 17 of 19 interviews report finding benefit of connecting with nature while at
their farms, with all those from the FC and all but two at NFNA experiencing this. A
middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer shares his deep nature connection while
farming: “… I feel like being out here, all I hear is the bee buzzing, and the birds, see the
deer running, and feel the wind blowing on me… I hear things clearly. And so that’s
more special to me and emotional just to feel everything around me.” Another A middle-
aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer says “it’s very stabilizing to be outside working,
connected to seasons, connected to growth and green things and soil.” All FC interviews
share about benefits of their involvement in the community farm helping to create a sense
of home or belonging while 7 of 10 NFNA interviews share this quality, for a total count
of 16 of 19 in this category. “I start farming, and I’m able to see other family members
and friends, and the community… and I felt ok, this is the place now, that’s how I feel.
Yes, definitely, I feel a sense of home,” expresses a middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA
farmer. Another elderly male Russian FC farmer articulates, “Yeah, farming here helps
me to feel at home. Because I think if I didn’t have it, I would return to [my home
country].” 5 of 10 NFNA farmers report finding spiritual benefit in their experiences with
their community farm while 8 of 9 interviews at the FC share this, for a total count of 13
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of 19 interviews. A middle-aged female Tibetan FC farmer shares, “I feel more
connected to like both life and death, especially being here too, with the green burial area
[part of the farm]. I’m constantly aware of that, new growth and also death at the same
time… one often feeds the other. Especially this year [in the covid pandemic] with so
much mass death, you know? So there’s that, for me, that’s kind of spiritual. Like how,
when our bodies are no longer animated by whatever, they return to the earth, and then
something else comes up. So I definitely feel spiritually connected in that sense.” An
elderly male Bhutanese NFNA farmer shares that “spiritually, when we plant the corn,
and when we grow and eat the food, we first we offer to the god, and only then do we
eat.” Overall the results from analyzing experiences from farmers interviewed shows
extensive agreement about receiving benefits from across domains related to health,
especially in terms of physical, emotional/psychological, and social health fields.
We asked why farmers participate in their immigrant focused community farm
and what they like about it (question 2, see table 2), though the results shown in table 4
draw on responses from all interview questions. The top reasons farmers give for this
question was access to land and that it connects them to past or ancestral ways of life (16
of 19 interviews). All FC farmers express land access as an important reason for them to
participate with their program, while 7 of 10 at NFNA report this. A greater proportion of
NFNA farmers (9 of 10) report the importance of a connection to a past or ancestral way
of life, while 7 of 9 FC farmer interviews report this factor as important to them.
Regarding access to land, a young adult White American-born FC farmer says “the
Farley center is just an amazing, wonderful resource. It’s there and I have this space.
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Like, I can do whatever I want, you know, and it’s gonna be good.” Talking about
farming connecting them to their ancestors, a middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer
shares that “…when I go down there with my parents they have a lot of ideas, this is the
right time to do this, this is the right time to do that, because we have these [past]
experiences, the same seeds we used to grow back in the country, we still have the same
seeds that my mom and dad used to grow in the field – and we are using the same ones.
When you see them growing here, when we have the seeds, when we pick them up, they
have the same color, they have the same size, and they look totally the same, and that
brings more emotional [connection]. That’s why we enjoy working here.” A middle-aged
female Hmong FC farmer says, “I feel happy to grow the vegetables that I used to grow
back in my home country, I feel happy when I get the land and grow the vegetables that I
like.” All 9 interviews at the FC said that access to equipment or facilities are a valuable
reason for them to participate in their community farm program, while 5 of 10 NFNA
interviews reveal this as an important factor, for a total count of 14 of 19 interviews
confirming this reasoning. A middle-aged Mexican male FC farmer says, “you cannot
invest on your own to have what they have already here. So if I want to move on to my
farm, it’ll probably take me another 5 to 10 years to build what is already here. So I will
probably have to have a lot of debt and to get tractor, to get irrigation to get a walk-in
fridge, a packing shed… that can really keep me here… farming is not able to pay for all
of that.” A middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer discusses the importance of on-
farm resources, “here they run the tractor and they make it easy. That’s easy, they do a
good job with that. Instead of oxen a tractor runs here, I enjoy that.” 8 of 10 NFNA
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interviews show the importance of affirmation of their ethnic identity through farming
with an immigrant or refugee focused farm program, while only 5 of 9 interviews at the
FC represent this for a total count of 13/19. “All the Nepali community goes there to help
each other… that’s the important thing,” shares a middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA
farmer. A middle-aged female Hmong FC farmer details the cultural significance
attached to their farming, “yeah, I need to do it because there are certain vegetables that
you can’t buy here unless you grow, like the long season cucumber, which [ripens]
towards the end of the season, when you cut inside it's all yellow, and has a really lemony
taste, we miss that so we must grow in the season… we cannot afford to buy all the hot
pepper that we consume… then there’s lemongrass, where it doesn’t taste the same unless
you grow it. So the one that you just go and buy at the store doesn’t have that flavor, you
lost the flavor when you bring it to Wisconsin. So we grow our lemongrass, and then we
harvest and wrap in certain way and we freeze it and then you still have that smell that
taste the whole season. So that’s why we feel like we must grow somewhere. Like if you
ask any Hmong family anywhere, Age 40 or higher, they must have a garden somewhere
where they either grow lemongrass, pepper, Hmong cucumber… there’s certain things
that we must grow otherwise we can’t buy.” Also with a total frequency of 13/19
interviews, farmer to farmer co-learning and assistance is more important to FC farmers
(7 of 9 interviews), though 6 of 10 NFNA interviews express this as an important factor
for engaging with their program. “This relationship is very important, yes, teacher and
student, friends… I went to the farmers, and heard that many of the other people find this
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farmer to farmer learning and support very important,” states A middle-aged male
Bhutanese NFNA farmer.
Table 4.4. Reported reasons why interviewees participate with their refugee/immigrant
focused community farm, in descending order of frequency. Breakdown by organization.
# of NFNA
interviews
reporting/n=10
# of FC
interviews
reporting/n=9
total
count/n=19
Access to land
7
9
16
Connection to past or ancestral way of life
9
7
16
Access to farm equipment/facilities
5
9
14
Affirmation of ethnic identity
8
5
13
Farmer to farmer co-learning & assistance
6
7
13
Training & education
3
7
10
Being part of a multi-ethnic community
3
6
9
Affordability
0
5
5
7 of 9 interviews at the FC said general training and education through their program is a
motivating factor to participate, while only 3 of 10 farmers at NFNA find training and
education a motivator for being part of their program, for a total frequency of 10 of 19. A
middle-aged male Indian FC farmer appreciates, “Farley Center helped us in that full
cycle. That means you grow it, you know how to store it, clean it and then market it and
then see the results of it, you know, success or failure or whatever… we had this dream
and these guys help us realize a dream.” A middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer
recognizes farm training and education, “they are helping us and supporting us in many
ways, like teaching us which plants goes in which seasons, what kind of soil fits with
which kind of crops, testing and maintaining, in what temperatures different plants go in
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the ground, that kind of stuff they are teaching.” Numerous farmers also bring up being
part of a multi-ethnic farming community as important, though a majority of interviews at
the FC express this (6 of 9) while only 3 of 10 at NFNA share this as valuable. A young
adult male White American-born FC farmer comments, “I just liked the idea of like, you
know, there were like 13 farmers from all parts of… different parts of the world” A
young adult non-binary mixed-race American born FC farmer exclaims, “the more
diversity we have in our lives, I feel like the richer we become, you know, and so getting
to see immigrant farmers who are bringing their crops and their cultivation methods,
production practices, that maybe they’ve been doing for their whole life, or their parents
taught them is an inspiration.” On affordability, a slight majority at the FC say this is
factor for farming with their program, while no farmers at NFNA share this, for a total
count of 5 of 19 interviews. A middle-aged male Indian FC farmer says, “It’s kind of
already set up here, we’ve got the connection, the land, and it’s affordable.” Overall, the
most frequent reason farmers participate in these immigrant and refugee focused
community farm programs are access to land, connection to a past or ancestral way of
life, and access to farm equipment or facilities.
We heard from the program directors at our partner organizations (NFNA and the
FC) that it is valuable to them to understand what are the biggest challenges to QOL for
their farmers. Questions 7 and 13 attempt to focus directly on this inquiry. Because of
Covid related delays to our research, we did the NFNA interviews first and then had a
one-year gap before we conducted the FC interviews. In the interim, we realized that it
would be valuable to ask farmers directly if they experience racism and how that affects
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them, so question 18 (FC only) also relates to challenges to QOL for farmers. Like with
the other results from coding the interviews, the results in table 5 also draw on responses
from all interview questions. The most common challenge for farmers overall is in
experiencing wintertime isolation from farming and their communities – all 10 interviews
with NFNA farmers reveal this, while 5 of 9 at the FC report this challenge for a total
count of 15 of 19. We have included multiple quotes here because of the powerful
emphasis many farmers put on this topic, this one from an elderly male Bhutanese NFNA
farmer: “so in winter I am unable to go out, I have that kind of joint pain, sickness, so I
stay home, and I don’t think about anything all winter. So I don’t walk at all, and I don’t
see anybody in winter, and because it’s slippery also I feel like I will fall down. And
that’s why I don’t see anybody in winter, I stay home.” A middle-aged male Bhutanese
NFNA farmer expresses the extreme challenge of wintertime, “so then I stayed in the
home and all the people are driving their cars [not walking], I didn’t see anybody while
staying inside the home, I was so nervous and worn down. I regret why I came here. I
didn’t see people, anybody, only white thing [snow] outside, that’s what I thought…
actually winters are a depressing thing for me, I don’t like. I don’t know how to ski, I
don’t like to be in the cold much, so I don’t find fun in winter.” And finally from another
middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer, “…and then I feel like in that resettlement
process, [in the winter] there is no land, no vegetable, nothing, only snow, and then I feel
like maybe we will die sitting inside the house, we will be rotting inside the house, that’s
what I felt.”
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A majority of NFNA farmer interviews (7 of 10) share that lack of transportation
or the distance from their home to the farm was an obstacle to farming and QOL, while a
minority of farmer interviews at the FC report this factor (4 of 9) for a total of 11 of 19. A
middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer: “I can’t drive up to the garden, that is the
problem… sometimes when I am working there in the garden, quickly weather changes
and it starts raining. So all of the others run away to the parking lot, which is very far,
and I with cane, I have to be receiving all the rains on my body.” From an elderly male
Bhutanese NFNA farmer, “because I am old, so no driving, and I don’t have a job, kids
go to the job, we have to wait for them to come back. So you know if I have land I
nearby I can go when they are at the job, I can walk there, and do the work.” And then
from another middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer, “the old people, and disabled
people like me, they were the leaders of farming who want to farm, and they try to go
there, but thinking of the rain or the bad weather, they’d like to go there, but they refuse
because of that. So much of the time I used to take old people with me in my car, and
took them there, and they enjoy doing that all. Most of the people, they call me, ‘can you
take me to the garden?’ and ‘bring me back from the garden?’ When I have time I can do.
But when I don’t have, they are wanting to go there, they’d like to go, but they can’t go.
So they just think only, always they stay at home.”
Slightly fewer farmers interviewed report that they do not have enough education
for growing or marketing with 3 of 10 at NFNA and 6 of 9 at the FC identifying that
insufficient education affects their QOL. “Yes. Cause I know and other people, we don’t
go, when they hear about workshops or training, they don’t go, they think, ‘I know how
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to cultivate, I know how to add water and do everything.’ Then they refuse to go to the
training. But also then this knowledge, is [important] and we can give some trainings
like that, I don’t know how we can bring them together, but also that would be a great
way by which we can support them and they will get some more harvest by doing that,”
says a middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer. Another middle-aged male
Bhutanese NFNA farmer shares, “Ok, fertilizer… also we don’t have a really good idea
of what kinds of fertilizer needs to go into that soil, so also if you give that training (and
fertilizer) that is nice.” And finally on education for marketing, a middle-aged female
Tibetan FC farmer recalls, “one year I had almost 7 or 800 heads of cabbages, and I
couldn’t use it, it was it was more than enough for my food truck, you know, and I
couldn’t sell it either. So a lot of got wasted. So there’s sometimes a lot of food just
getting wasted because we don’t even know where to sell it.”
Table 4.5. Major challenges to QOL shared by farmers, in descending order of frequency.
Breakdown by organization. N.b. the question on racism was added to the instrument
after NFNA interviews, so only applies to the FC interviews.
# of NFNA
interviews
reporting/n=10
# of FC
interviews
reporting/n=9
total
count/n=19
Wintertime isolation from farming and
community
10
5
15
Transportation / distance from home to farm
7
4
11
Education for growing or marketing
3
6
9
Adapting to a new culture
4
4
8
Inability to farm at home because of
insufficient land
5
2
7
Pests
4
3
7
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Profitability/pricing (for those wanting to do
farm related commerce)
1
5
6
Racism
*N/A
5
5
Short growing season
5
0
5
Flooding
3
1
4
Accessibility for those with disabilities
3
0
3
Theft of produce from farm
3
0
3
8 of 19 interviews report adapting to a new culture as a challenge to QOL, with a slightly
higher proportion of farmers at the FC reporting this (4 of 9) than at NFNA (4 of 10). A
middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer reflects, “I was really culturally shocked at
the beginning of the resettlement process. When I went to the hospital they talk English,
when I go to the market, they talk English, I want to buy something but I could not
because of my language, I cannot communicate, and so then I stay only home and, don’t
do anything, no one comes to talk, and I was really down at that point, and White people
die because of that. White people do suicide because of that.” Also on culture shock, an
elderly male Russian FC farmer remembers, “I noticed I felt sick when I came to
America and the truth is American people are more stressed than they were in Russia,
because you should be afraid of everything [in America]. I can’t understand how they can
survive this stress? They stress about this, that, stressed about everything, like [for
example] about my car [if] you scratch it? And it’s terrible!” Equally commonly reported
as a challenge facing farmers was the inability to farm at home due to insufficient land
and the presence of pests at the farms (7 of 19 interviews). A full half of NFNA
interviews report insufficient land for farming at home (5 of 10) while only 2 of 9
interviews at the FC report this challenge. A middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer
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says, “It would be the best [to garden at home], but there is no way, because I live near
downtown, I don’t have any other open field, I don’t even have my yard.” Regarding the
presence of agricultural pests being a problem, 4 of 10 NFNA interviews note this, while
only 3 of 9 at the FC said this was a challenge. An Elderly male Bhutanese NFNA farmer
says, “when we start growing, when we start planting, and when it is in the initial phase,
insects stop us a lot, because they eat all of the seedlings - so what sort of insecticides we
have to use, we don’t have the knowledge, and we are growing such traditional foods,
and we don’t want to use the insecticides, but without that, how do we grow the crops,
these are the challenges…” 6 of 19 interviews mention farm profitability or pricing for
their products is an issue - most of those respondents being at the FC (5 of 9 interviewed)
and only 1 of 10 at NFNA. A young adult male White American-born farmer states, “it's
tricky, like, just capitalism in general, but you know, you’ve got the competition and
you’re essentially exploiting yourself to get a low… lower price…. Being able to pay
myself a living wage and having understanding from people about how really actually
very hard it is to farm and how a $3 half pound bag of spinach is actually a really cheap
price.” A middle-aged female Hmong FC farmer thinks out loud on profitability,
“farming doesn’t get you enough income to sustain living in America because if you
calculate pay by the hour, you can only pay yourself $1 an hour. Because when I farm, I
basically go from like five in the morning until sometimes two and still like 80 hours a
[week] still doesn’t bring enough income for living here so it's not even doable.” Related
to question 18 on racism that we added for the FC after NFNA interviews were
completed, a majority of FC farmer interviews (5 of 9) find that racism impacts their
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QOL, and given the weight some farmers put on this topic, we have included more quotes
to demonstrate the range of what farmers shared. A young adult non-binary mixed-race
American-born farmer reveals, “I find myself more readily talking about race. Whereas
that just doesn’t come up in the vocabulary of White people that I work with. So it's also
really annoying, because I'm like, ‘Come on, guys, like, we work in the food system.
Why aren’t you talking about this?’ Yeah, it's really annoying. And it gets a little
awkward too if I bring it up, and I can't tell if that’s because people don’t want to talk
about it. Or they just don’t know how to talk about it, or both. But either way, I’m like,
‘Get it together. Start talking about it.’” Another FC farmer, middle-aged female Hmong
experiencing racism shares that “not here at the Farley Center, I just feel very close to
[everyone], I feel very welcomed here… but elsewhere, I don’t always know it’s racism
to my face, but personally, deep down there’s always a feeling that somethings not fair,
you know, like nobody came and told me face to face but it’s sometimes that you have
this consciousness where you feel like you know there’s something unfair going on
behind you but that nobody’s gonna come and tell you to your face.” Regarding other
experiences of racism, a middle-aged male Indian FC farmer says, “you always see
people come walking. And people that walk here [at the FC], I always try to talk to them.
Or they’re just curious all day and they talk to us. I think a lot of people come here and
they think that the farmers here don’t speak English.” Also from another interview, a
middle-aged male Mexican farmer shares, “I’m not a US citizen right now, but I hope I
can have it in maybe two, three more years. But for now I’m in a painful time. Painful
times, I don’t have access to any support from the banks… because you have to prove
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citizenship. It is very difficult to own land for farming, especially when you are an
immigrant, it is very, very difficult.” A middle-aged male Indian FC farmer says, “I have
a friend that five years ago, he bought a nice house and one guy [neighbor] close to them,
the guy burned the house down, just out of hatred.” Representing another experience of
racism, a middle-aged male Mexican farmer recounts, “last year I found my van, these
scratches all over it. Later they found that he was one of the farm vendors that sells at the
farmers market doing this. He said I was a bad person, but I talked with him seriously and
I said ‘why would you do that? You know, I didn’t do anything to you. Why’d you do
that? Next time you I see you we are going to call the police.’ So the market [organizers]
understood and then that vendor quickly left the market because I complained... that was
racism, not competition.” And lastly on systemic racism, the same middle-aged male
Mexican farmer continues, “we have to suffer like this… sometimes police officers in
some Wisconsin counties, they see that you are not American, they stop you very often.
That makes it very difficult to farm. One guy that farms here, he’s got another area for
planting nearby in Wisconsin. He stopped farming that field because too many stops with
the police. They give you tickets. With the police tailing him, they gave him about five to
seven tickets [in one season]. Let me tell you, it is still a problem, but we have to move
forward. We don't give up. They are obstacles to us, but we don't give up.”
5 farmer interviews at NFNA say a short growing season is a problem, while no
FC interviews share this, for a total of 5 of 19 interviews sharing this issue. A middle-
aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer shares, “I don’t see much challenges, but the
problem is a very short season… and that makes a lot of crops not mature enough too… it
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doesn’t have enough time to get matured and give enough fruit, enough yield.” Flooding
is a problem for a greater number of NFNA farmers (3 of 10 interviews), and only 1 of 9
interviews at the FC report challenges with floods. A middle-aged male Bhutanese
NFNA farmer states, “it was flooded a couple of times. Once it’s flooded, we’re told we
have to leave everything [because of food safety], you can’t use any vegetables, so that is
one of the biggest challenges. Second time, third time, it flooded… could it be a
possibility if we have a different place of land where the land cannot be flooded? I don’t
know, but it’s already flooded over three times, and once it’s flooded, all the gardens
there, people are losing their time, losing their investment, it’s a big loss for the farmers.”
A middle-aged male Indian FC farmer recalls, “it was the first year we got flooded pretty
bad. We had a pretty bad rain event in August and that totally washed out the fields… we
had a river flowing in the field and it washed out our tomatoes, potatoes, whatever we
had down there.” Least frequently reported challenges for farmers are accessibility for
those with disabilities and theft of produce from the farm, at 3 of 19 interviews each, with
all 3 reports on both topics coming from NFNA farmers. From a middle-aged male
Bhutanese NFNA farmer, “if they give us the access for the necessary [disabled] people,
somebody who wants to go down to the garden and has limited physical reasons, it would
be much better, like for my mom, she wants to go down there, if she’s not able to do
anything at least she can watch, sitting there, next to where I’m working, and she can
explain to me, ‘do it this way.’ That’s a good way.” Also regarding access and inclusion,
an elderly male Bhutanese NFNA farmer remarks, “…and the other thing is a restroom,
like portable toilets which can be moved. If that would be there, even one or two, would
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be much better, cause sometimes when old people go there and they don’t have a toilet
they have to come back up [out of the farm], and so then all the way back down, but they
can’t walk back again [so easily]. And that is causing a problem.” Theft on the farm is
observed by a middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer: “the problem I have seen is
stealing vegetables… this year, not only stealing the vegetables from the plant, they took
the out plant also. That’s the challenging thing.” In sum, the greatest challenges farmers
report relate to wintertime isolation, transportation or distance from home to the farm,
and sufficient education for growing or marketing.
The farmers interviewed provide extensive suggestions on what they think would
help support better QOL and improve their farming individually and/or in community.
Table 6 represents responses from questions 8-10 and 16 in particular, though like Tables
3-5, Table 6 also draws generally on all interview responses. We found near unanimity
from interviews that farmers desire to live and farm in the same place with only one
interview at the FC not reporting this desire for a total frequency of 18 of 19 interviews.
A middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer shows excitement, “I think that everybody
likes that! So if it’s on the same land, if the house is on the same land, we don’t have to
ask anybody for the right, you know we can go out any time and work in the field. We
can give our time whenever we want, we can see the farm from home.” From a middle-
aged female Hmong FC farmer, “personally, I would have a big land where I’m living,
and not in the city side, but in countryside, I would have a house, I would do a very big
garden. I always enjoy having animals with me, maybe a couple of goats, maybe some
roosters, some chickens… meat, and have a garden. I would do more, more beautifully
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than I am doing now, because I would be in the garden all the time. Let’s say I have just
5 minutes free, I would plant a couple of plants.” And from an elderly male Bhutanese
NFNA farmer desiring living on his own farmland, “because I am old, no driving, and I
don’t have a job also, kids go to the job, we have to wait for them to come back. So you
know if I have land nearby I can go when they are at the job, I can walk there, and do the
work.” Finally, a middle-aged female Tibetan FC farmer underscores the value of living
on-farm, “it’ll be a dream come true. And the farm will be right out your door.”
A strong majority of farmers interviewed said they would like to move from their
city to a village or rural area, with 9 of 10 NFNA and 8 of 9 FC interviews reporting
wanting this change of residence, for a total count of 17 of 19 confirmatory responses. A
middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer shares “I prefer living on the farm, or in a
village…I don’t mean that the city is very bad, but… I have bad feelings, like I have
trauma… when the sound of an ambulance or fire truck… (interviewee chokes up) you
know, I really feel scared, really scared, for these old people as well, living in the city,
and for me too. When I was living back in the refugee camp, there was a huge fire that
burned in the camp. It was midnight when I woke up I heard the sound of ambulances,
very loud sound, everyone was shouting, I was quickly going to the other rooms and
collecting my kids, ‘let’s run away, something is happening!’ I felt trauma because when
the Bhutan government sent us away, with the police firing, gun fire, with all the
pressures, and the same way trauma was coming back again. So that way sometimes, in
the city when we are sleeping and when that sound comes up, that feels really scary to
me. So because of that I don’t prefer that [living in the city]. So it’d be better if I could
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live in the village, it would be silent.” And another middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA
farmer shares that “even if you live in villages nearby here, everything is not very far
from you. So, you know, I just like the simpleness of it, you know, I think it’s the main
reason, just the simple living being on the farm or being in village.” Neither NFNA nor
FC currently have farm animals - 8 of 10 NFNA and 7 of 9 FC (15 of 19 total) interviews
report wanting to have farm animals. A middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA shares that
“because our parents grew up and know all those systems of farming, they’d love to have
chickens and ducks and cows and cattle, and also they have the knowledge and know
[how to farm]… in Nepal we raise pigs, cows, and chickens…” Also from another
interviewee, a middle-aged female Tibetan FC farmer says, “I would like to do like
chicken, chickens are really easy to raise, pigs eat a lot but because they love our
vegetables we can always feed the pig, or if I was gonna raise a cow it’d probably take a
bigger property to raise a cow but you can raise duck pretty easily. I grew up raising it
all.”
When asked if the farmers would like funded programs to support placing
refugees and immigrants who opt-in to such a program to live on land in farming
communities, all but one NFNA interview (9 of 10) and 5 of 9 FC interviews express
they want this and that it would help improve their QOL. “That would be that would be
an excellent idea. Because many of these people [immigrants and refugees] already come
with that experience of working with the land, and having done this… it’s such a hard
thing to find people who are passionate about land... that would be great, if that would be
an expected part of their immigration plan,” states a young adult male White American-
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born FC farmer. Another young adult FC farmer, non-binary mixed race American born,
dreams out loud, “[we could] live cooperatively, like a series of tiny houses around the
property and a main central building, similar to this [the FC] kind of, where you can share
those resources and either working cooperatively, and on a farm business together or
independently doing projects. And each person is kind of managing their own part or
facet of the farm, somebody wants to work with the livestock, or wants to be in the wash
station, or whatever, but working cooperatively, and, you know, having a space to raise
families and connect with people and being close to a town.” Also regarding possible
residential farming communities, a middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer says,
“with my friends, we used to talk like this, let us buy land and build houses around each
other, so that we can farm in the middle, with everyone, and we can share. The same
thing, if the resettlement were done like that, if they had done like that, many areas would
be going better, with their gardens, by their own… they can be getting their own food,
making their own vegetables, so that they don’t have to buy a lot, and they can save a
little money. There are families with grandparents, or people who can’t move and work
for eight hours, who are staying at home, so they can pass their time in the garden as
well, where they can refresh their mind, instead of feeling locked inside a room, like I do.
If it would be there, the community, the environment will be looking great and beautiful,
and at the same time they can be refreshing their mind.” Regarding how supporting
immigrant and refugee farming communities supports United States residents more
widely, a middle-aged male Mexican FC farmer shares, “it will be a great idea if… they
are involved in the US life, it will be awesome if they have the chance to enter new lives
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you know… and we have to take advantage because you already accept in refugees or
immigrants to this country, who have very good ideas how to grow. You know you are
helping [the immigrant], but at the same time later that [immigrant farmer] is going to
help a lot of people, like I am doing now. I am feeding a lot of people right now! I mean,
I do seven farmers markets a week [where] I’m selling about 300 packages [of my farm
product]. Maybe I feed about 250 families every week. Yeah. So it will be helping a lot.”
A majority of farmers interviewed at both sites (NFNA: 8 of 10, FC: 6 of 9, total
14 of 19 interviews) say they would like increased access to a heated greenhouse for
season extension or winter farming, and that this would help them psychologically feel
better in the winter, which most identified (above) as an extremely difficult time of year.
From a middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer: “if there is a greenhouse to do that, I
think, for me, I’m glad to do, I’d like to do, cause I feel very fresh when I go in front of
those plants, doing something in the garden.” Another exclaims, “it sucks. Life sucks in
winter (Laughs). So hard, life in winter. At least I would do something if I had a
greenhouse, where I could work for a couple hours every day.” Nearly half of farmer
interviews (NFNA: 4 of 10, FC: 5 of 9, total: 9 of 19) share that improved farm related
training and education would support easier or more productive farming. A middle-aged
male Bhutanese NFNA farmer says, “We want to learn how to decrease the insects, pests
on the site, we have not learned that. If they provide that training that would be nice.”
While a majority of farmer interviews express they are content with the physical
infrastructure on the farm, 1 of 10 NFNA and 6 of 10 FC (7 of 19 total) interviews share
they would like to have better or more machinery or facilities, including but not limited to
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irrigation, tools, tractors, processing facilities, and outdoor pizza ovens for gatherings. A
middle-aged male Indian FC farmer states, “We could use a processing facility, because
there’s a pack shed here for washing and packing. But there's not any sort of processing
facilities, we don't have a commercial kitchen, we don't have a large scale drying system,
so that would be helpful.” Also on improved facilities, a young adult male White
American-born FC farmer observes, “in the busy season there are choke points, like the
wash station can get crowded out, and then especially if there’s multiple growers going to
the same market at the same time, and people are trying to get ready. Kind of a similar
issue with water, like irrigation might be challenging, because before the well is turned
on, it’s all from the hose from the [office building]. And if one person’s using the hose,
you have to come in at 5am to try and find a time when there's nobody else around, and
then maybe somebody else is here at 5am, ‘God dammit.’” And regarding improved
equipment, a middle-aged male Indian FC farmer says, “a BCS [walk behind tractor]
would be great… and I think it would be pretty doable to have one that was shared
amongst the farmers. And, you know, it's probably one more thing for [the farm manager]
to have to manage and think about, but yeah, that could be really helpful.” Only 1
interview at NFNA and 5 at FC (6 of 19 total) would like more social gatherings on farm.
A middle-aged female Bhutanese NFNA farmer shares, “I feel like, all in the same field
at the beginning when we open the garden, at that time, a get together for the farmers,
making some foods, snacks, when we get together over some snacks, in the same place,
cause on that day everyone goes there and it’s a good way for us to connect with each
other.” A middle-aged female Hmong FC farmer talks about having more social
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gatherings, “because COVID we aren’t having gatherings too much together anymore...
it’d be good to be able to host more events so that more of time the farmers get to do
more things together.” And lastly from a middle-aged female White American-born FC
farmer, suggestions to improve their farm’s social climate with gatherings, “how to make
the Farley center better?…. A pizza oven!”
Table 4.6. Farmer suggestions for enhancing their QOL, in descending order of
frequency. Number of respondents/total respondents offering suggestions, by category.
Breakdown by organization.
# of NFNA
interviews
reporting/n=10
# of FC
interviews
reporting/n=9
total
count/n=19
Desire to live and farm in the same place
10
8
18
Move away from city to village or rural area
9
8
17
Have farm animals
8
7
15
Desire funded programs to support refugees
and immigrants to live on land in farming
communities
9
5
14
Increased access to heated greenhouse for
season extension or winter farming
8
6
14
Improved farm related training and education
4
5
9
Improved physical infrastructure on farm
including but not limited to machinery, tools,
irrigation, processing facilities
1
6
7
More farm social gatherings
1
5
6
More compost/manure
5
0
5
Inclusion of elders
4
1
5
Desire funded programs to support refugees
and immigrants to live on land under
individual ownership
1
3
4
Restroom near fields
4
0
4
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Half of interviews with NFNA farmers (5 of 10) would like more access to
compost or manure, while no FC farmers say they want this, for a total of 5 of 19
interviews confirming this need. A middle-aged female Bhutanese NFNA farmer says,
“so yeah, tilling should be better, and a lot of manure would be helpful.” NFNA farmer
interviews report greater desire to include elders and related to that, improve accessibility
(4 of 10 reporting), while only 1 FC interview share this need, for a total frequency of 5
of 19. From a middle-aged male Bhutanese NFNA farmer: “[our elders] have more
techniques and knowledge of cultivating different type of plants, what type of plant is
suitable for what type of area or climate. They know a lot more than us, ‘cause we were
kids then and did not see much in Bhutan. I had passed just 14 or 15 years in Bhutan on
the farm, so I did not see that much. But they know everything, all plants, how to grow,
what type of plants are suitable in this climate. So we can learn from them, they can
teach us. So that is the other thing when I think of these old people.” In contrast to
wanting to live on land in a farm-based community, far fewer farmer interviews (NFNA:
1 of 10, FC: 3 of 9, total: 4 of 19) say they want funded programs to place refugees and
immigrants who opt-in to such a program to live on land where they can farm as an
individual household or family unit. A middle-aged female Tibetan FC farmer shares,
“yes, that is what I want. A farm and a home on it. That’d be better and good to have a
program to help people get land to farm when they immigrate.” And from a young adult
male Mexican FC farmer who would like his own farm to live on, “10 acres, animals, a
house. A greenhouse, a wash/pack, lots of animals. Home gardens so I can grow like I
am now. My kids are growing older, and we’re going to help buy a home farm
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together… in the next 10 years. When you come back, maybe you’ll see me here, maybe
you won’t, because maybe I’ll be on my own land then. This is the reason why I work so
hard.” Nearly half of NFNA interviews (4 of 10) and no interviews at the FC (total: 4 of
19) express need for restrooms near their farm fields – however the FC already has such
facilities near their fields. An elderly male Bhutanese NFNA farmer says, “it is sooo
difficult [not having a bathroom at the field]!!! (Nervous laughter). If I go to the woods
side of the garden, there’s a lot of mosquitos, and there is one plant that when you touch
it stings… stinging nettles… but I don’t know… a lot of people go there and also who
will keep the bathroom clean?” Of the many suggestions for how to support better QOL
for the farmers interviewed, the three most frequent needs are to live and farm in the
same place, to move out of the city to a nearby village or rural area, and to be able to
have farm animals. In the discussion and conclusion sections that follow below, we
describe implications and contexts of the results, as well as meaningful ways to move
forward and follow-up with our findings.
4.5 Discussion
Working with refugee and immigrant community farm programs, our in-depth
interviews regarding quality of life experiences reveal that the farmers gain extensive
health benefits across a wide number of areas. Other recent research expresses that
refugee garden programs are understudied and that inquiry into related quality of life
benefits is important in terms of program analysis and improving supports for these
demographics (Jean 2015; Harris, Minniss, and Somerset 2014). Judelsohn et al. (2017)
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find that refugee resettlement “has received limited attention in planning literature, with
even less attention to refugees’ food-related experiences in their new communities,”
making the results of our research even more relevant to NGO’s and policy makers.
The farmers report particularly benefiting in terms of improved physical,
emotional/psychological, and social health, with slightly fewer though still a strong
majority of farmers experiencing other QOL benefits in terms family engagement,
connection with nature, establishing a sense of home or belonging, and spiritual
wellbeing. The physical, psychological, social, and spiritual benefits the farmers
reportedly experience parallel the findings of the limited literature we have found
available regarding refugees or immigrants involved in community gardens or farms,
detailed above in the ‘Background” section (Cummings, Minniss, Harris, Neil, &
Somerset, 2008; Mazumdar & Mazumdar, 2012; Hartwig & Mason, 2016). Our research
is also in agreement with other studies in that the farmers we interviewed establish a
greater sense of place (Jean, 2015) and reinforce connections to nature (Gladkikh, Gould,
& Coleman, 2019). Our research also shows that the most common reasons why farmers
participate in these programs are for providing access to farmland, helping revitalize or
maintain a connection to their agrarian past or ancestral ways of being, and access to farm
facilities or equipment. Other rationales for participating in these immigrant and refugee
focused community farm programs farmers detailed related to affirmation of ethnic
identity, farmer co-learning and other training opportunities, and being part of an
ethnically diverse farm community.
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In regard to the most common challenges farmers express facing, they involve
social isolation and disconnection from the enjoyment and benefits of farming during
wintertime, transportation issues relating to the proximity between home and the farm,
and receiving insufficient training and education for growing and marketing. While lower
in frequency than some other reported challenges (likely due to the question on racism
being asked only of FC farmers because of a change to the interview instrument midway
through the research), the farmers who confirmed experiences of racism shared some
powerful and harmful episodes. We believe that racism in the farmers’ lives may be
underreported and should be highlighted as work continues to build a more inclusive
society and institutions incorporate DEI into their systems.
We emphasize implications of this research relating to agriculture and
immigration for policy makers, food systems programs and practitioners, and researchers
that come in the form of suggestions from our interviewees on how to improve farming
and QOL benefits for immigrant and refugee farmers. Crucial to understanding how to
continue to improve both these community farm programs, our interviewees share their
top needs, with the most frequent being to live and farm in the same place (and moving
outside the city), adding farm animals to their produce farming, having funded programs
that support immigrant and refugee farmers to live on-farm in agricultural communities,
and to have greenhouse space for wintertime gardening or farming to deal with the
toughest time of year and also boost productivity.
Based on farmer feedback, we have further suggestions for policy makers and
those who work to support agriculture as well as immigrants and refugees. To enhance
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support in wintertime while minimizing cost we suggest synergizing with existing farm
and institutional greenhouses where possible to offer this population of farmers winter
gardening space. Given the importance of living on-farm to most of the farmers we
interviewed, we also suggest partnerships among regional and local housing development
programs with state and federal agriculture agencies and immigration and refugee
resettlement programs. A number of farmers reported living in the city valuable
immediately upon resettlement to connect with a variety of resources, however once
settled wish to live on farm, away from the city. While having farm animals was highly
desired by interviewees, it would be difficult if no farmers live on site for regular farm
animal care, so farm animals would also be easiest to integrate with programs that
support farmers to live on-farm – which would create additional synergy with the farmers
from NFNA who share desire for more compost and fertility. In absence of farmers
living on-farm, developing a network of numerous smaller pocket farms focusing on
immigrants and refugees throughout urban and peri-urban areas could help solve the issue
of insufficient land space for home gardening, while also reducing transportation
challenges. Perhaps the farm programs studied here could also partner with local transit
agencies to enhance bus routes and schedules to serve these community gardens – one
example for this being the on-demand, local scale transportation program “MyRide”
being piloted in Montpelier Vermont. To support both improved, culturally and
linguistically relevant farmer training and education as well as efficient access to grant
writing support for these community farm programs, we suggest bolstering positions at
Agriculture Extension agencies that focus on these types of agriculture assistance for
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historically underserved farmer populations. Lastly, farmers value the social benefits of
farming and farmer to farmer co-learning, and with covid disrupting social engagement
we suggest renewed focus on social gatherings that support farmer social engagement,
education, dissemination of outreach services. Moreover, occasional events throughout
the winter could help reduce the negative impacts of wintertime social isolation that a
majority of famers report experiencing.
Limitations of our work include that our research has only two sites of study, and
that more representative data could be produced by research done with a larger sample
size. The data could also be validated through follow-up interviews, member checking,
or other longitudinal follow-up including using the Delphi method. While it is a strength
that we have refugees and immigrants included as interviewees, that also makes the data
less comparable because NFNA is a farm program for refugees, while the FC is more
focused on immigrants rather than refugees – and immigrants and refugees may have
different sets of experiences and motivations. Above in the "Background” section we
discuss diversity and heterogeneity in life experiences and needs among refugees and
immigrants, and that it is not possible generalize within or across these two groups.
Differences such as gender, age, socio-economic status, ethnicity, religious identity,
country of origin, and number of years since resettlement are some of the many factors
that make comparison and generalization difficult. Out of concern to protect farmer
interviewees’ privacy and confidentiality we collected only limited demographic data
because the farmer communities at NFNA and the FC are very small and even revealing
partial identifiers could make it possible to connect statements to individuals – however
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greater demographic data could help guide research with more nuance concerning the
diversity and heterogeneity among immigrants and refugees. Another limitation regrading
comparability of the two sites of study is that the FC is more focused on facilitating
commercial farming for participants, while NFNA started with more of a commercial
farm incubator model like the FC, most participants are primarily farming for non-market
home and community production. For further, deeper study, it could be helpful for future
researchers to focus on either non-market farmers or aspiring commercial farmers as the
needs are overlapping though somewhat different. Future research could also focus at the
legislative level on how existing programs can support the modifications farmers suggest
above, particularly around enhancing land access and supporting residential farming
communities. Through improving the supports for immigrant and refugee farmers and
improving their quality of life, there can be downstream benefits including reduced
healthcare costs for these populations as well as greater community food systems
vibrancy and resiliency.
4.6 Conclusion
We hope this research can be instrumental for local, regional, and national change
that supports immigrants and refugees as important members of our communities and
food systems. We also intend for it to facilitate discussions and future research around
immigration, housing, and food systems more broadly, to use a systems approach to
solving complex problems including home and community scale food production and
land access. Working with our community farm partners at the Farley Center and New
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Farms for New Americans, we will continue to work to apply the findings with these
programs and disseminate the challenges and successes in supporting small scale
agriculture and refugees and immigrants in their needs to contribute to the food systems
or their families, communities, and regions.
Acknowledgments
This article and corresponding research has been supported by UVM Food Systems
Graduate Program, the Gund Institute for the Environment, and in part by the USDA
National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch project 038725, under Dr. Joshua
Farley and Dr. Josiah Taylor.
Special thanks to New Farms for New Americans and Alisha Laramee, Dr. Pablo Bose,
The Farley Center for Peace, Justice, and Sustainability and Shedd Farley, Dr. Josh
Farley, Ella Mighell, The Farley Lab Group, The Agroecology Livelihoods
Collaborative, UVM Food Systems Graduate Program, The Gund Institute for the
Environment, Jake Jacobs, and Abbi Jaffe.
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CHAPTER 5: CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE RESEARCH AND CONCLUSION
In the three core chapters of this dissertation, we apply participatory action and
community-based research approaches to design research in collaboration with the
communities concerned, working with them in answering important questions and
sharing data that will lead to solutions and advocacy. Our results from conducting impact
and sustainability analysis of community food systems initiatives shows they support and
hasten transitions toward more just and sustainable food systems.
Chapter two on universal meals in Vermont schools has already been invaluable
to research partner Hunger Free Vermont in creating materials for education and
advocacy at local, state, and national levels. This article has shown value to other
researchers as evidenced by eight citations in peer reviewed literature produced in the
United States and Norway, as well as numerous mentions in popular news media around
the U.S. Since the publication of this article, advocacy and federal Covid-19 related
funding made universal school meals available in every school in the state, and more
recently Vermont state funds have continued universal meals in schools throughout the
state. Advocacy continues to make this program funding permanent.
For chapter three, we developed the SEE farm sustainability analysis toolkit
guided by gaps in available tools for farmers to understand their own broad socio-
ecological economic sustainability while also being a way to communicate with
agricultural communities and policymakers the benefits of supporting sustainable and
agroecological farming methods. We found a particular lack of farm analysis tools that
are both free for farmers to use, as well as open source for further adaptation to a
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multitude of farming contexts such as geographic, cultural, and economic difference.
Moving forward, the SEE toolkit could be improved by incorporating additional farmer
and expert feedback on the indicators and then further piloted with a greater number and
variety of farms. Ultimately, we hope the toolkit will be utilized by agricultural extension
services or other agriculture agencies.
The research in chapter four contributes to advancing farmer quality of life,
especially for immigrants and refugees involved in community farm programs in the
United States. Conducting this research across programs at two distinct sites provides
comparability and diversity in demographics, location, and programmatic focus. Basing
the research in Northern states (Vermont and Wisconsin) may yield unique results due to
differences in growing season, demographics, and cultural values compared with warmer
and coastal states such as California. This research expands existing literature on QOL
experiences of immigrant and refugee farmers and can be replicated for future study as
well as longitudinal continuity with the communities involved. Additionally, creating the
interview instrument based on long term PAR engagement with these immigrant and
refugee community farm programs as well program document analysis offers holistic
information for future researchers, advising program development, and informing policy
makers. Using PAR approaches is identified as a way of conducting research that is
valuable and underutilized, as well as more attractive to communities and some funding
organizations. Through the combination of this research being community driven,
examining quality of life impacts related to participation in immigrant focused farm and
food projects, this research also contributes to filling major gaps in community food
