Julie Ramon-Pierson, president of the San Xavier Co-op board, grew up hearing stories about her grandparents and great-grandparents cooking traditional O’odham foods such as tepary beans, squash, and corn, and she remembers seeing her mother harvest and clean the native beans. She hopes the co-op will help resurrect narratives like the ones she was raised with.

“The primary goal of the co-op is to create economic development in the community, re-educate people about traditional foods so they can prepare them at home to adopt a healthier lifestyle, and preserve O’odham values, like respect of land, plants, animals, and elders,” she says.

The Tohono O’odham Nation spans 4,460 square miles in Southern Arizona and includes 28,000 enrolled tribal members. The land is divided into 11 districts, and the San Xavier District is home to about 2,300 members. Founded in the early 1970s, the co-op leases farmland from the landowners, called allottees, and about 90 percent of its 25 to 28 employees are O’odham tribe members, according to Gabriel Vega, the co-op’s farm manager since 2018.

The welcome sign outside the entrance reflects this agricultural history; it’s a shield painted with a traditional planting stick and feathers representing a blessing. In the center is a sprouting seed, considered “new life,” and the four parts represent seasons containing the cycle of the sun, rain, moon, and wildlife. (Photo by Rudri Patel)

While the co-op grows alfalfa as its primary money-maker, other parts of the property are home to orange, plum, and apple orchards; an assortment of vegetable crops; and native foods such as tepary, pima lima, black, and white beans, wild mesquite trees, and pima wheat.

In addition to growing and selling crops, the co-op hosts blessing and spiritual ceremonies and provides educational opportunities for the tribal community. In early March, for example, it hosted a cooking and culture workshop for women tribe members.

Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona, is focusing her dissertation research on water and land rights, as well as the impact of the San Xavier Co-op. She sees the co-op’s impact as three-fold: “It keeps traditional ecological knowledge alive, assists with food sovereignty, and allows the community to know its history,” she says.

There is a real effort, says Ramon-Sauberan, to keep doors open and educate people. If a member of the O’odham community wants to learn how to cultivate a certain food, she says, the co-op creates a teaching space to achieve this goal. More importantly, this attitude helps foster a “communal spirit among the members” that extends beyond the organization.

Bringing the Water Back

Though the O’odham has built an agricultural history in the Sonoran Desert over the course of thousands of years—one that recently helped earn Tucson the honor of becoming the first U.S. city designated a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy—the tribe’s farming legacy has been threatened in recent decades by a conflict over the desert city’s limited water supply.

Traditionally, the O’odham people structured their fields to channel water into planting areas, using the Santa Cruz River as the main source. When Tucson began to develop, however, its water demands drained the aquifers from the area, and by 1950, Vega says, “much of the agriculture ceased.”

San Xavier farm manager Gabriel Vega. (Photo by Rudri Patel)

When the farm formed in 1971, it fought to reclaim tribal water rights and reintroduce farming practices that had been halted during the dry years. In 1975, the San Xavier District sued the City of Tucson over water rights. Ten years later, the Southern Arizona Water Rights Settlement Act granted an allotment of 56,000 acre-feet of water yearly from the Central Arizona Project—enough to sustain roughly 900 acres of land.

“Water to this community is a sacred element,” Vega says. “To have a running flow of water is fulfilling the prayers of the O’odham people.”

During the period when water supplies were nonexistent, the connection between the land and its people diminished, according to Vega. “Wells went dry [and] farming decreased,” which led to the loss of agriculture and tradition, and a rise in diet-related diseases like diabetes.

When water returned, it opened the door to reintroduce native foods, a healthier way of living, and a pathway to reconnect to the land. And that’s where San Xavier comes in.

Even with the busy undercurrent of activity, the farm is a tranquil space where a palpable sense of peace permeates the air. This isn’t accidental, according to Vega. “Many of the O’odham elders wanted this area to return to an agricultural community,” he says.

Sustaining Tradition by Saving Seeds and Cultivating Wild Plants

Although the water has returned to the area and re-enabled agriculture, healthy eating habits are slower to catch up. Vega says for many people the reality of day-to-day life on the reservation includes fast food.

To reverse this trend, San Xavier Co-op is preserving the “genetic resources” stored in seeds. Though the O’odham have 19 different varieties of corn, San Xavier has access to only two. Recently, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded the farm a grant to build a 2,400-square-foot cold storage facility to preserve its seeds.

“The plan is to go door-to-door in the community and see if families have corn seeds that were lost in the last few decades,” Vega says.

A large nursery houses several different varieties of seeds. (Photo by Rudri Patel)

Organizations like Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S) help preserve indigenous seeds and serve as a repository to protect cultural heritage. Although there isn’t an official partnership in place, Laura Neff, an associate at NS/S, says that San Xavier Co-op recently received two community seed grants from the organization. Additionally, San Xavier sells its products in the Native Seed/SEARCH retail store. With efforts like these, the O’odham people may be able to return to the foods their ancestors enjoyed.

Another focus at San Xavier is cultivating wild foods. In the past, the O’odham relied on the pods of mesquite trees to supply them with protein. Once the pods dry, the O’odham harvest, mill, and eventually turn them into flour. “Traditionally it was eaten with water, and these high nutrients provided energy,” Vega says.

Diversity of Sustainable Crops

San Xavier Co-op remains viable—and able to aggressively pursue growing native foods—“because it invests in alfalfa crops, its best-seller on the farm,” Ramon-Pierson says. But the focus on income doesn’t mean sacrificing what is good for the land, Vega emphasizes. The co-op is Certified Naturally Grown, he says, which means it grows everything without synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or GMOs.

“This farming community has been here for several thousand years, and there is an intentional purpose to how the O’odham use the land,” says nursery coordinator Cie’na Schalaefli. Keeping it chemical-free helps the tribe maintain its traditional values.

Orchards line the property near the side of the farm. (Photo by Rudri Patel)

The co-op has also formed a partnership with the Compost Cats program through the University of Arizona, a student-run organization that collects food waste and scraps from local businesses, processes the material at the San Xavier Co-op, and sells it as compost to the community.

The co-op constantly looks for ways to diversify its offerings in order to stay afloat, Vega says. San Xavier has a blossoming partnership with both the food bank community and Tucson schools, says Ramon-Pierson, where it sells broccoli and melons. It also runs a catering business that blends seasonal indigenous O’odham foods with non-traditional items like tortillas and tamales.

Several other projects are in the works or already underway, Vega says. “Bridgestone, the tire company, recently contacted the co-op about the Gualye, a woody shrub which thrives in the desert Southwest,” he says. The interest is to produce rubber for tires. There’s also the possibility that hemp production could begin on the property, he adds.

Giving Back to the Community

Even though the farm looks for numerous ways to be profitable, the O’odham Nation is the first priority. Workshops like the Wild Harvest teach community members how to harvest, process, and prepare traditional foods such as cholla buds from a cacti, also known as ciolim, mesquite, and prickly pear.

A colorful mural serves as a reminder of San Xavier’s ancestral roots. (Photo by Rudri Patel)

“Once they learn how to harvest, they can do this on their land at home, bring it back to the farm, and we pay them by the pound,” Vega says. This fosters economic resiliency and a way to reintroduce traditional foods to children and families.

The workshops also cover the basics of how to cook foods like tepary beans—which can easily boiled in water with chiles—and sends participants home armed with how to search for online recipes used in making traditional O’odham meals. A resurgence of traditional foods, according to Ramon-Sauberan at the University of Arizona, is working to reduce the rates of diabetes and other health issues among the O’odham people.

San Xavier Co-op’s multi-pronged approach to caring for its community, is merely a “continuation of what’s in their ancestral genes,” Vega says. “Not many spaces that allow you to pay your bills, take care of your elders, and adopt a healthy way of living.”

[Editor’s note: This article was updated to correct Gabriel Vega’s time working on the farm and the fact that the tribe is looking at producing hemp as a new crop.]

The post An Indigenous Community Deepens its Agricultural Roots in Tucson’s San Xavier Farm appeared first on Civil Eats.

“I remember[ed] watching my grandfather trade collard greens and carrots with others and interacting with his community,” he says. “My dream as a little boy was to do the same; I wanted to work with others in the same community [of South Phoenix] where I grew up.”

After Chapman’s final release in 2005, he followed the example his grandfather had set and established TigerMountain Foundation (TMF), an organization that focuses on working the land and producing sustainable foods for the local economy, while also creating a sense of community.

“Community doesn’t happen unless people share something in common,” Chapman says. He felt that a community garden had the potential to bring people together around a singular goal and create “a classroom without walls and a place where people could feel proactive hope.”

Today, in an undeveloped industrial plot in an urban neighborhood in the middle of South Phoenix, an unlikely scene plays out: Volunteers scrape the earth to uncover sweet potatoes. Vendors sell kale, cactus, and red and green peppers in a small space outside the garden’s entrance, their wares lined up on picnic tables covered with bright tablecloths. A colorful mural depicting a young child holding a plant covers a nearby wall, setting the ambiance, and a local DJ spins Beatles songs.

Working in the TigerMountain garden.

TMF focuses on four community gardens, ranging in size from 1.5 to 18 acres and growing squash, melon, okra, onions, and tomatoes, among other crops. The nonprofit provides produce for more than 12 local farmers’ markets and grows specialty crops requested by local restaurants.

Gardening is only one aspect of the nonprofit, however. Chapman actively recruits the formerly incarcerated and people who grew up with hard lives surrounded by high-risk behaviors. TMF teaches participants practical, on-the-job landscaping skills, which include property cleanup, installing and repairing irrigation systems, and working on the garden’s overall design, in hopes they will develop a strong work ethic, spark ideas for a micro-businesses, and become financially literate by learning what it takes to harvest, grow, and sell produce. So far, Chapman says TMF has launched more than 1,000 entrepreneurs in various businesses.

A Force for Good in a Struggling Region

As founder and CEO of TMF, Chapman—now 53—focuses on a little bit of everything, from carrying out administrative duties to clearing the land to encouraging volunteers to absorb the philanthropic vibes in this South Phoenix community space.

Though the TMF garden produces food for the community, the connection with the land is also intensely personal for Chapman. It is how he escaped the prison pipeline.

Chapman grew up in a rough neighborhood where it was easy to make “horrendous choices and fall into criminal activity like gangs and drug dealing,” he says. He didn’t have the benefit of a “nuclear family or educational opportunities, and felt a gravitational pull toward less-than-ideal decisions,” and he spent his 20s in and out of prison.

Darren Chapman harvesting sweet potatoes.

In this region of Phoenix, crime rates are two times higher than the national average, and a quarter of the population lives in poverty. According to one study, South Phoenix is one of the most impoverished areas in the 4.7-million-resident Phoenix region. With these systemic factors are at play, it can be difficult to resist the temptation of bad choices.

Chapman attributes his evolution from inmate to CEO to the guidance of his grandparents, George Clarence “Bubba” Burnham and Jane Easter Burnham. “My grandparents were resilient, working hard to make a living,” he says.

He specifically credits his grandfather for pushing him to better himself while he was in prison and to transform the direction of his life. He witnessed his grandparents connecting with the land and saw how they formed a community garden in their neighborhood, where they grew plum and peach trees. “Everything revolved around building community in a natural way, through the land,” he says.

Acting on a Prison-Cell Epiphany

Still, an epiphany like the one he experienced decades ago in a prison cell isn’t always easy to make good on. Chapman faced some resistance in establishing a nonprofit that actively recruits the formerly incarcerated and recovering addicts. “Phoenix builds character, but without a formal pedigree, establishing a nonprofit, especially such a unique one, was an uphill battle,” he admits.

The struggle only fueled Chapman’s will to persevere, however. Ultimately, he put his faith in the perspective “that we are all just humans and there is no need for fences between people,” he says. “Digging in the dirt together, these barriers are eliminated.”

With this philosophy and Chapman’s resolve, TMF gained momentum in South Phoenix and attracted the interest of Social Venture Partners Arizona, a group of community and business leaders, philanthropists, and investors interested in funding nonprofits. In 2013, when Chapman pitched his idea about the community garden to SVP Arizona, they awarded him funding and the operational tools to run a nonprofit. With this honor, TMF received $100,000 dispersed over a period of five years. Chapman continues to apply for various local and national grants to sustain funding for his foundation.

This endorsement allowed Chapman not only to cultivate gardens, but to move beyond just growing food. It enabled him to recruit workers to help in landscaping and gardening, as well as teaching people about micro-businesses and financial literacy.

A mural at the urban farm.

Although TMF is unique, there are several similar projects sprouting across the nation. RecoveryPark in Detroit tries to create jobs for those who face barriers through a community farm that supplies produce to 70 local restaurants. In Chicago, Windy City Harvest partners with the local botanical garden to provide transitional jobs to underprivileged youth. Milwaukee’s Growing Power served as an example of the redeeming power of urban gardening for decades.

Using the Garden as a Tool to Improve Lives

Chapman believes in paying it forward and taking a chance on those in underprivileged neighborhoods who face obstacles similar to those he encountered. TMF’s strategy, Chapman says, is to target those who have little hope and facilitate a passageway for change, with the end goal of figuring out “how TMF can impact each individual that walks in the door.”

Chapman derived TigerMountain’s name from the acronym “Tenacity, Integrity, Greatness, Empowerment, Resiliency”; its motto is “to empower communities to better themselves from within.” Many youth, teens, and adults, he explains, are seeking a “safe place from the violence they witness at home.”

“What is better than a garden, which has to be cultivated day after day, week after week?” Chapman says. “Digging in the dirt, working in the sun, showing up and being accountable—this garden is a tool for helping people strategize to make their lives better.”

Part of the harvest from the TigerMountain Foundation’s urban farm.

But the gardens are only one of the ways people can seek refuge with TMF. Chapman’s asset-development model helps people learn about financial literacy, establish their own entrepreneurial enterprises, and foster workplace development.

Christine DeMyers, an Arizona State University Ph.D. student who is studying cultural anthropology and working with TMF, explains the approach: “The goal is to make the experience multidimensional by offering people options to do a variety of work, whether it means landscaping, community gardening, or learning more about financial literacy [and] entrepreneurial opportunities,” she says. DeMyers says this grassroots organization ultimately allows people to attempt to pull themselves out of poverty by observing how to take a vacant lot or an idea and turn it into a business.

Seventeen-year-old Emorej Daniels is one of the people learning to take their community garden experience at TMF and apply it to her personal life. She comes to the garden to “experience the positive vibe and participate in something positive,” she says. She calls the garden her haven, and said she “comes here to learn new things and hopes one day to grow my own garden by learning proper techniques.”

For America Lopez, the community garden space means something different. She sells sweet potatoes and other vegetables during the second Saturday of each month and also at the local farmers’ market.

Jasmin Ross helps Lopez with the customers. She moved from California looking to start a new life and loves how TMF “helps to inspire people and build women’s confidence.” She hopes to start a boutique for women’s clothing someday.

Digging in the Dirt Together

Chapman hopes TMF’s one-of-a-kind program is replicated nationwide. He is actively encouraging similarly situated communities in Baltimore to educate people about TMF, with the hope of enticing others with the notion of coming together through gardening, as well as educating people on financial literacy, workplace development, micro-business initiatives, and social or behavioral issues.

“The response is positive, and others seem interested in what TMF has accomplished and hope to do the same in their communities,” Chapman says.

Serving food to visitors and volunteers at the TigerMountain farm.

As people finish tilling, gardening, and clearing branches, they head to a picnic table at the edge of the garden. Chapman’s wife, Leonara, cooks homemade meals for the volunteers and employees. Everyone gathers together, and one of the volunteers entertains the crowd by sharing his latest rap song. It’s impossible to ignore the palpable joy and togetherness in the garden.

Chapman knows this feeling of community is born out of the land. He pulls out the sweet potato from the ground, then looks up. “We are all digging in the dirt together,” he says. “We are part of this joint effort. The silo of Mother Earth offers hope, sustainability, and spirituality.”

The post A Phoenix Urban Garden Provides At-Risk Individuals a Path Forward appeared first on Civil Eats.