Latino farmers benefit from UO ties

June strawberries mark a blessed end to the rainy season. With thoughts of shortcake, smoothies and homemade jam, soggy Oregonians rally on U-pick farms to savor the first taste of summer. For one group of farmers, the U-pick season means blue skies of another sort: a step away from poverty and funds for their kids' educations.

They are members of Huerto de la Familia (the Family Garden), a Eugene-based nonprofit helping local low-income families become economically self-sufficient through organic agriculture. For several years, UO staff members, students and alumni have pitched in to support Huerto and the people it serves.

Average families of four seeking the organization's support live on less than $1,500 per month. Unemployment, language barriers, immigration status, and low education levels push them to the margins of society and many of these families don't have enough food, says Gerardo Sandoval, associate professor in the UO Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management.

Huerto provides garden space and seeds to participants. They learn how to grow their own food and how to start independent food-related businesses like the U-pick farm.

Sarah Cantril '90, Huerto founder and executive director, started a nonprofit organization that rented community garden space in West Eugene to families for growing their own food; later, she secured a grant to launch a farm-stand business owned by four families who invest some of the profits into college funds for their kids.

University architecture students, meanwhile, have worked with farmers and their families to design and build a building that serves as a produce stand, a tool shed, a packing area, a garlic processing room and a space for general meetings.

"It was the perfect project for a perfect client," said senior Will Smith, then enrolled in a landscape architecture course focused on site design and construction. "It brought everyone together."

While the architecture students were pounding nails, another group of students addressed Huerto's other needs.

Renee Irvin, associate professor of planning, public policy and management, was teaching a course in philanthropy in which students researched local nonprofits, visited them, examined their finances, and presented their findings to their classmates. In 2010, the group awarded Huerto $15,000 to hire a garden project manager, a gift made possible by the Oregon-based Faye and Lucille Stewart Foundation.

The position was filled by Joanna Lovera '00, a longtime organic gardener who has worked on the UO's Urban Farm. She now helps 60 families grow corn, chilies, tomatoes, and cilantro by soliciting seed and seedling donations from local farms, arranging compost deliveries to garden sites in Eugene and Springfield, and by working side by side with gardeners.

She has also organized countless UO student volunteers from fraternities, sororities, Freshman Interest Groups and more to whack weeds, plant seeds, spread compost, sprinkle fertilizer and fix rototillers with Huerto families.

For the past three years, interns paid with stipends coordinated through the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics have kept Huerto operational by acting as grant writers, public-relations people and board members.

This year, the center will host a media and democracy conference that will include the screening of a three-part documentary on Huerto as part of the event's film festival. “Harvest of Pride,” which focuses on the Small Farmers Project, was written, directed and produced by environmental sciences graduate Chris Roddy '12.

Huerto's communications and development coordinator, Joanna Bernstein '12, is collaborating with the center to promote the films on campus and in Eugene.

There's more to this story than growing food and selling strawberries, she says.

- abridged from a story by Michele Taylor, for Oregon Quarterly