While attending EcoFarm 2020, I interviewed three members of the Ecological Farming Conference Diversity Advisory Group. I recorded and produced this story that aired on our local public radio station’s weekly talk show.
Transcript:
[RAD] At the end of January and Pacific Grove, the ecological farming Association celebrated its 40th year of convening with farmers, educators and eaters. In the past four years, eco farm has actively worked to incorporate more diverse voices with conference presenters, session topics and audience members. Coming up next hear from three leaders with eco farms Diversity Advisory Group about their progress and presenting a more inclusive gathering. We hear first from Amy Wu, a presenter at this year’s conference, and founder of from farms to incubators, which uses storytelling to increase awareness of women leaders and entrepreneurs and the agriculture sector to encourage women to pursue careers in ag tech. [Amy Wu] This is my third year coming to eco farm. This is the first year that I’ve been very involved with the Diversity Advisory Group. Though I’ve been sitting on the group for a little bit over a year, and this year, as part of the group, I was heavily involved with the programming aspect, and I proposed two different panels. One of the panels is an untold history Asians in farming. And what inspired that panel was that I, as somebody who was documents women, farmers and innovators in agriculture and ag tech, noticed that there was not a lot of information in history about the contributions of different folks, different farmers, from different races and ethnicities. When it comes to AG conferences and ag gatherings, I attend quite a few ag tech and ag conferences sometimes. And I would look around and I would just see a lot of middle aged white men, frankly, and when there were panels, I certainly didn’t see a celebration of anything related to Asians in farming. So I proposed this panel, and it got in and I thought that I was just thrilled that we had Larry Hirahara, who’s a Japanese American farmer, so much experience in the Salinas Valley. And also Robina body, who is an academic, but she’s also been organic farming herself, and comes from generations of farming from she’s Punjabi. [RAD] Why do you think there are not as many women or people of color represented at these group meetings for AG? [Amy Wu] That’s a really good question. I think some of it comes down to culture as well. And I can speak about culture coming from as an Asian American and somebody who’s specifically a Chinese American, I think, in the Asian culture, traditionally, this comes from actually having lived in Asia and also spent a lot of time with my grandparents and relatives in Asia. We tend to not tout our own successes and contributions. Traditionally, it’s been we’ll keep our heads down and work hard and move forward that way. And it’s an immigrant story as well, my parents generation. However, I think that unfortunately, the impact of that is that a lot of stories and of our contributions and successes in history itself is actually not told. When I pick up books about history of agriculture in the US, certainly, I don’t see the stories of, let’s say, Japanese American contribution of farmers in the Central Coast. And I also think it’s outreach. For example, you asked about, well, why aren’t there more folks from different ethnicities and races at farming conferences like at Eco farm? I’m seeing it start to happen slowly, stride by stride. But I think it comes down to outreach. I mean, I do know Asian farmers and some young Asian farmers in California, and when I said to them, I’m headed to eco farm, they said, What is eco farm? I said, eco farm is an organic, a huge organic farming gathering, you know, in California. And they, first of all, didn’t even know about it. And when I talked to them about it, they were like, well, why should we go? So I think it’s a matter of going into the communities and at a local level and sharing. Why is it important to attend gatherings such as eco farm? And that’s a critical question. Why is it important? Well, it’s important because the land that’s being farmed, and the food that we eat that’s being grown is not just being grown by the Caucasian farmer. I mean, there’s great contributions there, but it’s actually being grown from people of all different races and ethnicities, and there’s different strategies of farming that they may bring historically as well, from their traditions. There’s a critical connection between food and culture as well, and I think that’s an important part of the story of farming too. I’ll give an example. It’s Chinese New Year’s, and it’s the year of the rat, the holiday. And the celebration of a New Year is celebrated by food. There’s like seven different kinds of Lucky foods that are eaten, and each of them represents something specifically that symbolizes something for the new year, as something as simple as noodles, long noodles that are not cut, symbolizes a long life for the new year. But that’s a simple example of how food can be connected to culture and then cultural heritage, the kinds of pro. Produce that are grown of Asian vegetables like bok choy or Asian leafy greens. Well, those were, those were grown and eaten by when I go back to Asia, you know, my grandparents, great grandparents, when we gather as a family together, we gather with food, and it’s a common ground. I think that’s a critical aspect as well of food and farming that should be talked about more. [RAD] I love bok choy. That’s one of my favorites. [Amy Wu] Yes, I love bok choy, too. So my hope is that with future conferences and gatherings in agriculture and food and farming, that there will come a day when we don’t need a Diversity Advisory Group anymore, that that’s not even part of the conversation. That is just part of the fabric, and I’m hopeful that that’s going to be the case. So as I look forward, maybe, who knows, 10 years from now, looking back, I personally feel like the landscape will be different. I don’t know how quickly change will happen, but I am more on the hopeful side. It would be great to create some sort of movement, like a group, where we reach out to different communities of farmers, not just Japanese, not just Chinese, but Hammond Vietnamese, you know, Laotian, Korean American, and just have a collection of oral history and photographs and memories and bring them together, and somehow, within the state of California, find a way to share those out and encourage each of those communities to continue to share their stories. So I think, you know, obviously it takes one person plus another person plus another person, but that’s my that is my hope, and that’s why I think storytelling is so powerful. [RAD] Next, learn more about the origins of eco farm’s Diversity Advisory Group from volunteer and organizer Peter Ruddock. Peter is a sustainable food advocate and small business consultant who also works with slow food California. [Peter Ruddock] Eco farm, in its 40th year, has a long history and a good history. It has done many things, but it hasn’t felt welcoming to many people. It hasn’t been a very diverse place. That’s important, because if we’re going to have ecological food, the kind of food that our farmers produce available to everybody. We have to include everybody at all stages of the process. We have to have a diverse group of farmers. We have to have a diverse group of volunteers, of attendees, of speakers, of board members of everything. The demographic makeup of eco farm has not matched California, and it’s our rough goal to make it match so that we represent everybody. The origin story actually has to do with one urban ag educator, a woman of color, who was demeaned because what she did on half an acre wasn’t meaningful. I find that people demean urban ag all the time because they just think about growing food. And urban AG has so many benefits and it is so meaningful, it has to be part of what we talk about. So we need to be diverse in, including urban AG, we need to be diverse in including women and people of color. And looking at what happened, a number of us got a little bit upset, and we called a meeting, and we said, we’re going to do something about this, shehad said, actually, that she didn’t want to come back to the conference, like she was kind of a closing of the door for her.
She said it in a way that got back to us, that she didn’t want to come back to the conference, and that was part of what made us a little upset. We want her at the conference. We have to make a change, and when we convened to talk about making a change. We found a few skeptics who said, Oh, we’ve tried to make a change before. It’s very hard, and it can’t even backfire. You can end up appearing to be doing a tokenism. And we heard them and we heard their advice, but there are actually about 20 of us sitting around a table on an educational farm, as a matter of fact, and we said, Thank you for the advice, and it helps us in our guidelines. But we have to try, and it’s different with this many people. It’s different with the evolution of the conference and the consciousness, and we’ll keep those things in mind. They actually joined our committee. During the course of 2016 we planned a lot of things. We planned changes. We were a little nervous about how they would be received. Turns out, they were received very well when I showed up at January 2017 and I part. My car, there was a large van that pulled up at the same time, and people got out, and they looked a little bit lost, and they asked me about registration. I said, Walk with me. We walked over to registration together. They told me their story. They were a bunch of urban, AG, folks, a very diverse group of folks from Philadelphia who had come to California just for the conference, because they saw the change in our program and wanted to be a part of it. Well, my spirits raised. I told all my colleagues, it was a success. It was a start. We know this is a long road, but it was a success. By the end of 2017 we were glowing. This is our fourth conference with the conscious effort to be diverse and inclusive, and each year it gets a little bit better. We’re feeling really good that we’re on to a meaningful change here.
[RAD] New eco farm Executive Director Andy Fisher offers the big picture of how he sees the role of this organic farming conference as a Big Tent event that should reflect the broad diversity of the state of California. Eco farm should be welcoming to everyone interested in food and farming in the United States. [Andy Fisher] Here at Eco farm, we try to have a holistic picture of food. There’s, you know, lots of workshops about how to make money and how to run your business, kind of the business end of it, because we all, you know, we all need to to pay our bills. But there’s also elements that are about community building, about society, and there’s, there’s a lot of spiritual parts of this too. There’s, there’s workshops from indigenous folks, there’s ceremonies on the beach, there’s meditation, there’s yoga, there’s things that appeal to folks on on multiple levels. There was a story that was told last night from an African American woman named Joy Moore, who was who was given an award, and she said that the first time she came here was 2530 years ago, and there were only two black people here. So we’ve, you know, made a deliberate effort over the years to increase the amount of people of color at this conference, and with the idea that the who comes to the conference reflects the broader demographics of California at large. And so we’ve, we’ve made a lot of progress in that regard, and we still have a long way to go. So there’s, you know, there’s a lot of effort towards raising the money to provide scholarships to folks who can’t afford it, doing more marketing, doing changes to make people more welcome, as well as shaping the content. There’s a lot of the workshops to that regard. I’d like to see much more, and I’d like to see them be much more sophisticated and kind of address the issues more deeply. [RAD] Tell us about where do you think eco farm is going in year 41 and beyond? [Andy Fisher] Well, we’re certainly gonna be here in Asilomar. And you know, we’re looking to, as I said, we’re looking to kind of shake up the content a little bit and provide maybe more in depth workshops, provide more content around equity and inclusion, while always providing content for farmers on practical skills and tools that they need to know. So yeah, I don’t, I don’t see the content changing so much. I think we’re going to continue to try to try to find ways to diversify the audience and to bring in more of a diverse set of players, whether it’s, you know, Latino farmers or Asian farmers or what have you, or people from urban areas. So, you know, I think those are the kind of the obvious directions we’re heading. I’m not a farmer myself. I think that that this conference is a big tent, and it’s for not just for farmers, but for anybody who cares about the future of food and farming in this country. Yeah.
