Longing for the Taste of Home

BERKELEY FOOD INSTITUTE’S HUNGRY FOR CHANGE PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS SONOMA COUNTY WHEAT FARMER MAI NGUYEN

“My mom really loves bread. She used to love to eat a lot of French baguettes in Vietnam. And when the French first introduced wheat there, there was this variety called Chiddam Blanc de Mars [soft white spring bread] that now you can’t find anywhere.

I eventually got a hold of it and grew it for my mom and met someone who could make it into a baguette for her in that old French style. And giving that to my mom and seeing how happy she was, that’s the kind of work that takes a community to bring something back to life that’s so viscerally dear to someone I care so much about. There aren’t even words for just how profoundly beautiful that moment was.”

—Mai Nguyen in Hungry for Change, a video by Fabian Aguirre and Maya Pisciotto of The Understory for the Berkeley Food Institute

Last summer, the Berkeley Food Institute at UC Berkeley launched Hungry for Change, a multimedia project featuring 20 trailblazing California food systems reformers dedicated to advancing equity, health and sustainability in food and farming systems.

The individuals profiled work in a range of fields including farming, food advocacy and food security. What all these innovators have in common: They offer seeds of hope during challenging times.

Mai Nguyen, who farms heirloom grains in Sonoma County, is one of those changemakers.

Nguyen, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, has long balanced farming with farmer advocacy, traveling across the Golden State as California organizer for the National Young Farmers Coalition. Nguyen recently co-authored a report on obstacles—including securing land, facing climate change and economic insecurity— facing the newest growers in the nation’s largest agriculture state. The child of Vietnamese refugees, Nguyen grew up in San Diego, where they worked on refugee resettlement projects, including school gardens, a farm incubator program and a food pantry. A UC Berkeley graduate, Nguyen is involved in social justice efforts and farmer-led policy on behalf of farmers of color.

In eight years of farming, Nguyen has encountered both sexism and racism in the fields. They’ve been challenged by male farm equipment sellers on whether they know how to operate a tractor; they’ve also had trash dumped on their property in an area where Confederate flags are a common sight. And Nguyen’s endured people yelling racial epithets, threatening violence or telling them to “go home.” Racism isn’t unique to cities; in the country—even in bucolic settings—it’s also a problem and sometimes completely prevents young people of color from farming, says Nguyen, who farmed in Mendocino County for several years and relocated, in part, because of the prejudice they encountered there.

So Nguyen knows first hand the obstacles female and minority farmers face—especially in today’s political climate. Nguyen actively works on ways to reduce such barriers, including new legislation that may bring recourse to farmers like them who have been federally classified as “socially disadvantaged.” That includes growers who have been subject to racial, ethnic or gender prejudice.

The Farmer Equity Act of 2017 requires California officials to address challenges that farmers of color face by making access to government resources more equitable.

In concrete terms, it means creating a department-level staff position to help these farmers navigate the largely white, male world of agriculture. “From land to loans, knowledge dissemination to seed restoration, racial discrimination isn’t just in history books—it permeates the everyday lives of farmers of color,” says Nguyen. “This act is a step toward farmers of color having a voice in state policy-making so that we can advocate for our needs and access resources to meet them.”

Farmers like Nguyen want to see more equitable access to land, state funding and technical assistance. Buying or leasing property is tougher for an Asian female farmer than for a white male counterpart, says Nguyen, who leases their land. Ditto getting access to equipment. “People just don’t take me seriously,” says Nguyen, age 34. “They question my experience, knowledge and ability.”

Given how isolated—but also antagonized—Nguyen has felt as a female farmer of color, she decided to reach out to other growers to create community, pool resources and discuss common practices like sourcing seeds, cultivation techniques and selling strategies. What started as one contact with a Korean-American female farmer grew into a network that shares knowledge, stories and solidarity. The group founded by Nguyen, the Asian American Farmers Alliance, brainstorms marketing opportunities, collaborates on consumer education, discusses policy and shares best practices.

Strength in numbers is reinforced in Nguyen’s current and former employment. At their previous workplace, the California Center for Cooperative Development, Nguyen witnessed the collective power that comes with sharing tasks and responsibilities with a group of worker-owners, many of them with a food or farm orientation. Now with the National Young Farmers Coalition, Nguyen describes a pressing need for political action to ensure successful pathways to farming for the next generation—and they’re intent on organizing growers and developing leadership skills within its ranks to make that happen.

Nguyen is also active on the food side in advocacy work with the California Grain Campaign. This group of farmers, millers and bakers wants bakers who sell at farmers’ markets across the state to use locally grown grain flour in 20% of their baked goods by 2020.

“Farmers’ markets play an important role in educating food producers and consumers about the wide range of wholesome grains grown in this state,” says Nguyen, who is on a mission to expose eaters to the wide diversity of flavors and nutrition found in whole grains.

Nguyen has produced two catalogs for the campaign, championing California grain growers and highlighting heirloom varieties, such as Sonora wheat, spelt, Purple Prairie barley, red fife, emmer and durum farro. The publications, they say, are modeled more on fashion look-books than seed catalogs. Nguyen wants to get producers and consumers jazzed about hearty grains.

Advocacy is important, but farming is what feeds Nguyen. This farmer grows grains—currently heritage wheat and quinoa—using environmentally regenerative methods including dry-farming and no-till techniques (tilling, or mechanical plowing, disrupts the soil). “When I first started farming I sought out heritage wheats like Sonora because they are so well suited for the conditions where I grow,” says Nguyen. “The genetic diversity of heritage/heirloom wheats means they can adapt to varying conditions, including drought.”

Such varieties, says Nguyen, can be tough to source via commercial seed-stock companies. That’s where saving seeds is vital to maintaining diverse grain crops. “The farmers invested in bringing back heritage and specialty grains operate on a small scale, making them the most vulnerable businesses in agriculture,” says Nguyen, whose farming plans on one plot were set back by the devastating Wine Country fires of 2017 and this year by persistent rains. “Yet small farms are essential to all of us. They nurture unconventional crops and help diversify our food base.”

When Nguyen was a child, their maternal grandmother taught them how to grow plants and save seeds. “She would tell me when the weeds would grow what it would mean about the soil. She helped me understand the role of all plants, not just the ones you purposely cultivate.” Growing food and cooking at home was an economic necessity. “Everyone says food is medicine. But we didn’t have health insurance,”

Nguyen says. “Eating well was always a focus in my family.” Nguyen’s whole-grain farming philosophy is not just about culture, history and sustainability. It’s about taste too. “For thousands of years there were all these different types of delicious-tasting grains, but now there’s just mostly white, bland, no-flavor flour in the grocery store.”

As a child of Vietnamese refugees, Nguyen says it’s no coincidence that they became a sustainable farmer. Sharing traditions like growing and cooking food is a way of keeping a culture alive in a new place, even when one’s home has been destroyed and one’s country lost. “For me, farming is a way to keep in contact with the present while honoring the past.”

Humanizing all aspects of the food system—which has been dictated by Big Ag and Big Food—is key to making it fair, accessible, equitable and environmentally sustainable, says Nguyen. “I don’t want people to see me as just a producer of a product. I’m not a factory. I’m a person who has developed knowledge and skills. That’s not something that is easily replaceable.”

Adapted with permission from Hungry for Change, a publication of the Berkeley Food Institute. Food.Berkeley.edu/resources/changemakers/the-changemakers-of-hungry-for-change.