Cultivating Food Sovereignty Where There are Few Choices

Huertas did not begin as a research project, but rather as a grassroots effort to build gardens with Latino/a migrant farm workers on rural dairies in Vermont using donated materials and time. Over four summers it has grown into a larger, more organized food access project. In 2013, 23 gardens across northern Vermont were planted, filled with herbs and vegetables that remind these workers of home. In providing access to culturally familiar, fresh produce to a highly vulnerable population, it remains contextualized within the larger intersection of the commercial dairy industry and transnational migration. In this way, it offers a compelling lens to problematize questions of food sovereignty. The farmworkers participating in the project are geographically isolated and most do not have reliable access to transportation, while living thousands of miles away from family and friends. In no way are these workers experiencing the full benefits of food sovereignty. However, by connecting farmworkers with volunteers, materials, and the permission to plant these gardens at employee housing units, Huertas aims to address the disparities in access to nutritious food while simultaneously bridging the barriers of isolation and social inequities. Often characterized as a “nontraditional” destination for Latino/a migration, Vermont has seen a steady increase in the number of migrant farmworkers from Mexico and Latin American countries since the late 1990s. Despite the newness of this trend, the Latino/a population in Vermont has grown 24 times faster than the overall population in the first decade of the new millennium (Baker and Chappelle 2012). As the second whitest state in the nation (trailing only Maine), these demographic changes have not gone unnoticed, and the presence of these workers reveals the hidden dynamics behind Vermont’s iconic working landscape. Currently, there are an estimated 1200 Latino/a migrant dairy workers in the state. However, these numbers are merely estimates, given that the vast majority -- roughly 90% -- of these workers are undocumented (Radel et.al. 2010). For many, migrating to the United States became the best, or indeed, the only option as rural livelihoods and smallholder agriculture have been devastated in the wake of neoliberal policies like the North American Free Trade Agreement. Now in Vermont, these workers experience a great deal of fear, isolation, and anxiety connected to their presence as “invisible workers” laboring in what has been characterized as a “carceral landscape” (McCandless 2009). This paper examines the development and future of Huertas, an applied food security project co-coordinated by authors of this paper. Together, we question the ways the project and its aims engage with the concept of food sovereignty. The goal of this paper is to present our applied work in progress and seek feedback on a broader ethnographic research project that is emerging simultaneously. Through discussing the ways that our work complicates the notion of food sovereignty, we aim to develop an approach to activist scholarship that contributes to the autonomy and justice of all involved.

Teresa Mares Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Vermont; affiliated with the Transdisciplinary Research Initiative in Food Systems. Teresa Mares received her Ph.D. (2010) in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Washington. Her research focuses on the intersection of food and migration studies. She is currently developing a new ethnographic project on food access strategies and food security concerns within Vermont’s migrant worker community.

Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland Migrant Health Coordinator for Bridges to Health, a Program of University of Vermont Extension. Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland is currently completed her MS in Community Development and Applied Economics at the University of Vermont, focusing her research on Health Care Access and Utilization of Health Services by Latino Dairy Workers in the state of Vermont.

Jessie Mazar Research Assistant and Program Assistant for Huertas. Jessie Mazar received her BA in Global Studies from the University of Vermont in 2012

Food Sovereignty: a critical dialogue, 14 - 15 September, New Haven.