Indigenous farm connecting young people with land, boosting local food access

Editor's Note: This article was originally published by New Mexico In Depth. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

On a small patch of land north of Albuquerque, Orenda Martine reached for a red onion, trimming the root and then the stem, its papery skin rustling in her hands. Once she finished with one onion, she grabbed another from the pile to prepare for delivery to local families.

Rain that began falling the night before one morning earlier this month had just let up. Humidity hung in the air and deep mud where Martine and a few others worked squelched under their feet. Nearby, a second group, laughing occasionally as they went, washed and bagged carrots that went into the ground in the spring.

Martine (Navajo and Laguna/Zuni/Santo Domingo Pueblos) has been helping out at the Indigenous Farm Hub in Corrales for the past few years. 

She’s a graduate of the Native American Community Academy, an Albuquerque school the hub has a close partnership with. Children in kindergarten through high school, from the academy and elsewhere, leave the classroom at least a couple times a year to learn from the land. 

The hub also runs a residency for Native and non-Native people who are interested in farming for a living. Nationally, the average farmer is about 58 years old, so there’s a need to foster the next generation, said co-founder and senior director Alan Brauer. Farmers in the program help harvest the thousands of pounds of vegetables the hub grows every year to feed hundreds of New Mexicans, partly through paid shares. Food from the farm also goes to families with children attending the academy and a Diné language nest. 

“When we pick food, I know that they’re going to families that need it,” Martine said. “I think that’s just really important, since myself and my family, we had a hard time getting food, so it’s just really nice that I get to be able to do that for other people now that I’m older.”

This story is part of Indigenously Positive, a collaborative series from New Mexico In Depth and New Mexico PBS focused on telling stories of Native joy and empowerment. 

Have an idea for a story? Reach out to host/producer Bella Davis (Yurok) at [email protected].

Native people have limited access to healthy foods at some of the highest rates.

That fact has been on Kara Bobroff’s mind for a long time. 

Bobroff (Navajo/Lakota) was the founding principal of NACA. Shortly before it opened in 2006, members of the community gathered to talk about how education could better serve Native children. One of the themes that kept coming up was the need for nutritious food and a reconnection with land and Indigenous agricultural practices, which colonialism violently disrupted.

When the pandemic hit in 2020 and, according to a Native American Agriculture Fund report, worsened food insecurity in tribal communities, Bobroff approached Brauer, also a longtime educator, about farming a few acres. 

This year, blue corn fills up one field that held sunflowers, pumpkins and squash the year before. The neighboring field sat empty for a couple years to let it rest after decades of corn being its only crop.

“We try to use good practices around regenerative, sustainable approaches to agriculture, which are the new terms that are just the way things were done here with the ancestors of this land and the current people who do inhabit this area,” Brauer said. 

Hear more from Martine, Bobroff, Brauer and a few other folks who keep the farm going:

Indigenously Positive is a collaborative series from New Mexico In Depth and New Mexico PBS. Host/producer: Bella Davis (Yurok); Director/producer: Benjamin C Yazza (Diné); Camera: Joey Dunn (Diné) and RJ Torres