New American Leads the Charge for Small Family Farms
3 December 2005
Chukou Thao is the director of a longtime Oxfam partner organization that represents the immigrant Hmong farmers of California's San Joaquin Valley. Now that Thao is becoming a national spokesperson for immigrant farmers, Oxfam interviewed him and other members of his community about their experience advocating on behalf of small family farming.
When children starting eating fresh strawberries in the cafeterias of Fresno County schools last year, it is unlikely they grasped the symbolism contained within these sweet, delicate fruits. For the Hmong farmers in this central California community, the berries represent one more step forward in their long journey—a journey toward prosperity, and acceptance, in their new country.
"The growing is easy. The Hmong people farmed in hard conditions in Laos," explained Chukou Thao, the immigrant son of Hmong farmers. "Everything else was difficult."
Everything. Accessing farmland, obtaining credit, trying to market Asian vegetables still unfamiliar to American consumers—and all this on top of learning a new language and culture that were utterly foreign to these indigenous people from the rugged mountains of Laos.
Now the director of the National Hmong American Farmers Inc., 35-year old Thao remembers vividly how his parents had to struggle. The family came to the US when he was six, part of the early wave of refugees from a war that many Americans wanted to forget.
Before the war, the Thao family had been successful and well established. His grandfather had been a local mayor; his mother was among the first Hmong girls to go to school. Then the Vietnam War came. Like other men in the community, his father fought on the side of the US military. When Laos fell to the communists and the Americans pulled out, the Hmong were forced to flee for their lives. Many were trapped in refugee camps in Thailand for years, and some still remain.
"After 30 years, many people don’t realize why we came here," said Thao. "We were part of the secret war."
"The Hmong slowly adjusted, but the prejudice is the hardest," explained Peter Vang, the refugee community liaison for Fresno County, himself a Hmong immigrant.
A Different Path
But Chukou Thao made it, landing a stable, 9-to-5 job with the City of Fresno. His family was pleased, but he had something else in mind.
"Chukou had a good job with the city, with opportunities to move up, and good benefits," said Sal Quintero, a former Fresno city councilmember. "Yet he chose a different path. He has made a very strong commitment to his community."
"To see my parents lose it all . . . it makes you want to give more back," reflected Thao. "The resources are there. Many of the people just don’t know (how to access them)."
He decided to use his experience with the city to become executive director of the Hmong American Community (HAC), a nonprofit dedicated to connecting the Hmong —roughly 80% of whom live below the federal poverty line—with jobs, education, housing, and health care.
With assistance from the University of California at Davis, Thao organized training sessions for HAC’s farmer cooperative to meet quality standards of institutional buyers, get fair prices for what they grow, and to find the right markets for their crops—daikon, lemon grass, bok choy, and other Asian vegetables. The co-op has done well: Hmong produce is now sold in gourmet stores and farmers’ markets, some hundreds of miles away in San Francisco. And now they are tackling the mainstream markets—with strawberries as their latest victory.
"Seventy percent of the strawberry growers in Fresno are Hmong. It’s their special crop," said refugee coordinator Peter Vang.
"They doubled the size of strawberries with their farming methods," says Quintero, who adds, however, that his favorite Hmong-grown crop is a bit less sweet: "I’m a Mexican American, and I really like spicy chilies. The Hmong farmers are sure growing some spicy ones."
Last year, Thao spun off the agricultural training center, which is helping farmers to be more successful through instruction in new technology, pesticide regulations, and business development. The center includes an incubator to help new farmers—including farmworkers yearning to cultivate fields of their own—get started.
And the center is not just for the Hmong. Thao has reached across racial and ethnic lines to provide services to other immigrant and minority farmer groups—Minh, Cambodian, Vietnamese, African American, and Latino. He has developed a partnership with the Nisei Farmers League, the group representing Japanese American farmers, who were also forced to confront discrimination.
"When I was growing up on my parents’ farm, I saw them getting ripped off all the time by the buyers because they didn’t speak English," said Thao. "The co-op was established to change that."
Quietly Bridging the Old Ways with the New
Like with other immigrant communities, the challenge is to find a way to succeed in the new world, without forsaking what was most important about the old.
"The older generation changes slowly, but they can change," said Long Yang, one of the group’s board members. Although Yang has become a pharmacist and now holds a senior position with Kaiser Permanente, his father resisted western medicine throughout his life. "My father hung on to the old ways. The elders believe in shaman and spirits."
"The Hmong come from a very traditional leadership practice," explained Peter Vang. "The young aren’t supposed to go out in front of the elders."
Yet somehow, according Vang, Chukou Thao has helped build a bridge for his elders. He had the patience to go back and forth, between the elders and the outside community, often having to tell them what they didn’t want to hear. But he ultimately brought them along—without challenging their traditional values.
"Chukou speaks softly," added Vang, "yet he represents the words of the people who have no voice."
"He’s gotten his community to realize they can work with the overall community" said former city councilmember Quintero. "He’s done it all in a very quiet way."
Ready for the National Stage
It is Thao’s ability to serve as a bridge that is defining the next phase of the organization’s work. Newly renamed the National Hmong American Farmers Inc., this grassroots organization is poised to make its debut on the national stage.
With a $100,000 grant from the US Department of Agriculture, it will be assessing needs and identifying strategies for Hmong and other immigrant farmer groups nationwide, including the Hmong communities who farm in Minnesota, the Pacific Northwest, and the Carolinas. To do this, Thao is setting up the organization’s first office in Washington, DC, where they will advocate on behalf of the issues that affect all small farmers: workers compensation, health and safety, and access to markets, among others.
"Chukou is really emerging as a national leader on Hmong and new immigrant farming issues," said Jaeda Harmon, program officer for Oxfam’s US Regional Office which has provided support to the organization since the late 1990s.
Keeping the Lights On
None of this, of course, has been easy.
"There have been times when we haven’t had much money. We really had to scrape," recalled Thao. "Oxfam helped us keep the lights on. That’s sometimes all you need: to keep the lights on."
"We never set out to do these things. We were just farmers," he added. "It’s been a great journey."
