Extension Highlights

New Roots

Maria Moreira helps new immigrant farmers succeed in much the same way she has succeeded – by turning to their roots, and testing those roots in new soil.

Maria and Extension professor Frank Mangan have created a new agricultural niche in Massachusetts by working with recent immigrants from places like Brazil, Central America, Puerto Rico, southeast Asia and elsewhere to develop the techniques and infrastructure necessary to grow and market produce that – until now – has only been available in those far-flung locales.

Together they have become known as the “ethnic vegetable team,” though the designation does little to convey the richness and complexity of their project, which tends to be a colorful blending of cultural, nutritional, gastronomic, economic and agricultural considerations.

As Maria describes the evolution of her work, however, she inevitably begins talking about a small farm in Lancaster, Massachusetts . . . about its role as an unexpected incubator for her work with immigrant communities . . . and, beyond that, about the small island in the Azores where she was born.

Maria grew up on the tiny island of Santa Maria, 760 miles off the coast of Portugal. Only 37 miles long and 10 miles wide, Santa Maria fostered a lifestyle that was as rich in its work ethic and family values as it was limited in food choices and amenities, especially in the 1960s. It was, in fact, those values and the desire for broader opportunities that brought Maria’s family to the United States in 1966, when she 12 years old. The family came to the U.S. to join Maria’s grandmother, Maria Morua, a Massachusetts native who had lived in the Azores.

It was in Massachusetts that Maria met another Santa Maria native, Manuel “Manny” Moreira. They married in 1972, and in 1976 they bought a house with five acres in Chelmsford, Massachusetts – their first farm and a dream come true.

The only trouble, recalls Maria, is that the community did not share that dream. As the population blossomed, some former farm towns became far more interested in growing house lots than crops.

“The community no longer considered itself to be a farming community,” says Maria. “It just was not supportive of agriculture. My husband and I had to take outside jobs in different places. It wasn’t until nearly five years later, in 1980, that we were able to buy our present farm acreage in Lancaster.”

Maria Moreira with Geraldine Herring, USDA office of Outreach, and Stephan L. Tubene of Maryland Cooperative Extension

In 1982, the couple purchased 35 cows and began trying to make a living in dairy farming. “We both dreamed of how wonderful it was going to be, working together just as our families had,” she recalls. “Working as a family was very familiar to us, and we longed to raise our four children as we had been raised back in Santa Maria.”

Again, things didn’t work out exactly as they had planned. By the mid 1980s, the milk check still could not cover the farm and family expenses no matter how many hours they worked or how hard they tried to save. “We thought, we talked, we worried. We just wanted to keep the farm, and keep us all together,” she says. Again the family looked to its own roots for an answer. That answer turned out to be Queijo Açoreano.

“Queijo Açoreano is the Portuguese cheese that I ate as a child,” she says. “We realized that the only way to keep the farm was to add value to the milk we produced. There was no other way. We couldn’t sit there and hope that milk prices would rise. So we made cheese.”

Manny’s Dairy Farm Queijo Açoreano, to be exact. Maria and Manny tested their new product first among friends, and then in the area’s burgeoning Portuguese community. It proved to be a hit.

It took another two years for the couple to develop a marketing and production strategy, and to build the needed infrastructure, with much-needed help from the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources.

Hard work, big decisions, and family unity were nothing new to Maria and Manny. It was their heritage.

What happened next, however, was completely new, and came from the other side of the world. While Maria and Manny were putting their own heritage to work, another immigrant group was struggling nearby. Hmong refugees from the mountains of Laos desperately wanted land to grow their traditional vegetables.

“A elderly Hmong lady asked if she could have a piece of land on our dairy farm. We were so impressed by her dedication and knowledge about growing vegetables that, when she asked for more land for her extended family the following season, we encouraged her to move to our crop field.”

More Hmong families have moved into the area, and over the past 20 years, between 50 and 100 Hmong families at any particular time have consistently farmed 20 acres.

“We were dairy farmers. The Hmong loved vegetable production; but the passion was the same – there was an immediate connection because of their shared love of farming,” she says. When their youngest child left for college, Maria began assisting the group in marketing its vegetables to Southeast Asian immigrant communities, to ethnic restaurants, and to upscale suburban farmers markets.

The approach worked so well that Maria founded the Flats Mentor Farm (FMF), located on a 70-acre river bottom piece of land in Lancaster, Massachusetts. FMF assists and supports small farmers of diverse ethnic backgrounds with the land, farming infrastructure and marketing assistance needed to promote and sustain successful farming enterprises. FMF promotes economically viable agricultural production that protects the environment through the practice of sustainable farming. This program offers resources, hands-on-training and technical assistance on soil fertility, irrigation, pest and weed management and marketing. FMF also provides opportunities for beginning farmers to increase their economic returns, and quality of life.

In 2007, thanks to Maria’s tenacity and support from UMass Amherst, Heifer International, USDA, CSREES, and the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture, the immigrant farmers at the FMF worked 26 acres of land, sold their ethnic crops at 23 farmers markets, and grossed just over $20,000 on their newly piloted wholesaling effort.

All of Maria and Manny’s children have left the farm, along with the milking cows. The farm survives, however, thanks to the heritage of hard work, adaptation, and community that the couple brought from the Azores. Manny is operating an Ethnic Custom Slaughter facility at the farm and Maria is doing what she loves best – working with UMass Extension to set up agricultural marketing systems for other farmers with a similar passion. She jokes that the passion for farming is a “disease.”

“When you have the passion, you need to make it work for you,” she says. “I want to help other farmers, especially new farmers facing many of the challenges we faced, learn how to make agricultural marketing systems work for them.”