In Tucson, ‘Barrio-Supported Agriculture’ Feeds the Latino Community

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Midtown Farm in Tucson, Arizona, is an offshoot of the Flowers & Bullets Collective in the Barrio Centro neighborhood. Tito Romero and Jacob Robles, friends since childhood and now in their early 30s, founded the organization in 2012 to offer healthy food alternatives, improve their neighborhood and share their Latin American and indigenous cultures. “The idea of ​​growing food sustainably has been a trend for some time in predominantly white, medium-sized communities,” says Robles. “For communities in the barrio, Communities of Color, these trends don’t reach us so easily.”

The friends spent about five years planting gardens and installing rainwater harvesting systems in people’s backyards before they and other members of the collective began leasing 4 acres of their closed former elementary school to grow crops and build a sense of community. Where their friends kicked a soccer ball and dangled from climbing frames when they were young, they now harvest fruit and vegetables, raise goats and chickens and organize gardening workshops for their neighbors.

Although urban agriculture has a long history, Barrio Centro is part of a recent movement to increase food security in underserved, largely ethnic communities while maintaining or regaining cultural traditions and values ​​that people in these spaces can share and express. In West Sacramento, California, We Grow Urban Farm is across from an elementary school in the low-income Broderick neighborhood, where it serves local residents and seeks to “empower the next generation of colored farmers.” And in Chicago, the Urban Growers Collective, a black and women-run nonprofit, runs eight urban farms, mostly on the South Side, where more than 76 percent of the population are black.

Jacob Robles heals a clay komal with pickled lime during a recent Flowers & Bullets workshop via grinding dry corn into nixtamal for masa, or dough used to make tortillas. A comal is an ancient type of skillet used in Mexican cuisine. It is also used throughout Central and South America. (Photo by Alfonso Chavez.)

Barrio Centro extends next to a freeway and is directly below the flight route of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. The aircraft noise led to the closure of the Julia Keen Elementary in 2004 and robbed the residents not only of a school, but also of a lively district center. “This school was extremely important to this community,” says Romero. “There were two meals a day for children, it was an afternoon program, it was youth sport, it was activity. It was a safe place. “

The farm is a way to recreate some of the lost common space, says Romero, adding that the goal is to one day buy more or all of the 9.5 acre campus to support the growth. He spends many mornings on the farm doing various tasks. Like most of the twelve core members of the collective, he is a volunteer; Robles is one of three full-time employees. One summer day, Romero was in the greenhouse spraying a natural pesticide on dozen of plant seedlings that were later to be transplanted into the ground. “We have some kale, some Swiss chard, some mustard, lettuce, broccoli,” he says and his voice fades as the thundering roar of a jet penetrates the greenhouse.

Long before the first seeds were sown, he and his friends often thought about the possibility of building their business on campus, says Romero. “For years we drove past the school and said, ‘Damn it, whatever we do in the church, imagine we could do it there.'”

They sold t-shirts with culturally relevant artistic imagery, a company that later funded the first seeds for the agricultural component of Flowers & Bullets. “We started with $ 500 and a couple of T-shirts, meetings in the park, potlucks at the others’ homes,” says Romero. Over time, one backyard garden led to another and to another.

The positive reception of their projects by the neighborhood motivated the group to address the need for green space that residents could call their own, says Robles. They had begun looking at their neighborhood from a different perspective since attending an ethnic study program in high school that encouraged activism and critical thinking from a Mexican-American perspective on issues such as socioeconomic inequality. While the program fueled controversy and litigation, it taught Romero and Robles that they can create change in their own community.

“There are many families here, generation families, and the people are very proud of this community,” says Robles. “And there is a lot of beauty in these things, but when I am completely real, there is also a lot of effort.” This duality is embodied in the name of the collective. “We like to say that flowers are the art, the beauty, the culture – and the bullets are a kind of struggle, the things we had to face in our community and the resistance to those things like gang influence and drug abuse. “

Most of Barrio Centro’s residents are Latinos, many on low incomes. Your neighborhood isn’t gifted with the abundance of farmers’ markets or green spaces found in more affluent neighborhoods, but the collective wanted to change that. In 2017, the Flowers & Bullets Collective received the keys to the vacant school premises after submitting a project proposal for the farm concept to the Tucson Unified School District.

At this point, Dora Martinez, a member of the collective, had joined the non-profit organization. Her previous work as a farm manager was instrumental in developing the group’s sustainable farming program. In April 2018, the group received a three-year scholarship of $ 600,000 from the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona. It was a big push for a project that not only aimed to feed the residents, but also to become a neighborhood resource that could provide educational workshops, jobs, and a sense of self-determination.

Itzel Gamez, 14, uses a metate, a grindstone that originated in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, to smooth corn masa, or batter for tortillas. She lives in the Barrio Centro district and took part in the Flowers & Bullets workshop with her brother Daniel. (Paloma Martinez is in the background). (Photo by Alfonso Chavez)

Existing programs on the farm and others that are developed together with the community are intended to involve and network even more people in the neighborhood. Although activities slowed when the coronavirus pandemic broke out, the farm became a drive-through destination where residents could get masks, hand sanitizer and free seeds.

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