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Planting Roots: Perspectives on Food-based Belonging

by Lauren Pong

Last week, I answered an unexpected call from a farmer. 


Xiaowen*,” Kathy began, “when are you going to come visit my farm again?” (*Note: *Xiaowen is my Chinese name.)


Her call had reached me while I was in my room. A few weeks prior and amidst the uncertainty of the GrizzlyCorps funding cuts, I had moved back in with my mom. It was my sixth move in the past two years. I was now working remotely, focusing on writing the manuscript for the survey study I had conducted earlier that year. No longer was I at the UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE) office near Gilroy, where I could arrange and go for farm visits on the same day.


Yet, as I heard Kathy utter my Chinese name––a cherished one that I rarely get to hear these days––I knew her call had come at the perfect time. While still living in Gilroy, meeting directly with farmers had grounded me and my GrizzlyCorps projects, which revolved around supporting small-scale farmers. In contrast, I've been feeling wistful these past few weeks. I missed knowing that face-to-face interactions with farmers are only a short trip away. Kathy’s call was a welcome reminder of my connection to the Asian farmer community in Santa Clara County, even without me being there. 


If you’re at all familiar with the Bay Area, you may be thinking: I didn’t know that there were Asian farmers in Santa Clara! It certainly was a surprise to my friends and family when I told them about this fellowship. Indeed, Santa Clara county––better known for Silicon Valley and high-tech innovation––has almost 200 Asian farmers. Most of these farmers are concentrated in the southernmost parts of the county: Morgan Hill, San Martin, and Gilroy.


My research on the topic yielded very few resources, but among the ones I could find was a 1997 article from a museum exhibit and a more recent 2013 book. These two resources taught me about the rich––but often overlooked––history of Asian farmers in Santa Clara. When the county’s agricultural industry began in the 1870s, 42% of vegetable farmers and 100% of strawberry farmers were Chinese. However, racist sentiment and a brewing economic downturn in California made Chinese people into a convenient scapegoat. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.


This wasn’t the only case of institutionalized racism affecting Asian farmers. Between the 1850s and 1940s, a plethora of discriminatory policies and laws targeted Asians. These included denial of citizenship, being unable to testify against a white person in court, inability to legally own land, multiple exclusionary policies, laws targeting Asian businesses and culture, and the Japanese internment during World War II. This last policy forced Japanese farmers off their land and evaporated their businesses in the process. 


Yet, even in the face of all these institutionalized barriers, Asians still found a way to farm this land. Post World War II, Chinese and Japanese farmers helmed Santa Clara’s chrysanthemum flower industry, its most valuable agricultural product at the time. Asian farmers maintained strong community networks, established the Bay Area Chrysanthemum Growers Association, and cultivated a culture of mutual support and knowledge-sharing. Today, the region’s Asian farmers help make Asian vegetables a top value crop in Santa Clara, providing produce to the Bay Area and beyond.


A typical greenhouse structure for growing Asian vegetables in Santa Clara County. Many greenhouses are also infrastructural vestiges from the chrysanthemum growing industry from the 1950s to the 1980s
A typical greenhouse structure for growing Asian vegetables in Santa Clara County. Many greenhouses are also infrastructural vestiges from the chrysanthemum growing industry from the 1950s to the 1980s

It both inspires and comforts me, learning how resilient those sharing my Asian heritage are to threats of exclusion and erasure. If Asians of the past and present have weathered adversity to find belonging in this land, then there’s nothing stopping me from doing the same. I say this as someone who has struggled to consider any physical place “home” for most of her life. For the past ten years, I’ve moved over a dozen times and across three different countries. I’ve often felt like a perpetual foreigner, even now, living in the state I was born in. However, I want to change this. I want to support a sense of belonging in myself and others. I’ve also realized that through food––growing it, preparing it, eating it––we all have a sacred connection to the land, to the local. This realization has led me to sustainable food systems and agriculture. It’s also led me to my current role as a GrizzlyCorps fellow at UCCE.


As a fellow, I help gather input from farmers to inform programming and policies, communicate their stories to increase farmer visibility, and provide Chinese language support for technical assistance and outreach activities. I’ve also been fortunate to build relationships with these farmers, eat the produce they share with me, volunteer at their farms, and learn about their experiences and lives. In doing so, I’ve felt more connected to my food, my community, and the Bay Area. 


With Kathy’s call, I was also reminded that this connection isn’t one-way. The Gilroy farming community is now linked to me just as much as I am linked to them. Gilroy is farther away than before, but I shouldn’t treat that as a barrier to maintaining the relationships I’ve established. Encouraged by this, I arranged with Kathy a time to visit. I’m now going to see her on her farm next week!


What does it mean to belong to a place, and how can we become that? Of course, the answer will look different for everyone. For me, learning about the resiliency of farmers who share my heritage, meeting the Asian farmers of today, listening to their lived experiences, and sharing them with a wider audience, I think I’ve begun to find mine.


Left: Me harvesting yam leaves at a Chinese grower’s farm; Right: Garlic chives from a farmer I cooked for dinner


 
 
 

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