Back to the Root? Immigrant Farmers, Ethnographic Romanticism, and Untangling Food Sovereignty in Western Oregon

Abstract

Immigrants—especially those from farmworker or campesino backgrounds—have gained attention as promising recruits for a new generation of sustainable farmers. Nonprofits promoting this aspirational vision of food justice link sustainability to empowered workers and communities of color, and to the preservation or revival of (agri)cultural traditions. I present findings from ongoing research showing that Oregon nonprofit food sovereignty initiatives training Mexican immigrant farmers have achieved successes as cultural, community building, and educational programs, but have struggled to produce viable farm businesses. I contrast these farmers with the less ecologically oriented and less self-consciously “cultural” immigrant farmers who work without organizational support in the same region, and who find an aspirational agrarian good life in more conventional agricultural practices. I argue that activist and academic formulations of food sovereignty linking peasant heritage, sustainability, labor rights, and immigration justice may lead scholars to overstate immigrant farmers' actual propensity for "alternative" agriculture and ignore those immigrant farmers who fail to conform to this ideal.