Growing Farmers of the Chihuahuan Desert – Preparing for a Hotter, Drier Future
For more than 10 years, La Semilla’s farm team, led by Co-founder and Director Cristina Dominguez, has been steadily building from the ground up – cultivating soil health with respect for the Chihuahuan Desert, building connections across La Semilla’s programs, and fostering relationships across the region with people working towards a healthy, equitable food system. This year marks a momentous milestone in the expansion of that network. After years of deep practice, we launched our first agroecology farming fellowship and graduated the first cohort.
With Latin American origins, agroecology is a global agricultural framework and social movement founded by Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous rural people. Through the lens of agroecology, farming is rooted in place, practice, and movement. As Practice, it is inclusive of farm production practices – such as soil health, seed saving, knowing desert ecologies, and navigating climate impacts through the wisdom of those practices – with values-based decision-making. As Movement, it includes environmental justice, food justice, integrated cultural and intergenerational practices, gender equity, and healing from historical trauma. Agroecology invites place-based, community-led processes and context-specific approaches.
Our fellowship offers a unique opportunity for beginner farmers and food justice advocates to expand on their knowledge base, share in their experiences, and learn from a growing network of local farmers and community experts from various disciplines in our Chihuahuan Desert amidst the increasing impacts of climate change. The fellowship was designed by farm team members Cristina Dominguez, Julieta Saucedo, and Josh Jasso as a cohort system with the intention of cultivating community among the fellows and strengthening a broader, supportive community of desert farmers and agroecological practitioners.
The apprenticeship incorporates immersive hands-on learning and instruction designed around agroecological principles. Biweekly instruction focuses on both agroecology as practice and as a movement, highlighting the close connections between cultivating soil and change in our desert and border region. Fellows learn and work at La Semilla Community Farm, as well as with farmer mentors at varying sites in Anthony, NM, Las Cruces, NM, and El Paso, TX. The mentors who hosted this first cohort are: De Colores Farm, Fossil Face Farms, Full Circle Mushrooms, OG Farms, Planty for the People, and Utopia Valley. Many of the mentors have been in relationship with La Semilla for years, and this also serves as an opportunity to nurture these relationships while expanding a local network of support and resources.
It is important to us to “walk the walk” of economic equity and representation. That’s why we bring fellows on as employees during the 6-month process. We are also thoughtful about the cohort as a whole and who we invite to lead sessions as guest trainers – centering the expertise of practitioners who are women and femmes, Black, Indigenous and people of color, as well as LGBTIA farmers.
We will be announcing the application process for our next cohort of fellows in early 2022. Be sure to join our email list and follow us on social media to receive future updates!
Sketches by Christin Apodaca. Drawn during our fellowship’s closing evaluation session led by La Semilla’s Storytelling Department.
We are able to offer this opportunity to our community thanks to many near and far – not limited to, but including support from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program for our program, “Training Agroecological Farmers for a Hotter, Drier Future in the Chihuahuan Desert: Increasing Representation & Opportunity” [grant no. 2020-49400-32329].
