HOUSTON (CN) — They have lived in refugee camps and survived assaults by racist Russians. Now they are urban-farmer entrepreneurs in Houston, thriving with the help of a nonprofit that embraces the skills of new Americans.
With soaring gasoline and food prices forcing families to tighten their budgets, many are buying seeds and planting vegetable gardens as the weather warms this spring to reduce their grocery bills and improve their diets.
For inspiration and introduction to crops not commonly grown in the U.S. they can look to Plant It Forward.
It was founded in 2011 with the goal of connecting recently resettled refugees with jobs that meet their skill sets, according to Rachel Folkerts, its farm programs director. She took the job after a Peace Corps assignment in Senegal.
“Back in 2010 there was very little local farming in Houston. Today, it is a really big presence at farmers markets,” she said.
Six of the group's farmers, most of whom are from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sell their produce every weekend at markets throughout the city. But the bulk of its sales are through subscriptions, with 75% of the proceeds going to its farmers.
On just 6 acres of donated land, the group’s farmers grow 70 different crops over a year—mainly salad greens, carrots and radishes “so we can pack a lot of veggies, which only take two months to grow, into a small space,” said Folkerts—enough to feed 700 families who subscribe for weekly allotments.
In its 11 years, Plant It Forward has sold $3 million in fresh produce.
Roy Nlemba, 56, traveled all over the United States clearing sites for landfills for a plastics company that recovers natural gas—which can be used to make plastic—from decaying trash.
Nlemba started planting peanuts and other crops with his parents at their farm outside Kinshasa, capital of the DRC, at age 5. So it bothered him when he saw large tracts of vacant land during his work travels in the U.S. “If I saw the land I was, ‘Ah this land they don’t do nothing. Why?’” said Nlemba, whose first language is French.
He said he dreamed about farming here and got his chance when a friend from his church told him Plant It Forward was recruiting Africans.
A conflict in the DRC forced Nlemba, then 26, to flee to neighboring Angola. Asked why exactly he left, he smiled. “That’s my secret I can’t tell you. … I never worked for the government. No, I was a political follower,” he said.
An aid organization helped him move to Russia, where he lived for 10 years and learned to speak some Russian but grew frustrated by the government’s refusal to give him documents needed to establish citizenship and other problems.
He said he and other Africans were attacked by Russians due to their skin color.
He told how Russians sometimes hit him in the back with sticks and chains and showered him with pepper spray when they spotted him walking down the street. He also had to watch out for law enforcement. “The police if they see you, they arrest you. Everything you have, they’ll take it,” he recalled.
Nlemba is now a U.S. citizen after nearly 20 years in America.
He is not at all bitter about his experiences in Russia. In fact, he divulged, he loves Russian food more than any because it has a lot of organic ingredients. “The first thing I like is the black bread. It’s brown. But Russians call it black.”
Nlemba's easygoing disposition might also stem from the success of his farming business. Working just two small plots, he has made enough money that he opened a pharmacy last year in the DRC that is run by his nephew, who, like all his nieces and nephews, calls him “daddy.”
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