Hmong American Farmers Association CI Report – Final

What has been most instrumenta to your progress?

investing staff time to engaging with HAFA members both individually and collectively was crucial to making progress on the issue. By making space and time for these conversations helped strengthen our relationship with our members and better understand their hopes, fears and what they saw as possible for their futures, as compared to what we saw as being possible. It was especially important to bring farmers together to have a group conversation about the issue because we sometimes too quick to think we had buy-in from a farmer based on the one-on-one time we had spent with him/her, but when we got the group together people would often react differently and and say different things than what they said in regards to being a part of a co-operative. This made us better realize the concerns of many of our farmers about forming a co-operative and accept the fact that not all of our farmers would want to form a co-operarive to buy the HAFA farmer. This in turn made us readjust our expectations, revamp our strategy and be more effective in working with those farmers who did want to move forward with the co-operative for buying the farm.

As part of our conversations with them we regularly shared the farm financials with them and walk them through them, so they could really understand the cost of operating the farm. We also operated a small equipment cooperative to help our farmers better how a cooperative works. The equipment cooperative was especially because it gave our farmers the experience of actually being a part of a cooperative. It also allowed us to understand how our farmers would or would not work within a cooperative. It helped us craft strategies that were intended to help all of the farmers succeed and see the benefits of being a part of a cooperative. It eventually became clear, however, despite our efforts for all farmers to want to thrive within the cooperative structure, which HAFA members really thrived within a cooperative and which did not, and that was incredibly helpful and important for us to move forward in addressing the issue.

We hired a Hong farmer, who was not a HAFA member, but a member of a cooperative to work with our members. This was really helpful because he brought credibility on many levels and was quickly able to build trust with our members. The consultant was able to bring concerns to us that our farmers shared with him that they never would have shared with us. The consultant was also able to point out flaws in our thinking and planning and helped us adjust our work and plans for moving forward.

Key lessons learned

We made the mistake of thinking selling the idea of forming a cooperative to our farmers would be an easy sell because the benefits of doing so were obvious to us. Looking back now, it was a much harder sell than we realized. It also took us longer to make the progress that we made. In all honesty, we thought we would be farther along at this point. While we aren’t where we thought we would be, we do have a plan moving forward and we know that both HAFA and our members learned a ton over the last couple of years.

We underestimated how hard it would be to overcome the experience that many refugees have as a result of receiving direct services for a extended period of time. As much respect, admiration and appreciation we have for our members, there is a tension that exists because they would like HAFA to do far more for them than we are willing to do. We are unwilling to do for them what they should and can rightly do for themselves. This tension was evident in our discussions and plans for the land co-operative. As accomplished and knowledgeable as our farmers are, they don’t feel empowered, so the idea of forming a land co-operative to buy the farm just did not resonate with them. This kept many of them from fully embracing the idea and moving forward with us.

Reflections on the community innovation process

It was important to have the time to generate ideas, raise concerns try some things on a smaller scale to increase understanding of what we were working toward. Had we not been able to do that, our members would not have been in a position to make informed decisions about moving forward with us. While we are moving forward with a smaller group of farmers than we expected, we know they are all in and have no doubts they will achieve success.

Other key elements of Community Innovation

Having strong relationships with our farmers based on respect and trust allowed us to have tough and honest conversations. We constantly collected feedback from our members as we moved through this process. What they told us overwhelmingly is they new we had their best interest at heart and we would not force them to do anything they were not comfortable doing. They also trusted that if they chose not to be a part of the land cooperative that they would not be penalized. We feel good about how the grant unfolded, the progress we made and where we are headed. We also believe we have much better relationships with our members than when we started this process.

Progress toward an innovation

We have nine members who are committed to forming a land cooperative and purchasing the HAFA farm.

What it will take to reach an innovation?

What’s next?

As mentioned earlier, we are working with nine of our members to finalize a timeline for formalizing a land cooperative and then we will work with them to finalize a plan and timeline for purchasing the HAFA farm.

If you could do it all over again…

Curb our enthusiasm and don’t make assumptions! For us the benefits of forming a land cooperative were clear, and we were surprised initially when many of our members raised concerns and gave us pushback. We also underestimated the important historical place farming has in Hmong culture and what it means to our farmers. We learned from this process that many of them don’t want to ‘own’ land, but they do want to farm and cultivate the land and listen to and learn from it in order to grow beautiful flowers and produce.

One last thought

We are grateful for the support we received from the Bush Foundation at an important time in making progress in our work.