Cultural understanding, skilled marketing, and scientific research on agricultural practices have helped commercial farmers successfully grow and distribute crops traditional to Massachusetts’s immigrant populations. The history of the collaborative team behind this successful project began with a phone call from a Spanish-speaking farmer to the University of Massachusetts Extension office. Because he speaks Spanish, the call found its way to Frank Mangan.

The farmer telephoned UMass Extension looking for a soil test and information on soil fertility; he was having trouble growing ají dulce, a pepper common in Puerto Rican cooking. Mangan, Extension Associate Professor, says he was curious. “We can grow other peppers — I wondered why this one would have trouble.” Mangan visited the farm, and the trouble, it turned out, was that the farmer was direct seeding.  Peppers have to be started early in Massachusetts because the growing season is much shorter than in tropical climates.

Ají dulce wasn’t the only new plant Mangan encountered that day. His subsequent work to develop the agricultural practices and infrastructure to produce, market, and distribute foods from immigrant communities was a result of his visit to the farm that day. Mangan, his assistants, and students began with research on agricultural practices for production of these tropical vegetables and herbs.

The support the UMass team offers now extends truly from farm to table. The process begins with the research on markets that determines which crops to grow and in what quantities, and agricultural research determines practices for successful production. The collaborative provides established and new farmers with this marketing and agricultural information, and the Nutrition Education Team creates and distributes informational materials on nutrition and recipes. “Each of these components is important,” says Mangan.

The collaborative’s work has grown from technical assistance to marketing and distribution support. “It all really took off when Maria Moreira joined the team,” says Mangan. Agricultural marketing specialist Moreira is herself an immigrant farmer, originally from Portugal’s Azores islands. With the team’s help, farmers in Massachusetts have added over 10 new crops that are popular among Latinos, Brazilians and Asians, and sales have reached over $2,000,000.

The UMass team has been expanding markets on several fronts. From Brazilian, Puerto Rican, and Southeast Asian crops, the team is now working with communities and foods from other regions, including Central America. These crops, nutritional information, and recipes will be available at several farmers’ markets in target communities of the Boston and Holyoke Collaboratives for Food and Fitness in 2008. The team not only works to expand the market for these specialty crops within immigrant communities, they also are reaching out to other markets.

“There’s great market potential for these crops,” says Mangan. “Immigrants are excited to see foods they haven’t seen in years, and there’s also a population that’s always interested in trying new foods.” With the agricultural and marketing assistance provided by his team, they are poised to grow these markets, support the success and growth of Massachusetts’s farmers, and put more healthy food on tables in Massachusetts and beyond.

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