Navajo Farm Feeds The Hungry, Provides Jobs
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Hunger on the reservation really came to the fore last winter when a Navajo elder froze to death after trying to walk from her remote, snow-bound home to find food.
Saint Mary’s Food Bank spokeswoman Mariah Alexander said elders and children are the most vulnerable people on the reservation. Many Navajo are forced to commute off the reservation to work, often leaving their children in the care of grandparents.
“Arizona actually has some of the worst hunger statistics,” Alexander said. “We have hardest hit populations that aren’t able to make ends meet because of cost of living, transportation costs.”
Statistics show that one out of every five people on the Navajo Nation in Arizona is considered food insecure. That means they may not know where their next meal is coming from
Alexander said Saint Mary’s delivers food to 20 sister agencies across the Navajo Nation, a reservation about the same size as the state of West Virginia. She said people often drive a long way for groceries.
“It takes sometimes 45 minutes to an hour to drive from their home to the nearest gas station, maybe more, let alone grocery stores,” Alexander said. “And because they’re so far and spread out up there and remote you see a lot of price increases at the grocery stores up there. So for example, white bread is easily $4.”
In Leupp there’s just a convenience store. Resident Stacy Jensen called it the “inconvenience store” when I caught up to him at his greenhouse.
“They don’t carry fresh produce or meat in Leupp, not at all,” Jensen said.
And it’s 80 miles round trip to the nearest grocery store. So Jensen grows his own corn, squash and melons just like his family did when he was growing up.
“When I was younger I followed my flock of sheep around here,” Jensen said. “We had our livestock and corn fields, as well jackrabbits and cottontails.”
Jensen studied at Northern Arizona University then came back to Leupp to teach people about growing their own food to improve their health. Forty percent of Navajos 45 years of age and older suffer from diabetes.
“When I came in 2005 I thought 'what the heck’s going on over there,'” Jensen said. “The farm itself was sort of at a standstill.”
The fertile soil next to the Little Colorado River was laying dormant. Today about 30 families grow their own crops to eat.
“I’ve always said if they have extras take it out to the roadside and sell it at the swap meet and that’s how they get a little bit of income from their hard work,” Jensen said.
Now the farmers have the opportunity to make more money. Jensen recently won a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to turn part of their hundred-acre farm into a blue corn farming and processing operation.
One of Jensen’s mentors is Jessica Stago. The two met through the Native American Business Incubator Network.
“It will provide food not only for families, provide food to schools,” Stago said. “It has a lot to do with food security. It has a lot to do with providing an economic base that’s already here.”
One of the farm’s customers will be the nearby Star School. The students often come to help plant seeds and harvest.
“There are a lot of families who rely on the school system to feed the kids,” Stago said.
North Leupp Family Farms has the water and land permits it needs and now it also has funding from the USDA to sustain the program if the group can come up with the matching funds — $13,532. Then they see themselves getting the business off the ground in the next three years.
Stago and Jensen hope the farm will serve as a model for more farms like it throughout the Navajo Nation.
