[Ngo-sanrm] [VIN] A Vietnamese community bounces back with urban agriculture

Mon Jun 24 08:59:55 BST 2013

Dear anh Chuck,

I agree with you. The resilience of the Vietnamese is so strong. I feel
glad when after disasters, now their life is developing and peaceful.

Thank you for sharing.

Have a good day anh Chuck and everyone,
Em Hương,

2013/6/24 Chuck Searcy <chuckusvn at gmail.com>

> This shows the resilience of the Vietnamese, and the community's ability
> to adapt and embrace new and innovative agriculture (and aquaculture)
> opportunities.  -- CHUCK
>
> *============================
> CHUCK SEARCY
> 71 Tran Quoc Toan, Hanoi, Vietnam
> Mobile:      +84 (0) 903 420 769
> Email:         chuckusvn at gmail.com
> Skype:        chucksearcy
> ============================*
>
>
> http://grist.org/food/in-new-orleans-a-vietnamese-community-bounces-back-with-urban-agriculture/
>  In New Orleans, a Vietnamese community bounces back with urban
> agriculture
>
> By Jared Green <http://grist.org/author/jared-green/>
>
> Cross-posted from The Dirt<http://dirt.asla.org/2013/06/10/in-new-orleans-a-vietnamese-community-bounces-back-with-urban-agriculture/>
> [image: vietfarmers]Mary Queen of Vietnam Development Corporation
>
> In 1975, after the fall of Saigon, many of the Christian Vietnamese who
> supported the U.S.-allied government in the south fled. Some ended up in
> camps in the Midwestern U.S., at least until the Archdiocese of New Orleans
> invited them to come to the Gulf of Mexico, where the climate was more like
> what they were used to in Vietnam. Many of the Vietnamese were also
> fisherman, so the Roman Catholic church thought they’d have a better chance
> if they could pick up their old trade in Louisiana.
>
> Now, almost 40 years later, there are 8,000 Vietnamese concentrated in a
> one-mile radius in New Orleans East. The community of fisherman was hit
> hard by Hurricane Katrina, and then the Deepwater Horizon debacle<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill>, but
> found ways to come together. At a recent EPA conference on repurposing
> industrial areas, or brownfields<http://www.epa.gov/swerosps/bf/overview/glossary.htm>,
> Tap Bui, a community organizer at the Mary Queen of Vietnam Community
> Development Corporation <http://www.mqvncdc.org/>, discussed how this
> unique community recovered with sustainable aquaponics.
>
> New Orleans East has 60 percent of the land mass of New Orleans but only
> 20 percent of its population. Before Katrina, there were high levels of
> poverty and unemployment. As the community fled the storm in late August,
> 2005, many residents wondered what they would come back to, Bui says. The
> storm destroyed the community’s hospital and other basic services. Still,
> by the end of October, more than 2,000 people had returned, and the
> majority of residents eventually came back.
>
> Meanwhile, implementing an “emergency master plan,” then-Mayor Ray Nagin
> turned a green space near their community into a landfill. The debris from
> damaged homes and commercial buildings across New Orleans had to be dumped
> somewhere. But soon pesticides and other chemicals were being dumped there,
> too, near a wetland and nature preserve. According to Bui, this spurred one
> of the first “cross-racial” collaborations ever in New Orleans East, a mass
> protest to shut down the landfill.
> [image: Mary Queen of Vietnam community meeting]NOLAMary Queen of Vietnam
> community meeting.
>
> “We rallied outside city hall,” Bui says. The group also bused in
> protestors to Baton Rouge, the state capitol. This was the first time “we
> Vietnamese actually felt like real Americans,” she says. “Before, we had
> just paid our taxes. Our community had become more engaged.”
>
> Their efforts paid off: The landfill was closed, and more than 200,000
> cubic yards of debris were removed. But still more needs to go. “The
> landfill is slowly sinking into the ground. The dump site is affecting the
> wetlands,” says Bui. Environmental remediation work is ongoing.
>
> Then, Deepwater Horizon, the BP offshore oil spill, struck, which was a
> fishing disaster. Bui says 40,000 Vietnamese work in the Gulf of Mexico,
> and a third of those are in the seafood industry. Particularly for the
> older Vietnamese, Bui says, it’s really a case of “I fish, therefore I am.”
> More Vietnamese were suffering from depression and drinking too much.
>
> In a sign of the truly resilient nature of the Vietnamese community in New
> Orleans East, the community once again rallied. “We did power mapping to
> determine how we were going to make BP pay for what they did to the
> Gulf,” Bui says. The Vietnamese joined together once again with a broader
> coalition of seafood industry groups to pressure the oil company. But while
> the Gulf was being restored, the fishermen had to find new jobs,
> immediately.
>
> The development corporation found a trainer who could teach aquaculture,
> the practice of raising fish on land. A two-day session brought up new ways
> to create more sustainable systems. In a pilot phase, workshop attendees
> tested out growing koi, bluefish, and catfish. Some then experimented with
> “aquaponics,” which uses the waste from fish as fertilizer to grow produce.
> [image: Mary Queen of Vietnam community aquaponics]USDA
>
> Now, the VEGGI Farmer’s Cooperative <http://www.veggifarmcoop.com/>, a
> massively scaled-up aquaponics operation for the community, sells fresh
> produce to local restaurants and stores.
>
> Amazingly, the fishermen who lost their livelihoods to the oil spill have
> “supplemented 100 percent of their earlier incomes,” Bui says. Taking out
> marketing and transportation costs, some “80 cents of each dollar goes back
> to the cooperative members,” she says.
>
> While there are a few aquaponics plots at around an acre, the group has
> finally been able to purchase an eight-acre urban farm site. The farm<http://www.mqvncdc.org/page.php?id=18>,
> which won an American Society of Landscape Architects<http://www.asla.org/awards/2008/08winners/411.html>award, is expected to be finished in the next few years, once they finish
> raising the money needed.
>
> *Jared Green is editor of The Dirt, the blog of the American Society of
> Landscape Architects (ASLA). The Dirt covers news on the built and natural
> environments.*
>
>
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-- 
Phạm Thu Hương
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