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

Mon Jun 24 07:14:52 BST 2013

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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