<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">This shows the resilience of the Vietnamese, and the community's ability to adapt and embrace new and innovative agriculture (and aquaculture) opportunities. -- CHUCK<br>
</span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></span><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><i><font size="1"><span style="color:rgb(153,0,0)">============================<br>
CHUCK SEARCY<br>71 Tran Quoc Toan, Hanoi, Vietnam<br>Mobile: +84 (0) 903 420 769<br>Email: <a href="mailto:chuckusvn@gmail.com" target="_blank">chuckusvn@gmail.com</a><br>Skype: chucksearcy<br>============================</span></font></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><a href="http://grist.org/food/in-new-orleans-a-vietnamese-community-bounces-back-with-urban-agriculture/">http://grist.org/food/in-new-orleans-a-vietnamese-community-bounces-back-with-urban-agriculture/</a><br>
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<h1 class=""><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
In New Orleans, a Vietnamese community bounces back with urban agriculture </span></h1>
<p class=""><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">By <a href="http://grist.org/author/jared-green/" title="Posts by Jared Green">Jared Green</a></span></p>
<p class=""><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span class="">Cross-posted from <a href="http://dirt.asla.org/2013/06/10/in-new-orleans-a-vietnamese-community-bounces-back-with-urban-agriculture/" title="The Dirt">The Dirt</a></span></span></p>
<span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><img class="" alt="vietfarmers" src="http://grist.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/vietfarmers.jpg?w=250" width="250"></span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Mary Queen of Vietnam Development Corporation</span>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill" target="_blank">Deepwater Horizon debacle</a>, but found ways to come together. At a recent EPA conference on repurposing industrial areas, or <a href="http://www.epa.gov/swerosps/bf/overview/glossary.htm">brownfields</a>, Tap Bui, a community organizer at the <a href="http://www.mqvncdc.org/" target="_blank">Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corporation</a>, discussed how this unique community recovered with sustainable aquaponics.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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.<span id="more-183072"></span></span></p>
<span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><img class="" alt="Mary Queen of Vietnam community meeting" src="http://grist.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/community.jpg?w=250" width="250"></span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">NOLA</span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Mary Queen of Vietnam community meeting.</span>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">“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.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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.</span></p>
<span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><img class="" alt="Mary Queen of Vietnam community aquaponics" src="http://grist.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/aquaponics.jpg?w=250" width="250"></span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">USDA</span>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Now, the <a href="http://www.veggifarmcoop.com/" target="_blank">VEGGI Farmer’s Cooperative</a>, a massively scaled-up aquaponics operation for the community, sells fresh produce to local restaurants and stores.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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 <a href="http://www.mqvncdc.org/page.php?id=18" target="_blank">farm</a>, which <a href="http://www.asla.org/awards/2008/08winners/411.html">won an American Society of Landscape Architects</a> award, is expected to be finished in the next few years, once they finish raising the money needed.</span></p>
<p><i><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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.</span></i></p>
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