Imagine having the skills to live off the land and provide for your family only to have war, famine and political instability make that impossible. You move to a new country to protect your family, but when you arrive, you no longer have the resources needed to put your skills to use. That’s the reality many Somali refugees face when they come to the United States: They have valuable agricultural experience but lack access to the land and resources needed to adapt to farming practices in the United States.
An initiative from Utah State University funded by the Vilcek Foundation aims to change that. Through a partnership with the Utah Department of Agriculture, the program will provide comprehensive farming training to refugees. Participants in Salt Lake City will learn how to raise livestock and poultry through on-farm demonstrations, training videos, mentorship and other opportunities. Topics range from farm safety, biosecurity and sustainable farming practices to business management and market literacy.
Assistant Professors Joseph Okoh and Chad Page in USU’s Department of Animal, Dairy and Veterinary Sciences are the driving force behind the program. Okoh previously worked with the Somali refugee community and noticed the challenges they faced in gaining access to land, training and financing, so he began to apply for funding opportunities to help remedy the situation. Okoh is USU Extension’s small acreage livestock production specialist and Page the sheep and goat specialist. When Okoh came across the Vilcek Foundation, which raises awareness of immigrant contributions in the United States through the arts and sciences, he thought the foundation might be willing to help.
“I was very excited when we received the grant,” Okoh said. “It’s going to help us train and restock farmers and help them to meet their protein requirements while making some small cash out of work they’re doing.”
One of the obstacles the refugees face is language. Most do not speak English, yet the agricultural techniques they’re trying to learn are complex and require precision to be effective. To work around this, the project has relied on in-person demonstrations on the 87-acre farm owned by the nonprofit Utah Refugee Goats.
“We show them how it’s done, and then they watch videos and learn that way,” Okoh said. “A few of the people speak English, and they have been very helpful in translating the project.”
While the initiative is investing a lot of time and money into the refugees, Okoh explained that the project will ultimately be a net benefit to not just the recipients, but also Utah as a whole. In addition to sustaining themselves, the refugees will help boost the state’s poultry stock in the face of bird flu and enrich their local communities.
“Whenever you have refugees, the government has to spend money taking care of them,” he said. “We are helping them move away from over-dependency by empowering them to become self-reliant, generate income and fully integrate into the United States economy.”
For their part, the refugees are excited and willing to contribute to their new country.
“Before the program began, people would call me to ask when they could begin,” Okuh said. “They are very eager to learn, to be part of society, to do agriculture and supply the market. We want to cultivate that zeal and keep it going, because if we don’t, that spirit can die over time.”
Just as many native-born American farmers are part of a family tradition of agriculture, Okoh hopes to give refugees the knowledge they need to make farming into an intergenerational endeavor.
“That’s one aspect of this that I love,” he said. “The majority of participants in these programs are women and children. And if you’re able to educate children with this knowledge, they grow with it, and if you educate women, you educate their families. We hope to take this even further by establishing a cooperative model that will allow us to continue supporting and training them as the next generation grows.”
The project has completed its initial rollout, and the second phase of training is slated to begin soon. However, Okoh is still looking for both financial support and volunteers as operations scale up.
“If anyone wants to collaborate with us to support the dream that this community has, we’d be very happy to work with them.”
Okoh and Page can be contacted at joseph.okoh@usu.edu and chad.page@usu.edu, respectively.