Minority farmers small but growing part of Missouri agriculture

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) -- Minority farmers are a small but growing part of Missouri agriculture, and officials are reaching out to get them information on making farming financially successful.

University of Missouri Extension sustainable farming specialist Jose Garcia said nontraditional farmers, including the disabled, women, and ethnic minorities, are taking on a larger percentage of the industry at a time when older white farmers are retiring and their children don't want to be involved in agriculture.

"We need to be ready for that," Garcia said at a small fruit and vegetable conference in Springfield. Encouraging more minorities to enter farming is the goal of a workshop Garcia will lead Thursday in Joplin.

He expects many participants to be from the Laotian Hmong community involved in farming near Joplin, but he hopes others, including Hispanics, blacks and women, also participate.

The Missouri Agriculture Statistical Service will have a representative at the meeting to encourage participation in the upcoming federal agriculture census.

Like the federal census, the farm census taken every five years helps determine where federal agriculture funding goes, Missouri Agriculture Statistical Service Director Gene Danekas said.

That's important not only for minority farmers interested in loans and other programs but also for local communities where minority farmers live, he said.

"The communities that serve these new growing minority populations, especially in agriculture areas, they really don't know they're there," he said.

The 2002 census showed minority farmers -- identified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as blacks, Asians including Hawaiian Islanders, American Indians, Latinos and Hispanics, and women -- made up a tiny percentage of farmers, but all but one segment showed an increase over the 1997 census.

Compared with 105,702 white male farmers, there were 205 blacks, 72 Asian, 703 Hispanic and 10,818 female farmers in Missouri. While the number of white farmers declined by 4 percent from the 1997 census and black farmers dropped by 6 percent, American Indian farmers jumped 27 percent, Asian farmers climbed by 24 percent, Hispanic farmers rose by 38 percent, and female farmers rose by nearly 11 percent over 1997 figures.

Extension horticulturist Gaylord Moore said he agrees with Garcia that there could be an upswing in the future.

Moore, who provided advice at a meeting in Webb City, where the farmers market attracts Hmong farmers, said the same hurdles exist for minority farmers as for white farmers.

Growing things is easy; selling them to make money is the difficult part, he said.

"You have to be very innovative in a lot of areas to sell it, to sell it and make a profit," he said.

---

Information from: Springfield News-Leader, http://www.springfieldnews-leader.com