we at least in our culture, we've started to exist above the soil.

we just swoop and take what the soil gives and off we go.

in the practice I'm observing here and increasingly valuing, we are becoming part of the cycle.

I think we're coming back closer to our place in this ecosystem.

New Roots is a partnership between Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansas and Cultivate KC.

the goal of the program is to support farmers in graduating and then starting a small farm business independent of the New Roots incubator farm.

I think Kansas City is a very welcoming place and people are excited to see farmers from all across the world growing in Kansas City.

And then, farmers provide produce where people can enjoy food from their their home country.

In 2005, there was a group of Somali Bantu refugee women who were involved with Catholic Charities, working with the case manager there and wanted to start a community garden.

And they had been farmers in their home country and they wanted to use those skills here.

So Catholic Charities helped them get set up with a community garden.

And then over time they really flourished and grew a lot of produce and wanted to sell their produce at markets.

So at that point, Catholic Charities partnered with Cultivate KC to help guide the production and sales and supporting these women to become farmers because that's a cultivates area of expertise.

So from that initial partnership, the new Roots program was born and we broke ground here in 2008 at the Juniper Gardens Training Farm to start the four year farmer training program.

they come here and grow for four years.

Everybody gets a quarter acre plot like this one, We work with farmers who have agricultural backgrounds and a lot of agricultural expertise, but since a lot of folks are from Southeast Asia and Central Africa, they're not familiar with growing in this climate.

So we help them learn how to grow in the Midwestern climate, how to run a business in the US, connect them to sales outlets, provide English classes for folks that need it.

We have a stair step model towards self-sufficiency.

So their first year in the program, we provide a lot of support.

We pay their market fees.

We provide them transportation to their market.

We do one on one field walks each week.

buy seeds and tools, and then each year we provide a little bit less support and the farmers are responsible for more.

So at the end of four years they'll have a good idea of what it will take to run a farming business independently.

The farm is a place to build community.

speak the language that they feel comfortable communicating in with folks from their culture and then also build relationships across cultures (speaking Chin) (speaking Chin) (speaking Chin) (speaking Chin) (speaking Chin) a nine acre establishment all together, all the way from the the graduate plots across the street down to the community gardens at the other end of the farm here.

what we're teaching a sustainable approach to agriculture.

not using chemical pesticides or herbicides or fertilizers.

We're we're trying to move farmers toward more water conservation techniques such as drip irrigation and shade cloth, low tunnels over the beds.

we have a compost pile here that we are constantly refilling and emptying again as we're sort of trucking it off to each of these each of these beds.

really trying to raise the nutrient content of the soil.

And we do that a lot by adding compost to the soil.

I'm finding that farmers, their experience of farming is more extractive.

It's more like however much space you have plant that much.

there hasn't been a lot of thought given in some cases to how this is going to shape the land or how this is going to enrich or deplete the soil.

we're trying to build an awareness that says,'Hey, this land can serve you as you serve the land.'

everything in nature, including under the soil and above the soil, everything exists in relationships And so I think our farming of the land always has to be the same, always has to be cyclical and always has to be relational.

So I'm watching the farmers as they're sharing knowledge and sharing tools and resources as they're taking their produce not only to market but also to their communities and to their churches and selling to, family, their friends, I realized that the entire practice exists and this sort of human ecosystem that is overlaid on this natural ecosystem.

And then we just become this one system.

I think our ability to thrive and flourish as farmers, to be able to support our families and our community relies on our ability to exist in relationship with each other.