KAYTE YOUNG:  From WFIU in Bloomington, Indiana, I'm Kayte Young and this is Earth Eats.

PABLO BOSE:  Many of the farmers talked about the ability to be out in nature with other members of their family and other members of their community, and several of them also talked about the benefits of being able to interact with people from other communities.

KAYTE YOUNG:  This week on the show we talk with geographer Pablo Bose about innovative resettlement projects that help refugees connect with familiar foods from home through gardening in community. That's just ahead. Stay with us.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Thanks for listening to Earth Eats. I'm Kayte Young. In the campaigns leading up to national elections in the United States, immigration is often a hot button issue. There is one group of immigrants in the US who are largely misunderstood. Or rather there journey to this country and their status is often not recognized in the communities where they settle. Refugees arrive legally in the US after years of displacement from their homes, time often spent in refugee camps in a state of limbo. Since they are typically fleeing violence, they may be processing traumatic experiences or grieving the loss of loved ones. When they finally do make to the US they still face many hurdles to overcome in order to settle and to begin to build a new life.

KAYTE YOUNG:  My guest today conducts research involving refuges resettling in Vermont, in a program involving gardening and farming.

PABLO BOSE:  My name is Pablo Bose. I am a Professor of Geography and Geo-sciences at the University of Vermont and Director of Global and Regional Studies.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Pablo Bose visited the campus of Indiana University as a guest of the Center for Refugee Studies and gave a talk in the geography department. I invited him into the studio for a conversation.

KAYTE YOUNG:  You have been working with a program that involves refugee resettlement and agriculture. So if you could tell us a little bit about that, or maybe it's not just one program.

PABLO BOSE:  I mean it's part of several different programs I've been involved with but the one that I'll talk about mostly here is called New Farms for New Americans. It's a program of the Association of Africans living in Vermont, that's the bigger umbrella, non-profit that it works under. That's a non-profit that supports refugees after their first year of arrival. It does work with some people beforehand but really they run programs on mental health, on youth development, employment, education. They run language classes, a number of different things. This has been one of their most popular and heavily participated in programs, started in 2010. And it's called New Farms for New Americans and it's meant to introduce newcomers to farming in Vermont. And that's cold weather agriculture, but also what it means to farm in a place like Vermont.

KAYTE YOUNG:  How many people are involved, how many refugees are involved in that kind of program?

PABLO BOSE:  On any given year it's roughly 80 households, 350 farmers in total. The plots are assigned by the households that participate in it.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So is it just like one big piece of land and then it's divided into plots?

PABLO BOSE:  It's actually two different locations divided by a river. Both of these are in a flood plain that is has been a food providing area for generations. It's a part of Burlington called the Intervale. So it's divided across these two sides of the river, four acres on one side and six acres on the other. There's also a couple of other acres that kind of go in and out of rotation, depending on what's left fallow. And that is then subdivided into eighth of an acre plots.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So individual households or farmers can kind of have their own plot and grow what they want? It's not like they're all working together to do one farm?

PABLO BOSE:  That's correct. Yes. So they're basically each assigned an individual plot. Now there are some family groups that will work together to have a larger system of plots. But generally speaking it's a plot per household.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Okay. And then what kind of farming are they doing? Is it kind of a kitchen garden for their own household or are there other goals with the food that they are growing.

PABLO BOSE:  Yes.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Like are they going to take it to a farmers market?

PABLO BOSE:  Yes I mean the program has evolved over the years. When it started it was really mean to be an introduction to commercial farming. Right, so how would you learn the skills that you needed to be a commercial farmer. That included, there was, sort of a demonstration participation in creating a CSA. There were market stands, there was the potential for selling some crops to local restaurants. So there was a number of different aspects to it. But what we found with the program was when we actually asked the farmers what it was they were interested in, they were primarily interested in growing food that they couldn't access otherwise. So the type of food that wasn't in the grocery store. African egg plants or there's a Bhutanese crop, I think it's daikon radish that they, they're like snake gourd. So there's a number of different things that were particular to different communities who are growing there.

PABLO BOSE:  Some of the African groups were growing African corn which is dent corn. It's similar to dent corn. And what they wanted from that is they're not eating that corn, they're then taking that corn, roasting it, milling it and then using the corn flour. So there's different things that are being, kind of, produced from there. Again at the outset there were these other kinds of things, putting together the things for a CSA or to take to market. But again when I spoke to the farmers, when we interviewed them, they were more interested in growing food they couldn't get than growing food for other people.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Okay. So for them it's not a money making venture?

PABLO BOSE:  Definitely not.

KAYTE YOUNG:  It's feeding their families and communities and accessing food that they're not able to get in the grocery store.

PABLO BOSE:  That's correct. I mean one of the things we also did in the early days of the program was we started to have people weigh the food that they were harvesting. As a way of, kind of, measuring what was the value of this program. And that's, again where we saw people were distributing that food around their local network, friends, family, within their communities. There was also a certain amount of trading between some of the farmers. Because some farmers would tend to specialize in a particular crop and sometimes they were also bartering with others at the farm.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Yes so in your talk, you talked about how maybe some of these refugee agriculture programs, the people who are kind of setting them up and designing them, maybe don't understand that much about farming. Or how hard it is to maybe make a living farming. And so if the desire was for people to have some kind of business out of these farming practices, that wasn't, one, necessarily all that practical. But also not what the refugees actually wanted. And so there were some other things that they were interested in. One was this food that they weren't able to access that was from their home countries that they were missing and wanting. And there were some other things that they were getting from it too, could you talk about what some of those were.

PABLO BOSE:  Yes absolutely. I mean I was really, I wasn't surprised to hear people say that they were able to get food they couldn't otherwise get. I kind of expected that. I was more surprised by some of the other benefits that farmers mentioned about participating in the program. Being outside. I mean it is a beautiful site. When I go down to those farms they're, especially, you know, in the height of the summer. They're lush, they're full, they're, and they look very different than other farms I would see, whether in Vermont or elsewhere. For example, the Bhutanese farmers build these elaborate trellis systems to grow snake gourds from. The African farmers have the corn growing in these really interesting kind of arrangements around the outsides of their plots.

PABLO BOSE:  And so the farms themselves look really beautiful. They're a larger plot than you would get in a community garden. And so I can well understand why farmers might really like going down there in the mornings or in the afternoons, perhaps after their job or before. So simply being outside was a benefit. Many of the farmers talked about the ability to be out in nature with other members of their family and other members of their community. And finally several of them also talked about the benefits of being able to interact with people from other communities. So from other refugee communities. We see this when you go down there. It's necessarily that they can speak a common language, in some cases they do speak English. But in other cases they're communicating using hand gestures and again trading vegetables, that kind of thing.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Well it didn't surprise me to hear you say that because I've worked in the past in a food pantry that was also, kind of a community food resource center. And we had gardens, we had community gardens and cooking classes and gardening classes. And, you know, when you're applying for the grants and, like, getting funding for the program, it's all about self sufficiency and people learning to grow their own food. And what we really, and even in the cooking too, and what we really found was what people were getting out of coming to those classes and being in the gardens or being in the kitchen, was about community. It was about connecting with other people over a shared task, doing something together, and connecting, really.

PABLO BOSE:  I think that's exactly right. I mean I'll give you another example of that. The program offers regular classes in cold weather agriculture, they offer a curriculum around agriculture. And those topics are determined by the participants alongside the garden teachers. But one of the things that is really interesting is the same farmers participate year after year. The program directors at one point thought, after the first year they did a graduation. And they gave out, you know, certificates, they had hats, there was a party, everybody was really excited. At the end of it the graduates said, but does this mean we can't come back? And, you know, the director said, it is important for them to come back. One, to refresh their knowledge about, you know, one and done doesn't necessarily do it.

PABLO BOSE:  But the other part was that the participants liked coming to the classes. They were going to be, the classes are usually held on a weekend, that makes sure more people can come etcetera. Their participation in the classes was a really interesting part of the program. It's not a requirement and not everybody is able to participate in the classes. But it does allow for that greater level of engagement.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Yes so it's not like they're just learning these growing skills and then once they've got them, they're like, okay, now I can go out and grow. It's like the whole activity of being there and connecting with other people and learning these things, was what they were wanting.

PABLO BOSE:  Absolutely. Yeah.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So it wasn't just about finishing and moving on. It's not like a trade school.

PABLO BOSE:  Right. I mean, and there is definitely very directed questions they have. I am having this particular bug on my plants, how do I get rid of them. But even there, or you know, NRCS will come and will do a, or other technical experts will come and they'll show you, here are more effective ways of watering. But just because they came last year and showed you that in April doesn't mean that you can't use a refresher. So they definitely are interested in that too.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Especially with growing food, anything where you're interacting with the natural world and the seasons and the weather. Every year you're going to have new questions. I mean I know that, just with, like, beekeeping.

PABLO BOSE:  Yes.

KAYTE YOUNG:  You will never take a class where you're done with beekeeping. You have to constantly talking to other to other people. Did you have this happen last year because this never happened to me and now it's happening. And, yes, like with the pests and different things you talked about.

PABLO BOSE:  You know it's interesting you mentioned bees because one of the other interesting innovations I've seen at the garden over the last number of years. Because the gardens are also a partnership with local farmers, with other agricultural and food systems initiatives, there's now a pollinator garden that is there. They worked last year with local orchards to create a fruit orchard as well. And so this has been also an interesting way of diversifying what is happening at the farm. There's a teaching garden at the farm as well, a plot where it's kind of a demonstration. It's an opportunity to sometimes try new seeds. There are participants who have brought seeds from their home country. And you can imagine how challenging that is as a refugee, to have been able to bring seeds from Africa, from South Asia, from wherever it is.

PABLO BOSE:  And so that's been really interesting as well, that there has been experimentation, both initiated by the farmers but also by the program managers.

KAYTE YOUNG:  And when you say a teaching garden do you mean teaching the refugees or where the refugees are teaching people who are coming from the community saying--

PABLO BOSE:  A little bit of both. So, there are, because it's the teaching garden area. There's, in some cases, a planting of a certain crop. There might be a demonstration of a particular technique. But that's also where the seed saving, there's a seed saving, kind of sub project. Where they try out different types of seeds, you know, how does this grow? How would you try this particular variety, these kinds of things.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I'm speak with Pablo Bose, Professor of Geography and Geo-sciences and Director of the Global and Regional Studies Program at the University of Vermont. After a short break we'll learn about how climate change has altered the work of New Farms for New Americans in recent years. Stay with us.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Kayte Young here, this is Earth Eats. If you're just joining us my guest today is Pablo Bose, Geography Professor at the University of Vermont. We've been talking about a refugee agriculture program called New Farms for New Americans. I asked him about recent severe weather events in Vermont and how climate change may effect the future of this community garden project. Here's Pablo.

PABLO BOSE:  There are many ways in which refugee farmers may feel precarious. And some of them have to do with the program itself, the way it's funded, the way it's supported. But I think one of the biggest challenges really has had to do with climate change. The refugee program in Vermont was wiped out in 2011 because of flooding caused by tropical storm Irene. That was seen as a one a hundred year storm, once in a hundred years. Except in July 2023 these devastating floods wiped out the farms again. And it left people at that time saying, you know, and certainly not all the farms had experienced both floods but a number had. And no one blamed the program, you know, how can you blame the program. But they still said what do we do next time, how do we prepare.

PABLO BOSE:  And I will say that perhaps not everyone took it as seriously, you know, could this really happen, would a flood happen? The floods happened again in 2024. So we've now had these once in a hundred year floods, happen not just in ten years, but three times in eleven years, in ten years.

KAYTE YOUNG:  And one right after the other.

PABLO BOSE:  One right after the other. This year people did take it more seriously. They went and pulled out what they could when they had the forecasts. The floods were not as severe as they were. At least where we were, they were still devastating in other parts of Vermont. And because the program had had this experience they were a little bit better prepared, we didn't have follow on flooding. We actually had a third flooding event in December in the site. Obviously there was nothing being grown at that time. But there was a better recovery this time. They were able to get more crops into the ground, they were able to support the farmers again after the food. Yeah, after the food, after the cleanup, after getting rid of the silt and, you know, all the rest of it. But it does leave these questions, you know, peoples hard work being wiped out.

PABLO BOSE:  And it feeling really demoralizing, you know, what do you do next. The reality is that the program has been able to support the farmers themselves, not only the program but private donations flooded in to try and help the farmers. Local stores, food stores and others provided gift cards. There were supports in place last year. This year they were not as extensive. They weren't as needed, I would say. But it raises that question of, like, you know it's not just the food that you're losing, it's a lot of time, it's a lot of effort, a lot of, you know, it feels demoralizing. So that question of, like, how do you deal with this, how do you adjust to it. In other places that run refugee programs, agriculture programs, they're facing different kinds of issues. In some it's also flooding, in other it's a lack of water, it's drought. We experienced a cold frost this year.

KAYTE YOUNG:  It was in the spring.

PABLO BOSE:  It was in the spring.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Late frost. And it damaged the blossoms.

PABLO BOSE:  Late frost.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Or the fruit.

PABLO BOSE:  Right. So that was for the fruit. This program already had it's starts in the greenhouses. And so they did not lose a great deal. They did lose some because I don't think the greenhouses at that point were ready for what hit in terms of the frost.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Yeah. They can protect from frost but maybe not if the temperatures get too low.

PABLO BOSE:  That is, that was exactly what happened. And it wasn't with all the plants. So again, it wasn't as bad. In the case of Vermont and these programs, the question has been raised, do you back there again? You know, it's the same question that we ask with others who face flooding for example. Do you rebuild in a place that gets flooded again and again? Do you rebuild in a place that gets hit with hurricanes or other kinds of vulnerabilities?

KAYTE YOUNG:  Wild fires.

PABLO BOSE:  Wild fires, exactly. In this case I think that question of, do you go back, why would you go back? You know that place is going to get flooded again. Well, there are very reasonable answers to why you would go back to a place that is a flood plain, because it's very fertile soil. Right, this is a place that had a long history of growing food. There are also relationships that the program has with it's neighbors, with other farmers in the area, who also, to be fair have asked that question. Do I go back there again? Vermont is not like many parts of the mid west or, you know, other parts of America that is more of a bread basket. There are many parts of Vermont that are not particularly suitable for agriculture. So it's not like it's that easy to just shift to another location. Shifting higher up means having access to less fertile soil.

PABLO BOSE:  And so there are other things that the program has been working on to try and become more climate resilient, within reason. I mean there is not much you can do if it's going to, if a river is going to break its banks and be ten feet higher than it ought to be. But there are some things that you can try and mitigate as best as possible. In this particular case seeing the way the river has broken each time it's flooded, which has been to cut straight across the fields. The program has started to move the fields. And so to take it out of the pathways of the river as much as possible. A lot of designing, a lot of negotiating with the land owners, which in this case is the park district. And lots of support from the state and the city, they're working on doing exactly that next year.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So it kind of jumped ahead past this question earlier, but what are some of the challenges that show up in trying to set up an agriculture program for refugees?

PABLO BOSE:  There are a lot of different challenges. I would say, first and foremost is language. You know if you're going to set up a program like this you need to be to communicate with the participants. That means you have to have translators and interpreters. You need to try and make sure, how do you communicate with people, not just directly? How do you get into the networks that will get messages out? When the floods happened, you know, they utilized wattsapp. They have been working with a local, something called the Vermont Language Justice Project to create short videos in each language to send out messages. So language definitely can be a challenge. Transportation, if you need to get out to where the farms actually are, if you don't have access to car it's very difficult to get out there. There's no bus nearby, so that's definitely a big challenge.

PABLO BOSE:  There's a not a huge economic barrier to participation. There's a nominal fee that the farmers pay essentially that goes towards offsetting some of the water costs. The lease itself is paid for by the program.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So that was the other thing I was going to ask, about, like, land access and how does the program find the land to do this kind of farming?

PABLO BOSE:  Yeah. It's an ongoing challenge. I would say that is the biggest challenge that the program has had. Is, it's been very popular, so how do you manage those kinds of requests? Who gets access to the farmland? There's certainly some farmers who have been returning for over a decade at this point. And yet this is not their land, right. This is not land that they even have a direct land relationship with, because they don't sign the lease. So there's been an attempt to get access to more land over time. Working with the city, working with the state to some degree and with private land owners. I know the program has looked at some other areas that have been offered to them. For the most part it's two barriers that have held them back, or I would say, three barriers.

PABLO BOSE:  One is adding more land in a new location means you need more staff to help support that. So these programs are not overstaffed by any means. You know, it's a couple of people, maybe three people. So, more sites means more staff, means more resources to pay those staff.

KAYTE YOUNG:  More infrastructure to the water and all that.

PABLO BOSE:  Absolutely. Secondly, most of the other available land is not as good. So again you have that challenge. A couple of the farmers, you know, they took the farmers up, showed them the land and the farmers were not that interested in it. They said this is, you know, lots of clay, lots of stones, lots of, you know, it's not as. And then some of these other locations, you still have that transportation barrier issue. So, yes.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I guess it might be good to talk a little bit about refugees in the US in general. And, sort of, changing landscape or shifting landscape for refugees from the Obama years through the Trump years, through Covid to now.

PABLO BOSE:  Can just say very briefly that, you know the refugee resettlement program in the US is a tiny portion of our overall immigration landscape. And I think we tend to conflate refugees with other migrant groups. When we talk about refugees in these kinds of programs, they're very limited. Right, that refugees, you know, at the biggest sale of refugee resettlement we had, you know, when the Vietnamese came in. You know, maybe you were bringing in a few hundred thousand people at a time kind of thing, to the Bosnians, to African, Nepalese, etcetera. These groups who are coming in, you know, maybe you had a hundred thousand refugees coming in. Not huge numbers and we conflate them sometimes with asylum seekers.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Yes. I think that's true.

PABLO BOSE:  Right. Or other groups. This is not to say that the reasons refugees might be fleeing their countries might not be, they might be very similar to the same reasons that somebody is an asylum seeker, forced to flee their country. They are also in fear for their life. The difference is that a refugee is somebody whose legal status in the US is that they're here legally, they have come through a legal means, they were extensively vetted. You know, even before the Trump Administration it used to take a thousand days for a refugee, from the point in which they applied in a camp to when they arrived in the US. And just to put it in perspective, you know, last year, under two hundred thousand people in the world were resettled as refugees. Out of more than a hundred million who are displaced.

PABLO BOSE:  Now again, most people don't want to be displaced to begin with. And if they have their option they would want to go back in peace to their home. But for some people that's not possible because that home doesn't exist anymore, or they can't return to it. And it's those people who come to places like the US, who have been deemed not a threat to the US, and who have been selected because they're really in need of sanctuary. Somebody who has studied refugees in the US and other places for a long time, I will tell you for the most part, we select people not simply because we can protect them, but also because they can give something to us. The refugees who come here overwhelmingly are people who have types of skills that we can use. You know, they are skilled in different kinds of ways and I think that's one of the things that sometimes really upsets me is that we waste this amazing human capital and human potential in the debates we have over who refugees are.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I think that there is a huge misunderstanding in the US around who refugees are and why they're here and where they're coming from. I know that I have that misunderstanding myself. And based on what you just said I clearly have misunderstandings. Is it from specific countries that have been, sort of decide--

PABLO BOSE:  Yeah. Exactly.

KAYTE YOUNG:  The program has decided, yes, this country is a place where we know, you know, like you said, Somali refugees, like there is certain countries that have been designated.

PABLO BOSE:  That's right. That's exactly right. And it's actually not the program that decides that. It's actually the Office of the President. This is why you've seen this kind of back and forth, is that, you know, in the last years of the Obama administration, the focus was on Bhutanese refugees, on Congolese refugees, on Burmese and Syrians. The Syrians became this big, political hot potato. Donald Trump came in, tried to put the travel ban, the Muslim ban, all of these kinds of things. Again because the Office of the President is the one that gets to say, this is how many refugees should come in, and this is where they should be coming from. And because of that, and again refugees are just one slice of the story. But, you know, in the last year of the Obama administration we brought in a hundred and twenty thousand refugees. In the last year of the Trump administration we brought in fifteen.

PABLO BOSE:  So, it absolutely cratered the programs because the programs also rely on those numbers for their funding. So they get paid on the basis of how many people they serve. Not necessarily how many people are coming into the country but how many people they serve. So there were a lot of closures of offices and that made it really challenging.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So when you talk about how, what a loss you think it is when people are not understanding who these people are and what they might be able to bring to the country. It also seems like a loss to me if refugees are being selected because of particular skills they might have, and then they're being put to work in a meat packing plant.

PABLO BOSE:  Yes.

KAYTE YOUNG:  That's confusing to me.

PABLO BOSE:  Yes, I mean, and I should be clear that it's not as straight forward as refugees being selected for particular skills. I mean that kind of point system that's been proposed for immigration, it doesn't happen quite as clearly as that. But, yes, you're right, there is a mismatch between refugees, immigrants as well but refugees in particular coming in and being put into jobs and industries that under utilize or mismatch what their skill set, their education, their desires etcetera. You know going back to your question about, what do we lose, what do we miss through this kind of process, I spent five, six years going across the US between 2013 and 2019 visiting different refugee resettlement sites. And I was particular interested in smaller cities, secondary cities, cities that didn't have a big history of immigration.

PABLO BOSE:  Because I was curious what was happening in Dayton in Columbus and was happening in, these aren't necessarily small cities, but Nashville and Durham. But also Turlock, California, Twin Falls, Idaho, you know, Lincoln, Nebraska, a lot of these other places. And what we saw was that for many of these communities, they were confronting their own challenges. In some of them they were kind of rust belt cities, in some of them they were graying cities. They were places where they had a lack of labor, they had a lack of kids in the schools, things like that. And in town after town I saw that bringing in refugees was revitalizing different towns. And I think that that's lost in a lot of this debate. I understand the anxieties that people have and that they talk about, you know, well why aren't we focusing on X group from here.

PABLO BOSE:  These are not mutually exclusive goals, you know. And I think that's a real disservice to the reality of situations of saying that we can only pay attention to one thing. Especially when we don't pay attention to that other population either, right. You know, I've heard people say things like, oh well, why aren't we resettling refugees and not paying attention to, fill in the blank, veterans or African Americans or whoever it is. And then you turn around and you say, I would take that more seriously if we actually did put more resources into supporting veterans and other groups, so.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Yeah and one of the questions that sort of came to mind for me when you talking about the refugee resettlement in Vermont is, how is the local community accepting of the refugees?

PABLO BOSE:  Yes.

KAYTE YOUNG:  And, I mean, of this agriculture program in particular but just in general. How is the--

PABLO BOSE:  The agriculture program is generally very well thought of as, you know, people can get on board with farming, refugees, Vermont, that's not a hard sell.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Okay.

PABLO BOSE:  I think that there's definitely been ups and downs with refugee resettlement in Vermont. A pretty notable push back against resettlement happened in 2017 when the town of Rutland in southern or central Vermont sought to resettle just about two hundred Syrians there. And this proposal got caught up in local politics, it got caught up in national hysteria. And in the end, at the time, only about 13 Syrians and a couple of families ended up resettled there. Well what happened afterwards was Rutland, which is a town that had been in, kind of decline in lots of ways. It had been using population for years. What ended up happening, a couple of years later the city council was trying to pay people ten thousand dollars to move there. They could not get people to come there. And now resettlement has resumed again.

PABLO BOSE:  I did some polling of a representative sample of Vermont residents over about a six year period between 2013 and 2022. I didn't poll during the height of the pandemic. And I found support for refugee resettlement pretty high all across Vermont. Again you have people who have been sort of solidly opposed. But that number has dropped from about 20 per cent, when I first started doing the polling, to way less than 10. So it remains a pretty popular program. The biggest challenge today is the biggest challenge with refugee programs across the US which is the same problem that everyone in the US is dealing with, housing. The number one problem, finding affordable housing. That's not a refugee history, that's a US issue.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Well I was wondering too if there were any programs that allow people in the community and the refugees to get to know each other, to, you know, be in community together. And, you know, cultural exchanges kind of thing.

PABLO BOSE:  Yes there is definitely, I mean one of my favorites is actually one of the community setters. The main community setter that is located in one of the largest refugee neighborhoods in northern Vermont. You know if you go down to where the senior center is, I always love seeing it. You will find seniors, native born Vermonters, long time Vermonters and newer Vermonters from these different communities. They often can't speak the same language but they play cards together.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Oh nice.

PABLO BOSE:  You see things like that. There is definitely, in the schools there is definitely an interaction between communities. It's not perfect, there's still all kinds of, you know, clashes, misunderstandings that definitely come up. And, you know, this is not an easy process. Demographic change is never easy. And I think that is part of what you are seeing playing out. It's not helped by the politicizing of it any more.

KAYTE YOUNG:  What about food, like, sharing food or, you know, maybe farmer's markets as a site where maybe the refugee farmers might be bringing some of their food. Or there might be some kind of.

PABLO BOSE:  Yeah, that is a very interesting part of the migration story more generally. You know for immigrants it's long been a pattern that, you know, how do you establish a business early on. And food is a long established way of doing that. We don't see a ton of Bosnian restaurants in Vermont. I think there's been an European deli, this kind of thing. Vietnamese on the other hand has been very popular. Some of the most popular restaurants around town are Vietnamese. You've definitely seen some Nepali food, some Afghan food. So there's been the establishment of a few restaurants. Hard to make a go of a restaurant. And so we've definitely seen some and go. We've had some long time staples. My favorite place to eat in Burlington is a Vietnamese restaurant that's in the old bus station. And that family has a fantastic model that's, you know, done gangbusters for years.

PABLO BOSE:  Prepared food to some degree, we see a little bit of that. That's a little bit harder for some of, you know, a lot of the home cooks who are trying to engage in that.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Like value added farm products?

PABLO BOSE:  Yes. Some people participate at the farmer's markets. There are a number of different kinds of farmer's markets. Some of them are lower barrier to entry for vendors. So you tend to see new Americans more at those than at the, kind of, the big tourist attraction farmers markets, I'd call them. Some home delivery. There's a little bit of working with local grocery stores for more specialized products, prepared products, in some cases canned sauces, things like that. So there's been a little bit of that, for sure.

KAYTE YOUNG:  And then what about farmer's markets?

PABLO BOSE:  Farmer's markets, again, not as much the tourist attraction farmer's markets. It has tended to be some of the more local ones. I had a very interesting experience. I went to Bowling Green, Kentucky and I was looking at the refugee programs there. And at the end of my trip I always like to go to a refugee restaurant. And so it had been recommended to me to go to this Burmese restaurant. So I went there and I looked at the menu and it all looked like Thai food. And so I asked the proprietor, you know, is this, do you have Burmese food. And he said, oh well, you know we know Americans aren't going to eat our food. So, you know, we make this Thai food. I said, is there something I could get that, you know. And he said, oh well, okay, I'll make you something. He said on Sundays we close and we just make food for our community.

PABLO BOSE:  And I said oh well make me this. And so he clearly saw this as a challenge. He made me food that I think removed a layer of taste-buds. It was delicious but it was extremely spicy.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I'm speaking with Pablo Bose. Professor of Geography and Geo-sciences and Director of the Global and Regional Studies Program at the University of Vermont. We'll return to our conversation after a short break.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Welcome back. This is Earth Eats and I'm Kayte Young in conversation with Pablo Bose, Geography Professor at the University of Vermont. We're talking about agriculture programs for refugees and how growing familiar foods can help refugees feel at home in a new place. When I interviewed Pablo Bose in September of 2024, it was just after the presidential debate in which Donald Trump made the false claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. This intentionally divisive misinformation resulted in violent threats towards the Haitian community. Schools had to be closed due to bomb scares and many people were living in a state of fear. I asked Pablo about this dangerous climate.

KAYTE YOUNG:  It's irresponsible. It is cynical, especially because they know it's not true and they don't care. It plays on old racist tropes about Haitians, about black migrants, about whoever it is that's the other. It made me think about in Canada, sometime in the early 2000, I remember this infamous case where a small town, I think south of Montreal, passed a local ordinance against the cooking of goat meat outside. There was one family, maybe Somalian, I can't remember, there was one family that had moved into town. They had not cooked a goat outside. But it was, again, this kind of, oh, what will they do, what could they possibly do. And you know, this is an old, old, again xenophobic, trope.

PABLO BOSE:  The same reason that, you know, one of the communities, neighborhoods I lived in in Toronto is still to this day called Cabbage Town, as a derogatory slur against Irish immigrants. I still remember looking in the USDA archives about these directives from the 1950's to try to convince Italian grandmothers to stop cooking out of their backyard gardens. Because we're a modern nation now, we need to eat microwaved food or something like this.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Well I don't want to hear that about Cabbage Town because I, in my mind Toronto is the model of integrated city and everybody gets along [LAUGHS].

PABLO BOSE:  [LAUGHS] I did love living in Toronto. I loved Kensington market and I loved many different parts of Toronto. But, yes.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Okay. Well, burst my bubble. Which does me to another question that I would love to hear from you. Is, in terms of your background, like, how did you, I don't know if food studies is one of your focuses. But, like, how did you get into this kind of work, what really drew you to it?

PABLO BOSE:  Yes. I actually am part of the food system's program at the University of Vermont. I've done several studies on food and migration. That's really what drew me towards the study of food, food ways. In this case refugee agriculture but I've actually been really interested in the way in which food is used in the diaspora to create different kinds of connections to home. Recreate tastes, whether connected to family, region, nation, all kinds of different things. So it really came out of my studies of the ways in which people maintain, create, reinvent there notions of home. And taste is one of the most significant parts of that. And so we see that with all kinds of communities, of how do you create that little space of home. How do you introduce yourselves to someone else.

PABLO BOSE:  You know we sometimes make fun of the multicultural day events that, you know, whether it's a school, a church, a mosque or whatever it is that's holding. But it really is a way for you to introduce some element of what you hold dear. Forget about culture alone. But, like, what do you value. It might be, well this is the way my grandmother made X, and I want to share that with you. Or this is, oh, this is the way you cook this. Oh, we make it this way. It's a very personal and intimate way of showing others who you are.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Yes and it feels like it's always very welcome on the other end of, like, I want to taste that.

PABLO BOSE:  Yes. It can be. I mean it can also be a distancing way of saying, like, you're not doing that right.

KAYTE YOUNG:  A ha. Or this food smells and I don't want to be near it.

PABLO BOSE:  Right, absolutely. And of course that too is one of the, kind of slurs that are directed at immigrant population.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Yes. I take it back, it's not aways welcome. But it does feel like, you know what you said about the Vietnamese restaurants, it can really serve as a bridge.

PABLO BOSE:  Yes. When the pandemic lock down started I remember somebody saying to me, you know, look at the restaurants that you want to see survive. And make sure that you, you know, when they were doing take outs.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Order take outs.

PABLO BOSE:  And so for a good year, almost a year, I got take out from that Vietnamese restaurant every single week. I mean they already knew me.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I don't blame you.

PABLO BOSE:  But I went every week and it was glorious. And in fact when I go home, I'm going to go that restaurant tomorrow. Because just thinking about is making me hungry.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Yes.

PABLO BOSE:  It's called Pho Hong. I just thought I would name the restaurant.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Yes, please do because if I'm ever in Burlington I'm going to want to go there.

PABLO BOSE:  Absolutely.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Well thank you so much, it's been really a delight to talk with you. Is there anything else you want to add. I know there's a lot that we didn't get too.

PABLO BOSE:  I would just add that it's been inspiring to go to these different refugee agriculture programs, not only the one in Vermont, but seeing the ones across the country. The New Roots programs for the International Rescue Committee, Global Gardens in Boise, Nuestras Raíces in Holyoke, there's many, many others as well.

KAYTE YOUNG:  You said there was one in Lewisville. What is that?

PABLO BOSE:  Lewisville has one of the IRC gardens I believe, the common roots gardens. And it's pretty amazing. You see an incredible amount of diversity of skills and knowledge. And, yeah, not to downplay some of the challenges but there are wonderful programs and they are well worth our investment.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Well thank you very much.

PABLO BOSE:  Thank you.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I've been speaking with Pablo Bose. He's a fellow at the Gund Institute for Environment, Professor Geography and Geo-sciences and Director of the Global and Regional studies program at the University of Vermont. You can find links to the refugee agriculture programs he mentioned our our website, Eartheats.org. This piece was engineered and produced by Leo Paes.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Dear Earth Eats listeners, yes, I'm talking to you with your radio tuned to WFIU or this episode downloaded into your pod-cast play list. Thank you for tuning in. I want to invite you to consider subscribing to the Earth Eats digest. It's a short newsletter I put out every two weeks. I write a little something at the beginning, usually about the current season, what might be growing or what sounds good to eat. Maybe I'll touch on some larger issue in the food world. It's usually along the lines of a short personal essay.

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KAYTE YOUNG:  That's it for our show this week. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. The Earth Eats team includes Eoban Binder, Alexis Carvajal, Alex Chambers, Toby Foster, Leo Laes, Daniella Richardson, Samantha Schemenauer, Payton Whaley and we partner with Harvest Public Media. Special thanks this week to Pablo Bose. Earth Eats is produced and edited by me Kayte Young. Our theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey. Additional music on the show comes from Universal Production Music. Our executive producer is Eric Bolstridge.