Annual Farmer Gathering builds solidarity during challenging times

On March 25-26, AFSC New Mexico hosted our 13th Annual Farmer Gathering.

Over 30 farmers and community partners got together at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque to reconnect with each other, share stories, photos, challenges and solutions from their farm from the last season. 

We have been convening farmers from around the state for over a decade, primarily to encourage and facilitate cooperation in meeting market demand to increase economic viability. Since then, it has evolved into peer-to-peer learning, identifying challenges, and sharing strategies for success.

This year, farmers experienced the hottest and driest winter on record. They’ve also survived more than a year of a political regime attacking our land and water, our families and neighbors, our access to healthcare and nutrition programs, and our agricultural programs. So it was very clear to all in the room that what we are doing is not just farming for the sake of farming.

There was a renewed commitment to each other to stand in solidarity with one another as we face ongoing attacks on our people, land and water.

Among several other threats to our community’s well-being and way of life, these attacks include:

• poisoning our waterways with fracking waste and diverting dwindling supplies of fresh water for the use of data centers;
• beginning uranium and heavy metal mining operations on our traditional common lands and watersheds;
• opening indigenous sacred sites to oil and gas extraction;
• ramping up oppression by state security services.

In the face of all that, the affirmation of our relationships, the way we work and the values we live gave everyone a sense of hope and a source of strength as we continue this work in an ever-increasingly hostile climate.

AFSC New Mexico co-director Sayrah Namaste sums it up well. “It’s so beautiful to be in community with such caring people who tend the land and feed us.”