6-minute read
In a pocket of densely populated Clifton there grows an okra forest. Tree-like stalks of the crop rise nine feet into the air, and fuzzy, green pods sway in the wind. The growers at City Green Farm Eco-Center pluck a few every day and eventually bring the batch to farmers markets.
Toward the ground, though, waxy and white pods bigger than your hand slowly dry out on the bottom stalks; when they turn brown and brittle, the seeds within will be harvested and saved.
Though seed-saving is common, the situation with this okra plant at this North Jersey farm is anything but. This is Bamyeh Falastinia okra, a crop native to Palestine and a culturally significant food item under threat of extinction, in part because of the ongoing military conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
What’s growing in Clifton is more than a harvest’s worth of okra, says Lana Mustafa, a Palestinian-American farmer and educator. She brought the seeds to City Green in the spring and last month visited the village in Palestine — Battir — from which the seeds came.
“We’re seed protecting right now — it’s pretty serious,” Mustafa says. “That village is going to be turned upside down in the next five years and there’s really no way to protect them.”
Mustafa is one of several growers in New Jersey using food to build bridges and preserve culture. Nate Kleinman, who co-founded the Experimental Farm Network in South Jersey a little over 10 years ago has, with his team, grown and saved seeds from dozens of foods integral to cultures from conflict-ridden places, including Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine.
Kleinman and his team get most of their seeds from USDA genebanks, which store seeds of crops from around the world. Growing seeds from, say, Afghanistan here in New Jersey is not only a way to keep particular foods from extinction, but also to change our perceptions of the places from which the crops came.
“When you look at the diversity in a place like Kandahar, Afghanistan,” he says, “and you see that U.S. researchers were able to walk through markets there and collect seeds in the 1940s and ’50s, it’s a reminder that so many of these conflicts that we think of as intractable are actually much more recent developments.”
“And the people from these places are humans just like us, and they have dreams and desires, and they like to eat nice cucumbers and watermelons and spinach and all of the same foods that we do in most cases,” he said.
A ‘greater than ever’ need to save food from areas in conflict
The seeds from which the Clifton okra plants grew came from the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library, which protects cultivars from the existential threats of climate change, agribusiness and land loss.
Vivien Sansour, who runs the seed library, sent over 40 varieties of crops to growers across the U.S. this year. Mustafa was eager to participate but she had plans to travel to Palestine this summer and reached out to City Green, a nonprofit urban farm that both grows food and hosts community workshops, to see if they had the space and time on their Clifton farm to tend to the okra.
“When Lana approached me, I was like, of course,” says Henry Anderson, City Green’s director of agriculture. “We’ll make the room if we have to because it felt to me like that kind of crisis moment.”
After seeing communities under threat of conflict or seizure on her trip to Palestine, Mustafa gained a sense of urgency to save native cultivars such as Bamyeh Falastinia okra, as well as perspective on her agency to help.
“I think everybody has the understanding that whatever’s hidden there, whether it’s a 200-year-old mosque or seeds that have been carried down for generations, nothing is truly safe,” Mustafa says.
“And we’re super fortunate and privileged to have people here who have been seed-keeping and protecting these heirloom varieties, so part of that is just spreading them out and making sure we can preserve the genetics and keep the plants going for us and them,” she said.
The hope for Mustafa and City Green is to send back more seeds than they received, but also provide some for Truelove Seeds, a Philadelphia seed company that grows culturally significant crops and sells them to the public.
Mustafa and City Green are the only growers sending Bamyeh Falastinia okra to Truelove, but the farm is also growing Palestinian arugula, fenugreek and a pea variety for the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library.
“The urgency around preserving these cultivars is greater than ever,” says Truelove cofounder Owen Taylor. “As people are experiencing such devastating loss both of life and livelihood, I think the reason Vivien and PHSL approached us and other growers was to make sure these cultivars are preserved here for people who were forced to flee, but the hope is that they go back home at some point — both the seeds and the people.”
Seeds of plants from Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen
Truelove also grows crops and sells seeds from plants of the African Diaspora — sorghum, flowering sesame, okra, cotton, black-eyed peas, climbing gourds and luffa, to name a few. They also cultivate culturally significant crops from around the Mediterranean and Middle East.
Kleinman and the Experimental Farm Network grow their crops on three New Jersey farms in Pittsgrove, Princeton and Egg Harbor City.
Since starting in 2013, the network has grown a wide variety of crops from countries in conflict, including okra and sorghum from Sudan and South Sudan; eggplant, peppers and melons from Syria; fenugreek, millet and beans from Yemen; basil, garden cress and melons from Iraq; and winter and summer squash, sunflower and wheat from Ukraine.
Aiding their efforts are people in the U.S., and in New Jersey in particular, from those communities who support the work, Kleinman says.
“War-torn countries became a real focus [for us] because in many cases those seeds come from communities that have diasporic communities in the U.S. we can work with,” he says.
“Also, many of the places that have been destroyed or intensely damaged by war are places that have a long and deep history of agriculture and have some important crop varieties,” Kleinman says. “That includes places like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Yemen and Ukraine.”
Many of the crops Experimental Farm Network grows originated in climates more arid than New Jersey’s. But Kleinman says his work in the fields has proved the Garden State can be suitable grounds for crops regardless of the growing conditions.
“Southern New Jersey has a pretty beautiful climate for growing things from all over the place,” he says. “We’ve found things from desert climates actually thrive really well. It’s surprising but it’s true.”
One wonders what the fruit of such disparate crops might taste like, though Kleinman and his team are primarily focused on seed-saving. If something edible does emerge though, he says, “I eat it, enjoy it, share it with friends and neighbors.”
‘Doesn’t take much to fall in love with it’
The Bamyeh Falastinia okra growing in Clifton is a landrace crop, which means it evolved in Palestine specifically to the conditions present there, though a relatively dry summer, and the fertility inherent in Jersey soil, helped the drought-resistant okra flourish here.
Because the crop is born of Palestinian soil, it follows that culturally significant dishes feature it. As the name implies, one is bamyeh, a stew of okra, tomato, garlic and spices prepared either on the stovetop or in the oven and served with rice and sometimes red meat.
Mustafa says she can’t quite replicate her mom’s bamyeh recipe at home, but she likes the versions she finds from vendors at the Paterson Farmers Market, and there are several Palestinian restaurants in North Jersey to try it, too.
Aya Mustafa, a registered dietician in Clifton and Lana Mustafa’s cousin, says bamyeh is a “staple food,” one high in nutritional value, even if it requires some getting used to.
“Every family makes it, but it’s one of those foods that people either love it or hate it because it can be so slimy,” she says. “When I was younger, I was like, ‘Oh, the sliminess I don’t like.’ But now I look for it — it’s the perfect comfort food.”
Mustafa says chatting about food is an easy way to share Palestinian culture, or any culture, in lieu of other conversational avenues that might be fraught with tension. She’s seen how at farmers markets.
“For something like the okra, we’d label it ‘Palestinian heirloom,’ and somebody might be like, ‘Oh, you eat this too?’ and it’s like, ‘Well, yeah, it’s found all over the world and there’s all different varieties and this is how we cook it,’” she says. “It’s a natural progression into learning and it shows how similar we are across the world.”
Isabel Anderson, farm manager at City Green, says the okra project was an obvious fit for their community-oriented farm. The conversations like the one Mustafa references are the types they like to foster on the farm at City Green — dialogue around food in a place that highlights the attention required to grow good food and which offers a glimpse into what an equitable food system looks like.
“It almost feels like it is exposure rather than teaching,” she says of City Green’s approach to sharing their mission of opening foodways for more people. Visitors “are aware food is a human right and everyone should have access to open spaces and the autonomy to grow their own food. So, it’s like being able to empower because we have this space to provide it and share it.”
‘An avenue for building relationships between people’
The plants growing in New Jersey from various other countries will likely stop producing at the first frost, which could come any week now, and then the work of seed-saving begins in earnest. Taylor, at Truelove Seeds, says the process of harvesting seeds connects people to food in a unique way.
“I think the biggest success is seeing people gather and find hope and meaning in the regeneration of the seeds. I think that’s truly why we do it,” he says.
Kleinman says the work being done in New Jersey has a broader impact than saving any one crop from extinction. The work connects cultures and ensures people of those cultures have access to foods important to them in the future.
“We’re trying to preserve things that are important to particular communities and with that comes a responsibility to those communities to treat those seeds with respect,” he says.
“When I’m growing seeds from somebody else’s culture, I don’t take that lightly,” he says. “I see it as an avenue for building relationships between people.
“I was growing seeds from Syria and Iraq before I had any relationships with people from those places,” he says, “but growing the seeds gave me an opportunity to develop those relationships.”
Matt Cortina reports on food for NorthJersey.com/The Record. Reach him at mcortina@gannett.com.
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Publish date : 2024-09-16 21:28:00
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