Hmong American Farmers Association

The Hmong American Farmers Association (HAFA) was co-founded by siblings Janssen and Pakou Hang in November 2011. Since then, the St. Paul-based organization has helped Hmong American farmers develop profitable, sustainable businesses in Minnesota.

In 2011, Hmong farmers met in Minneapolis with impact investors from the Opportunity Finance Network conference. At that meeting, Vang Thao Moua, a Hmong farmer who had immigrated to the United States in 1977, said she had been waiting for twenty years to be asked what investors could do to support immigrant farmers. Her remark sparked a lively discussion that culminated with a suggestion that Hmong farmers form their own organization. “We have to stop waiting for someone to come save us. We can save ourselves,” said Blia Yee Moua. A week later, HAFA was formally incorporated with eleven inaugural farmer-members.

HAFA emerged from the understanding that Hmong farmers faced unique barriers. According to a 1997 study by the University of Minnesota’s Department of Applied Economics, immigrant farmers faced many challenges: long-term access to affordable farmland near the Twin Cities; access to diverse markets besides farmers markets; access to capital to purchase land and other farm equipment; and access to bi-lingual and bi-cultural research and trainings.

Because Hmong families did not have access to these resources, many were exploited. HAFA collected stories of Hmong farmers who were charged $300 an acre to rent land from a white farmer only if the Hmong farmers agreed to allow their family to come into the fields and harvest produce free of charge. Some white farmers charged Hmong farmers $50 to $75 an acre for custom soil tilling when the market rates for white farmers were only $15 to $20. Based on an annual survey it conducted, HAFA estimated that, in general, Hmong farmers earned only $5,000 in sales per acre. Other mainstream vegetable growers made over $8,000. In short, racist policies and practices perpetuated an unfair economic system in which Hmong farmers were working hard but barely making it.

To address these problems, HAFA rooted its work in the “whole foods model”—a system that supported capacity-building while protecting ecology and demanding equitable wages for farmers and workers. In order to build true community wealth, HAFA argued that it needed to simultaneously engage all components of the whole foods model: land access, new markets, financing, trainings and research.

Other groups had focused on delivering one component of the system or tried to support individual farmers as they moved through the system. But what made HAFA’s model unique was its focus on all the components, at the same time, with cohorts of Hmong farmers to truly change the system. The ultimate goal was to build the farmers’ self-efficacy, expand social capital, build community and intergenerational wealth, and change the food and agricultural system so that it worked for all. To participate in HAFA’s programs, one had to be a farmer-member. In order to be a member, one had to have been farming for more than three years on more than three acres and have over one million dollars in liability insurance.

HAFA spent its first two years under the fiscal agency of the Latino Economic Development Center (LEDC). The small organization was granted 501(c)(3) status in December 2013, but even then, the operation was touch and go. HAFA struggled to secure enough funding to maintain cash flow as it competed with the more established organizations already working with Hmong farmers. What set HAFA apart were its practices, which were rooted in cultural norms, its membership requirements, and its explicit articulation of self-determination. As the organization pointed out in its early grants, it was the only such group started and led by Hmong farmers.

In 2014, through the support of a generous benefactor, HAFA secured a 155-acre incubator and research farm in Vermillion Township (Dakota County) along Highway 52 South. The HAFA Farm, as it came to be known, gave over twenty Hmong families long-term access to five- to ten-acre parcels, along with irrigation and a rinsing, washing, and cooling facility. This opened the door for Hmong farmers to sell their produce to schools, co-ops, restaurants, and other institutions.

In 2017, HAFA received the coveted Bush Prize from the Bush Foundation in recognition of its innovative and transformative work.