Filming for Hmong Family Farms
Todd Murray, WSU King County Extension
Bee Cha, WSU Small Farms Program
Funded by King Conservation District and supported by WSU Small Farms Program through grants from USDA Risk Management Agency and King County Agriculture Programs
Background:
Hmong are from the highlands in Laos. Hmong began to immigrate to King County in the early 1980’s as refugees resulting from the Vietnam War. Church, government, institutional and community groups helped create new lives for the refugees that settled in our area. Now Hmong Farmers are a significant component to the King County’s agricultural landscape.
Learning new sustainable business and farming practices is important for farmers to continue to survive in King County. Washington State University’s Small Farms Program has expanded its outreach capacity to engage immigrant farming communities state-wide. WSU King County Extension is fortunate to host Bee Cha, of the Small Farms Program, as a Hmong community liaison and immigrant farming specialist. Bee is challenged with task to bring sustainable practices and tools to the farmers through education.
The Situation:
Learning and passing of information in Hmong culture is traditionally done orally through folk stories and visually through art. While the classroom-style of teaching does reach some farmers, language, work schedules, and learning styles have been barriers to making education easily accessible.
We found that all farmers have access to DVD players and that video has the potential to overcome some barriers to learning. Training educators and the young farmers in video production supports our goal to provide appropriate, accessible education to farmers. Demonstration videos will provide Hmong farmers with the educational tools they need to learn new sustainable farming practices.
The Project:
About a dozen of young Hmong Farmers assembled at 911 Media weekly for 12 weeks to learn how to create videos. 911 Media Arts Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting independent digital media artists in the creation and exhibition of their work. The instructor taught the group of youth and four extension educator mentors how to structure film projects through preproduction planning, film photography, and editing. After learning new skills, the group was challenged to create a video project of some aspect of Hmong culture that they would like to represented in video.
The student-made videos were filmed in King County, and show the production, filming and editing skills they developed in the Hmong Film Workshop. One group produced a short film about reading and writing in Hmong language. The second team provided a snapshot of Hmong farming and marketing in Washington State. Another group documented spiritual practices by community shamans while the last team filmed the progression of learning Hmong traditional dance.
In surveys, we found that no one of in the team would want to be a farmer full-time, as a career. Up to 1/3 of the participants would consider a family farm in addition to their careers. 90% of the group enjoys working on the farm to some degree while up to a third of those find joy often when working on the farm. Everyone here believes that their family’s farm is important and all are proud of their farm.
Five of the eleven workshop graduates will work with WSU Extension making demonstration videos for Hmong Farmers. This summer of 2008, we will begin constructing and preplanning educational demonstration videos.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge our funders, King Conservation District and our supporters, WSU Small Farms Program through grants from USDA Risk Management Agency, 911 Media support and staff, Sylvia Kantor, King County Agriculture Programs and WSU King County 4-H and State 4-H Sarah Butzine, Sue Lerner and Carey Roos.
Thanks to the following for their support:
And special thanks to Essential Baking Company and PCC Natural Markets for tasty Treats!
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