{"id":31340,"date":"2019-05-15T04:00:04","date_gmt":"2019-05-15T09:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/civileats.com\/?p=31340"},"modified":"2019-05-23T08:48:54","modified_gmt":"2019-05-23T13:48:54","slug":"finca-conciencia-is-building-food-sovereignty-on-vieques-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2019\/05\/15\/finca-conciencia-is-building-food-sovereignty-on-vieques-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Finca Conciencia Is Building Food Sovereignty on Vieques Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou are not allergic to bees, right?\u201d asks Ana Elisa P\u00e9rez Quintero, who helps run Finca Conciencia<\/a>, the only agro-ecological farm on Vieques, an island located about seven miles off the east coast of Puerto Rico, before we enter the property through a heavy wooden gate.<\/p>\n

The nine-cuerda (slightly over 8.5-acre) farm is perched on the top on the Monte Carlo neighborhood of the island. Scattered in between fruit and nut trees, beehives, and fallow land, P\u00e9rez Quintero and Jorge Cora grow organic vegetables on around 40 beds, laid out over two sides of a gently sloping hill.<\/p>\n

\"The

Home to roughly 10,000 residents, Vieques has no major, commercial source of locally grown produce, so Finca Conciencia is trying to fill that gap and build a food sovereignty movement on the island. In addition to growing vegetables, they do that by keeping bees, giving workshops, saving seeds, and holding community kitchen events through a collective they formed in 2015 called La Colmena Cimarrona<\/a>\u2014the Maroon Beehive\u2014a name that hints at their unique strain of runaway bees, their politics, and their own histories.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can produce more ourselves and become more food sovereign, maybe that can lead to an awakening in the political sphere in Puerto Rico\u2014and even more so in Vieques,\u201d P\u00e9rez Quintero explains.<\/p>\n

The half-dozen rustic buildings at various stages of disrepair, lined strategically at the highest point of the farm to catch the view of the Caribbean Sea in the distance, are a reminder of the devastating impact Hurricane Maria had when it tore through the island in 2017. While the farm is slowly rebuilding, its main focus is on growing vegetables for the farmers\u2019 own consumption and to sell to restaurants on the island.<\/p>\n

\"Most

The 30,000-acre island has long struggled with food access and availability. Puerto Rico, which consistently ranks higher for food insecurity and hunger than most other parts of the U.S., imports roughly 85 percent<\/a> of its food\u2014that number jumped to 95 percent after Hurricane Maria. Food insecurity on Vieques is compounded even more by an irregular and unreliable ferry service. Earlier this spring, for instance, both cargo ferries to the island were broken, cutting off residents\u2019 access to gas, milk, eggs, and fresh produce.<\/p>\n

In addition to food insecurity stemming from its remoteness, Vieques has been battered in many ways over the years. The U.S. Navy used half of the island as a weapons test site for more than six decades before finally ending in 2003, eventually turning that half into a National Wildlife Refuge<\/a> that is also a Superfund Site<\/a>. And Hurricane Mar\u00eda slammed into Puerto Rico in September 2017, killing 3,000 people and cutting off electricity, gas, food, and supplies for weeks to Vieques.<\/p>\n

\"Jorge

\u201cWhat Jorge and Ana are doing is both unique and necessary,\u201d says Sylvia de Marco, who runs a vegetarian boutique hotel on the island and sources greens and other produce from the farm. \u201cVieques has so much potential\u2014we can grow year-round\u2014it\u2019s amazing not more people are doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raising Produce and Pollinators<\/strong><\/p>\n

Originally from the city of Arroyo, Puerto Rico, Cora has been working with bees since 1996. He came to Vieques to buy queens from his predecessor, Mike Diaz, after Hurricane George destroyed his hives in 1998, and he never went back home. Diaz gave the land to Cora when he retired, marking the start of Finca Conciencia, 12 years ago.<\/p>\n

P\u00e9rez Quintano, also from Puerto Rico, arrived five years ago to participate in a workshop. Inspired by what Jorge was doing\u2014and the very obvious need for more food sovereignty on the island\u2014she decided to stay as well.<\/p>\n

The \u201cagro-api-artisanal farm,\u201d still recovering from the Hurricane Mar\u00eda, currently produces around 150 pounds of food per week, mainly green leafy vegetables that it sells to residents, restaurants, and hotels twice a week in the island\u2019s port town of Esperanza. The farmers, and the day laborers who help work the land, consume the rest of their produce.<\/p>\n

\"Jorge

The farm is part of La Colmena Cimarrona, the larger collective that P\u00e9rez Quintano and Cora founded to create agroecology training opportunities, as well as provide administrative and fundraising support for like-minded organizations. In addition to teaching workshops on composting, organic farming, and seed-saving, the collective runs a community kitchen, community gardens, and a group for women working in food security. Its long-term goal is to train enough farmers around the island to eventually have a local farmers\u2019 market.<\/p>\n

The collective also runs an apiary, spearheaded by Cora, that raises Puerto Rico\u2019s unique hybrid bees\u2014a hybrid of \u201ckiller\u201d African bees and a European strain that is gentle and resilient to many of the parasites that plague European honeybees. \u201cThey call them wild, or \u2018killer\u2019 bees,\u201d says P\u00e9rez Quintero. \u201cBut they\u2019re not. It\u2019s the same kind of racist discourse that was used to describe indigenous and enslaved people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cora, who has been developing different hives to keep the smaller, hybrid bees, agrees. \u201cThe bees are a hybrid, like us Puerto Ricans. You can\u2019t manage the hybrid bees the same way you do European bees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around 80 percent<\/a> of the island\u2019s 150,000 bee colonies were wiped out during Hurricane Maria. To save their dozen beehives during the storm, P\u00e9rez Quintero and Cora strapped them to pieces of wood and tied them to the sturdiest trees.<\/p>\n

Since then, however, the apiculture side of their business has slowed down a bit as they focus their efforts on ramping up vegetable production. But both are adamant that there is no separating bees from agriculture. \u201cWe live inside of the bees; they are connected to everything we touch and eat and use,\u201d Cora says. \u201cWe can\u2019t live without them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Banks of Life\u2019 and Seed Saving<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve come during the dry season, but even so, because of the winds, low rainfall, high levels of evapotranspiration, and lack of irrigation, farming on Vieques is a challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere isn\u2019t much to see at the moment,\u201d says Cora. \u201cOn the main island, the earth is productive when it rains, but in Vieques it’s harder\u2014the soil is drier, and the rain is less. In reality, the climate here is more like a desert.\u201d<\/p>\n

To get around that, Cora developed a type of narrow, long, raised vegetable beds based loosely on traditional farming techniques used by the indigenous Ta\u00edno<\/a>, in which long furrows collect and hold water when it rains. They look similar to double-dug beds<\/a> used in bio-intensive agriculture, but they are longer and higher. The farm doesn\u2019t adhere strictly to any one system, but is adamant about not using agrochemicals or industrial techniques.<\/p>\n

\"

\u201cWe call these \u2018banks of life,\u2019\u201d says P\u00e9rez Quintano. \u201cDuring the hurricane, for the most part they stayed intact,\u201d even if much of their farm didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\"A

About half the beds are currently growing leafy greens, eggplants, and peppers, and the other half is going to seed. P\u00e9rez Quintero has been dedicating herself to generating seeds that are locally adapted to the conditions in Vieques since she came to the farm five years ago\u2014both to lessen dependence on outside sources and to generate seeds that will flourish in the unique local climate and soil conditions of the islands. For now, the seeds are mainly used on the farm and exchanged at the workshops the farm regularly holds.<\/p>\n

In the Wake of Natural Disaster<\/strong><\/p>\n

Recovery from Hurricane Maria was even harder for Vieques than for the rest of Puerto Rico; electricity didn\u2019t fully return there until January 2019, and the hospital still operates some of its services out of trailers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe effectively had no health services, no dialysis, [and] no diabetes medication after the hurricane,\u201d remembers P\u00e9rez Quintero. \u201cIt was a real crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the damage the farm took from the hurricane, access to fresh food wasn\u2019t as much of an issue. They harvested everything they could and distributed some of the provisions, built a model garden at the Catholic church, and started a women\u2019s group through the collective to work on food security and health issues.<\/p>\n

P\u00e9rez Quintero and Cora saw Maria as a way to bring awareness to the issue of generating more food security on the island. \u201cThat\u2019s what we want to tell the people here,\u201d Cora says. \u201cThere are going to be more times where there is no ferry and no food\u2014and they have to be prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n

Food Sovereignty as a Political Statement<\/strong><\/p>\n

The land on which Finca Conciencia is built is what is known locally as \u201crescued land,\u201d or land that belonged to the Navy but was overgrown and not in use. Residents like Cora\u2019s predecessor Mike Diaz came and cleared the land, effectively laying claim to it.<\/p>\n

\"A

While that land is recognized by the government, it has no clear titles, making it easy for people to claim and sell it. The most lucrative buyers are eyeing land for hotels and vacation homes for one of Vieques\u2019 main industries: tourism. Because the island was inaccessible for so long, development has been slow, making it a paradise for off-the-beaten-track travelers. The surge in wealthy, absentee owners, however, means that prices for land have skyrocketed and buying land for farming has become all but impossible.<\/p>\n

For P\u00e9rez Quintero and Cora, the history of Vieques ties in with what they are trying to do today with their farm. La Colmena is in the process of setting up a community land trust to claim some of the remaining, unsold land to use for food production.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgroecology and agriculture in general is, in its own way, a way to rescue Vieques from the gentrification, land speculation, and displacement that we are seeing,\u201d P\u00e9rez Quintero explains. \u201cWe have a lot of absentee owners\u2014we need more people that are actually here in order to change things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finca Conciencia and its associated collective hopes that its work will advance social, economic, and environmental justice and sensitize people to the issue of food\u2014and political\u2014sovereignty.<\/p>\n

One of the anecdotes P\u00e9rez Quintero likes to tell is from just after the hurricane. The farm had started a soup kitchen using radishes and arugula, ingredients that produce rapidly, \u201cthings that before the hurricane people would have potentially found gross,\u201d she says. After eating canned food for weeks and seeing little aid and help from elsewhere, one of the men on the island turned to her and said, \u201cLook, I\u2019m not actively fighting for independence right now, but I think we need more of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That seems to be the essential mantra of the farm: To free ourselves, we have to feed ourselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not an easy way to make a living,\u201d Cora concedes, sitting and watching the Caribbean Sea break on white sand beaches in the distance. \u201cBut someone had to show that it could be done. And we\u2019ve done that\u2014aqu\u00ed estamos\u2014we are showing that it is possible. And that\u2019s not nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou are not allergic to bees, right?\u201d asks Ana Elisa P\u00e9rez Quintero, who helps run Finca Conciencia, the only agro-ecological farm on Vieques, an island located about seven miles off the east coast of Puerto Rico, before we enter the property through a heavy wooden gate. The nine-cuerda (slightly over 8.5-acre) farm is perched on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1012,"featured_media":31283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4632,4479,521],"tags":[],"coauthors":[10067],"class_list":["post-31340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-farmer-profiles","category-farming","category-local-food"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFinca Conciencia Is Building Food Sovereignty on Vieques Island | Civil Eats<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The only agro-ecological farm on the Caribbean island is feeding people who have long struggled with food access\u2014and working to advance social and political freedom in the process.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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