LITTLE ROCK — About a dozen Hmong farmers gathered earlier this week as part of a community round table discussion to help promote the use of government programs.
The meeting came in the wake of several expiring poultry contracts that have left a few with no means to pay off debt.
Washington County poultry farmer Shane Tawr acted as the interpreter during the all-day meeting held at the Pauline Whitaker Equine Center in Fayetteville.
Language differences have been among the barriers the Southeast Asian farmers have had to overcome in accessing U.S. Department of Agriculture programs and services, Bruce Thao, a special projects manager with the nonprofit Hmong National Development of Washington, D.C. said Thursday.
Thao, in announcing the round table event, wrote in a news release that “severe financial hardships and stringent poultry industry regulations have made it difficult for Hmong farmers to maintain their farms and farm loans.”
Thao in a telephone interview said that while his organization met with farmers and representatives of state and local agriculture, the final assessment from the effort would not be available to the public.
Instead, the report will be used for internal purposes at the Agriculture Department, he said. A news release will also be available in the coming weeks on Hmong National Development website.
Hmong National Development is a nonprofit group based in St. Paul, Minn., that acts as a national policy advocacy organization, especially for Hmong communities that have a limited ability to organize themselves, Thao said.
Ge Xiong, a turkey farmer with a farm near Ozark, agreed that many problems his fellow farmers have had were rooted in the language barrier.
Unlike some members of his Hmong community, Xiong can speak and write English well. He is also fluent in about three other languages, including French.
“I hope that the farmers who need to upgrade [their poultry houses] and were not able to get loans from lenders will be able to get a direct loan” from the Agriculture Department, Xiong said Friday.
About 65 out of an estimated 100 families that have settled in Franklin, Johnson and Logan counties have poultryfarms, he said, “and those that are having problems are mostly broiler [chicken] farms.”
More than 6,700 ethnic Hmong and Laotians reside in Arkansas, according to data from HmongStudies.org, which uses 2010 U.S. Census data.
Monday’s round table discussion with farmers was part of a three-day effort led by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, which is a part of the Department of Agriculture.
The Agriculture Department has redoubled efforts to ensure fair treatment of its employees and customers, and in April 2009 issued a memorandum titled “A New Civil Rights Era for USDA” outlining the means to do so. The effort came about after allegations that the department had unfairly discriminated against some ethnic groups including American Indians and blacks.
The White House also supported the department’s effort through a 2009 executive order titled “Increasing Participation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Federal Programs.” There are an estimated 16 million Asians and Pacific Islanders in America, the White House reported. The population in the United States is an estimated 313 million people.
Reginald Jackson, a state public affairs representative for the Agriculture Department’s National Resource Conservation Service in Little Rock, declined to comment about the financial difficulties that have affected an unknown number of Hmong farmers. Jackson attended Monday’s meeting.
But he said the National Resource Conservation Service regularly holds outreach meetings to make producers aware of the programs that can help pay for the cost of equipment needed in operations such as poultry farming.
Business, Pages 36 on 11/19/2011