North Leupp Family Farm, located less than an hour drive northeast of Flagstaff, is positioning itself to be a supplier of milled blue corn to Northern Arizona businesses. The 100-acre farm has been awarded a USDA Value Added Producer grant that would fund a feasibility study and development of a business plan for producing blue cornmeal from Navajo blue corn (a traditional crop also used in Diné (Navajo) ceremonies. But first, matching funds must be raised as part of the grant’s requirements.
“Growing blue corn is not a problem out here,” said farmer Stacey Jensen looking out over the land near Leupp, Arizona. “The Navajo Blue Corn and Hopi Blue Corn that we grow here is drought-resistant.” Jensen has been involved with North Leupp Family Farm since its inception as part of a health initiative to combat diabetes in tribal communities. Although the initial “Healing Gardens” project started in 2005, many prior generations have been farming and utilizing the natural environmental resources to provide food and economic support for their families.
“My grandma lived right over there,” said Jensen, pointing to a line of cottonwood trees along the Little Colorado River. “All along here, there are remnants of farms that date back to the 1960s. People have been farming here for a long time. That fence over there surrounds an Anasazi [Ancient Puebloan] ruin. This was their farming site, too.”
North Leupp Family Farms is a client of Grand Canyon Trust’s Native American Business Incubator Network (NABIN), which works to provide support to entrepreneurs through counseling and mentorship. The incubator bolsters the entrepreneurial environment by supporting business development through trainings, workshops and roundtables. NABIN helps small business owners succeed in the face of the unique challenges of doing business on the reservation. Those challenges include limited access to capital, lack of commercial property, and Bureau of Indian Affairs administrative red tape. NABIN assisted North Leupp Family Farms apply for the USDA grant.
“We’ve been in partnership since 2005. They’ve been right on board with us,” said Jensen, chairman of the NLFF Board of Directors about the Grand Canyon Trust.
According to Ashley Davidson, communications manager of the Grand Canyon Trust, Stacey Jensen has been “working doggedly to make this blue cornmeal dream a reality.” The farm has already found one buyer for the blue corn – Flagstaff-based manufacturer Local Alternative Inc. of Flagstaff. Jonathan Netzky, Local Alternative’s president, has agreed to buy tonnage of blue corn meal at a small premium.
“Milled blue corn sells for a much higher price than regular corn,” said Jensen. “Right now, no one’s producing it in Northern Arizona – it all has to be brought in from New Mexico.”
Currently, about 30 Navajo families tend small plots on the 100-acre farm, which also provides fresh vegetables to the Leupp STAR School, one of the first farm-to-school programs in Arizona. They use traditional farming practices, aided by solar power and drip irrigation. The grant would allow the farmers means to explore growing beyond a subsistence operation to become a regional producer of milled blue corn.
“At NABIN, part of our mission is to support economic development that can be provided to community members through traditional and cultural activities. The farm’s leadership has been successful in obtaining the 501(c)3 designation, as well as implementing solar infrastructure to irrigate the farm, and building a greenhouse to support year round production,” explained Jessica Stago, MBA, who serves as a mentor for the Trust’s Native American Business Incubator Network. “The largest challenge that the organization has faced is managing itself has its own entity and becoming self-sustaining.”
The USDA grant would help the farm plan for the future. The study would also look at the feasibility of building a solar-powered, portable cold storage unit to reduce food waste and add value to harvested products and establishing a mobile market to increase the farm’s customer base. FBN
NABIN, an initiative of the Grand Canyon Trust, has set up a donation page to help raise the remaining cash match. Tax-deductible donations can be made online at: https://grandcanyontrust.secure.nonprofitsoapbox.com/leupp-family-farms
or by mail:
North Leupp Family Farm Donation
c/o Grand Canyon Trust
2601 N. Ft. Valley Rd
Flagstaff, AZ 86001
North Leupp Family Farms
https://sites.google.com/site/leuppfarm
Leupp, Diné Nation
By Stacey Wittig
Flagstaff Business News
Leave a Reply