Cooperative Farm Project in NW Washington Draws on the Communal Traditions and Values of Mexican Land Reform
In northwest Washington state, a small seed of cooperative land use is being planted: a 65-acre farm owned and operated by immigrant farmworkers and their families. Along with fresh, sustainably grown local food, the farm is producing something even more vital: a sense of community and belonging, and perhaps a model for future land use.
Launched in 2017 and dubbed the Ejido Community Farm project, this effort now hosts Cooperativa Tierra y Libertad, a cooperative farm business composed of local farmworkers. The name and spirit of the Everson area co-op harken back to the great Mexican land reform efforts of the 20th century, which enabled much wider community access to good farmland. These small cooperative farms are known in Mexico as ejidos.
“We see the ejido as a home,” said Ramón Torres, one of the leaders of Tierra y Libertad. “It’s a place where our children are safe and can be kids, and be proud of their parents.”
This Northwest ejido is being supported and championed by Community to Community Development (C2C), a local grassroots organization that focuses on farmworker organizing and issues of racial and climate justice in Washington state. The group works closely with its constituent community, made up primarily of indigenous and Latinx immigrants.
“We were inspired by the frontline community leadership on this project,” said Rosalinda Guillen, executive director of C2C. “They saw it as a way to participate in an equitable and inclusive economy, and so we stepped up to help with the land acquisition and capital development to support their initiative.”
Guillen and other community backers hope that the project represents the first step in a movement that could eventually grow and flourish, transforming food and land-use models throughout the region.
Historic Roots
When the Mexican people finally rose up against the rule of long-time President Porfirio Díaz in the early years of the 20th century, land reform was one of their major demands. Led by revolutionary leaders like Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, this movement demanded the redress of inequality by allowing landless peasants access to quality farmland and adequate housing.
The goal was realized with the passage of the new Mexican Constitution of 1917. Article 27 of this constitution established the ejido system and included provisions limiting the private control and sale of such lands. In the five decades between the 1930s and 1970s, roughly half of Mexico’s arable land was redistributed to small farmers by the government through ejidos (where farmers had usufruct rights to the land, but did not hold title to it). Unique in Latin America, this system also promoted community and drove economic and political change at a local level.
These reforms shaped agriculture—and the larger economy—in Mexico for much of the last century. But neoliberal reforms in the early 1990s, partly driven by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), marked the formal end of the ejido laws in Mexico.
Today, some of the spirit and ideals of Zapata and other revolutionary leaders are kept alive by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. This militant movement, which emerged in 1994, now controls considerable territory in the Chiapas area of southern Mexico. Among other things, Zapatistas champion indigenous traditions and “bottom-up” politics, and oppose neoliberalism and globalization efforts like NAFTA.
Modern Land Reform
The Mexican tradition of ejidos and related land reform efforts were a major influence on Guillen, who founded Community 2 Community in 2006 after attending the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, a few years earlier. The Bellingham group’s mission centers on reimagining existing economic systems “by redefining power in order to end settler colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy in their external and internalized forms.”
In practice, this work includes spearheading or supporting numerous regional and national efforts related to food sovereignty and food justice. So when Tierra y Libertad emerged a few years ago, C2C stepped forward to help.
“It’s a concrete example of the solidarity economy that we’d like to build here in the region,” Guillen noted.
C2C helped the co-op project secure start-up funding through a grant from the Communities of Concern Commission. This funding was also used to provide technical assistance for the first two years of farming efforts.
As a cooperative farm business, Tierra y Libertad is already a success. The families started out with 20 acres of raspberries, and have since added 10 acres of blueberries, more raspberries, and some fruit trees to the mix; further expansion is planned. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, CARES Act funding allowed local food banks to buy all the produce from the farm at good prices during the 2020 harvest.
After several productive growing seasons, the co-op has ambitious plans for the future. A greenhouse has been built on site, and a solar power plant is in the works. Other goals include planting more total acreage, increasing crop diversity, and adding further sustainability measures.
In addition to preserving 65 acres of prime local land for family farming, Tierra y Libertad has also been a source of job creation. Along with the families that work the farm, it’s estimated that the project supports 15 seasonal farmworker jobs, along with 45 indirect jobs.
Connection With the Land (and Housing)
The Ejido Community Farm project hopes to become a modern example of land reform—and housing equity.
Right now, C2C holds a seven-year lease-to-purchase agreement with the property owner. The group is currently partnering with organizations like the Institute for Washington’s Future (IWF) to procure the several million dollars in funding still needed to purchase the land and do a full build-out of the project.
This build-out would include on-site housing for the families, an important aspect of the larger vision and goals for Tierra y Libertad.
“It is tough for any marginalized group to gain access to land and capital, especially considering the barriers of language, culture, and structural racism,” said Sean Hopps, executive director of IWF. “Along with C2C, we hope to be able to support emergent farm and food business cooperatives like this one as part of our ongoing work in the community.”
Edgar Franx, a farm organizer who has worked at Tierra y Libertad, testified to the importance of the ejido as part of forging stronger community connections.
“As farmworkers, we are often treated as outsiders and excluded from the community,” Franx observed. “The ejido gives us the power to engage with the community on our terms. I also feel more connected to the ancestors and the land itself when I work on the ejido, which is very different from the feeling I get working on someone else’s land.”
The long-term vision is for Tierra y Libertad to control all equity in the farm business and own the housing that is planned for the property. C2C will retain ownership of the land to ensure that it is used for nonprofit purposes.
Toward a More Equitable Future
All involved believe that Tierra y Libertad is an example of what is possible under a different kind of economic system, one which addresses the deep inequities of our current housing situation and represents a more just regional food economy.
“Our primary goal is to establish a model for cooperative means of acquiring and owning land, one which enables low-income people of color to sustainably cultivate farms of their own,” Guillen said.
For Torres, the ejido represents nothing less than “a unique manifestation of the American Dream, which has been slipping away for a lot of people.”
Hopps believes that the project offers hope for a better future in our region, much as Mexico’s revolutionary land reform efforts once offered hope to the country’s landless peasants.
“The ejido embodies our shared vision, which can be described as ‘back to the future’: back, in the sense of recapturing the values that once characterized our agriculture, including opportunity for all, stewardship of the land, and the practice of communal values,” he said. “And future, in the sense of addressing the critical issues before us: climate change, the concentration of wealth, and the continuing economic repression of people of color.”
