Efforts to revive a partnership that supported a farmer training program and a farmers’ cooperative at Northern New Mexico College, appear to have failed this month.
College officials chose earlier this year, not to renew a contract with the American Friends Service Committee.
A meeting between College officials and representatives of the Service Committee’s New Mexico office, was supposed to address concerns over the use of the ¡Sostenga! kitchen facilities, Domingo Sanchez, vice president of Finance and Administration for the College, said in an interview last week.
On Dec. 16, the Service Committee published a statement on its website that blamed the end of the partnership on College administrators, but did not specify who. Sanchez and President Richard Bailey said they made efforts to compromise and maintain the relationship with the Service Committee.
“We are disappointed that nearly five years of partnership and accomplishments in creating jobs and growing food for the local people were not valued by those administering the facilities,” the Service Committee’s statement said.
Since 2012, the Service Committee had been using the ¡Sostenga! kitchen to store, pack and distribute goods as part of its farmer training program and La Cosecha del Norte: A Growing Co-op, a farmer-owned cooperative of nine local farms.
“From 2012 to 2016, AFSC’s Farmer Training Program and La Cosecha del Norte provided fresh produce for several grocery stores in northern New Mexico as well as for the Española Valley, Taos and Santa Fe Public Schools,” the statement said. “Approximately 21,500 school children ate fresh veggies grown in the Española valley by Española valley farmers.”
The contract ended on June 30, at the end of Fiscal Year 2016, Sanchez, who was interim president of the College at the time, said.
He wanted to continue the partnership by allowing the Service Committee to use the College’s field, greenhouse and classrooms, but not the dry storage space in the kitchen.
“We couldn’t renew the contract for the dry space because we’re leasing it to the County,” Sanchez said. “We extended our interest in continuing to work with them. We even found a trailer that we are locating at the facility, that we offered to them as an alternate location to store the dry goods they were keeping in the kitchen.”
College officials signed a lease agreement in February with the Rio Arriba County Economic Development Department, allowing them to use the ¡Sostenga! kitchen, Economic Development Director Christopher Madrid said in an interview.
Under the lease between the College and the County, Siete del Norte, a private economic development organization, has been using the kitchen facilities in support of its efforts to establish a Food Hub at the old Hunter Ford building on Paseo de Oñate, though Madrid said the whole point of the kitchen is so anyone can use it.
“Our purpose is not exclusive, it is to make facilities available in partnership with Siete del Norte,” Madrid said. “So if we have other folks who want to use them, we just need to work together so the facility gets used properly and we don’t have one group conducting activity that’s interfering or problematic with another group.”
Madrid said he and members of his staff met with the Service Committee multiple times about the use of the ¡Sostenga! kitchen and they felt like they had legitimate concerns.
The Service Committee said in its statement, they reached out to Bailey and had not received a response by Dec. 16, but in a telephone interview six days later, Bailey said the message never reached him.
He said College officials are still open to the possibility of a future partnership with the Service Committee.
“This is a new day at Northern,” Bailey said. “We understand and appreciate the work that AFSC does and the College will look to rebuild a healthy partnership with AFSC so that we can help the community.”
Currently, the College does not have any other means of doing farmer training.
Sayrah Namaste, co-director of Service Committee’s New Mexico office, declined to elaborate on the group’s formal statement, including whether the Service Committee had any other concerns about the partnership.