Fresno’s Hmong Farmers Support SNAP at San Francisco Farmers Market

Xiong and Zee Chertai make the long drive from Fresno to San Francisco every Saturday to sell their unique vegetables at the popular Alemany Farmers Market . Harvesting some 52 varieties of vegetables including bitter melon, Asian long beans, Korean and Chinese melons from their 19 acre farm in Fresno, their customers line up . They grow multiple varieties of egg plant, white for their Armenian customers, round for their East Indian clients and traditional varieties for their Italian friends.

 With such an extensive variety of crops grown year round for this certified California farmers market, the Chertai’s have a strong customer base including SNAP (Food Stamp) clients participating in the new double value program where SNAP customers double their CalFresh SNAP expenditures. During a visit to their farm on July 19th, 2011, the Chertai’s mentioned the new “token system” that their SNAP customers use to purchase their just harvested vegetables. Wholesome Wave partner Pacific Coast Farmers Market Association introduced the double value SNAP program in 2010 . The program continues to expand, with farmers such as the Chertai’s from Fresno selling just harvested varieties of ethnic vegetables to these SNAP clients at the Alemany Market

Photo: Farmer Xiong Chertai with Armenian Egg Plant harvesting for San Francisco’s Alemany Farmers Market Clients

Trained as a mechanic, Chertai wanted to be his own boss after arriving as a refugee and quickly took up farming in Fresno, eventually settling on his own leased farm in 2000. After supporting American troops in the mountains of Vietnam and Laos as a teenager, he eventually made his way through various refugee camps, arriving in California in 1980. Learning English, marrying, studying to be welder and mechanic, he quickly, like so many of his Hmong and Lao colleagues, felt the independence of farming was his future. The Chertai’s children, one a pharmacist working for Kaiser Permanante, another a law student, return often to help their parents on the farm. Some 1, 400 Hmong and Lao farmers now operate in Fresno County with many selling at California farmers markets, others settled in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Montana, Iowa, North Carolina, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Florida, many, like the Chertai’s, feeling farming provided the independence and livelihood that they treasure today.

Photo: Gus Schumacher with Zee Chertai and Xiong Chertai, Chertai Farms, East Fresno California