¡Sostenga! Center For Sustainable, Food, Agriculture and Environment: Building a traditional agriculture program and community partnership

Since its inception in 2007, ¡Sostenga! Center For Sustainable, Food, Agriculture and Environment at Northern New Mexico College has been committed to promoting and reviving our region’s traditions of small-scale farming.

¡Sostenga! grew out of a community, grassroots process to determine how the farm’s structure and programming could support Northern New Mexico’s land-based culture and teach people the skills they needed to develop an economically viable, sustainable farm. Northern’s current partnership with Greenroots Institute continues this commitment to community and to demonstrating traditional, sustainable, regenerative agricultural principles, values and practices.

The lifeblood of farming in Northern New Mexico is the acequia (irrigation ditch).

These centuries-old systems of irrigation continue to be regulated by local acequia associations that are some of the strongest expressions of community cooperation and shared responsibility. NNMC is the only higher education institution with an acequia flowing through it, making ¡Sostenga! an ideal location for teaching the small farming practices utilized by Puebloan and Hispanic farmers for centuries (combined with contemporary advances such as drip irrigation) rather than those geared toward agribusiness.

The pilot program

Dr. Camila Bustamante, former Dean of Community, Workforce, and CTE, successfully advocated for the New Mexico Legislature to establish ¡Sostenga! in 2007 as a center for preserving Northern New Mexico’s farming heritage and to allocate initial funding. A partnership with the American Friends Service Committee helped sustain the farm from 2013 – 2017. In recent years, a New Mexico Junior Bill has been providing $50,000 annually.

The partnership with Greenroots Institute (GRI) and its Founder and Executive Director Don Bustos began in 2019. Greenroots has been contributing $40,000 a year since then through grants received through the Thornburg Foundation and the McCune Charitable Foundation. Bustos and Joseluis Ortiz y Muniz, who initially served as Greenroot’s Community Liaison and Visiting Research Scientist at ¡Sostenga!, also contributed the use of their own tractors and tools to bring the garden to the point of producing over 35 varieties of vegetables, with a goal of producing 150 varieties. Much of the produce is donated to La Despensa del Barrio, Northern's Food Pantry and community groups like Breath of My Heart Birthplace.

Ortiz y Muniz has recently contracted directly with NNMC. He and Jordan Bosiljevac are now Co-Coordinators of ¡Sostenga!. Dr. Ana Malinalli X Gutiérrez Sisneros (Dr. X), Clinical Coordinator/Associate Professor in Northern’s Nursing and Health Sciences Department, serves as ¡Sostenga! Faculty Advisor, a role previously held by current New Mexico Higher Education Department Deputy Cabinet Secretary Dr. Patricia Trujillo and Dr. Joaquin Gallegos, former Chair of our Biology, Chemistry & Environmental Science Department. Ortiz y Muniz brings a wealth of intergenerational knowledge passed down through his family of Northern New Mexico farmers, augmented by studying with Bustos, whom he called, “…the padrino of ¡Sostenga!. He’s the godfather of the farm.”

A full-scale demonstration farm

In 2022, the New Mexico Legislature approved a $150,000 request to purchase equipment for the farm, which has sparked a period of growth. In addition to tractors, tractor implements, rototillers and all the tools a farm needs to operate, the funds helped purchase a barn for tool storage/classroom space and equipment for an outdoor kitchen and processing center for an adjoining Demonstration Plaza.

Both the barn and the Demonstration Plaza will help advance ¡Sostenga!’s educational goals. The Demonstration Plaza in particular is equipped to teach how to dry, cure and store produce from the garden, traditional foods preparation such as chicos, posole and jelly and value-added processing. The goal is to demonstrate every aspect of farming, from soil preparation to harvest then to table, medicine cabinet or distribution and sale. Dr. X is especially interested in the potential to teach students in Northern’s holistic RN to BSN program how to process traditional herbs from a new herb garden to make medicines, salves, tinctures, remedies and teas.

“We want to be able to offer a traditional medicines course for nurses, so that they can take this knowledge that is rooted in tradition, culture, land-based ways of living and knowing and apply that practice in their medicine work as nurses and for their own homes,” Dr. X said. “This is like an outdoor classroom for us.”

Dr. X also hopes that some students in the Community and Global Health II class will choose to do their community service-learning project in the garden.

Awards and Recognition

Ortiz y Muniz and ¡Sostenga! Farm were honored as one of the 2024 Awardees at Food & Farms Day at the New Mexico State Capitol, receiving the Living Land Award for Outstanding Leadership in Land Stewardship from Farm to Table New Mexico and the New Mexico Food & Agriculture Policy Council.

Ortiz y Muniz was also invited address a U.S. Congressional hearing titled “Conservation in the Farm Bill: Making Conservation Programs Work for Farmers and Ranchers” in 2023. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham recognized ¡Sostenga! by declaring Friday, July 14, 2023, as “The NNMC Water for the People Day,” which was coupled with an event at the garden celebrating “Water for the People: The Acequia Heritage of New Mexico in a Global Context,” a book edited by Enrique R. Lamadrid and José A. Rivera. The event and panel discussion highlighted the importance of acequia culture in Northern New Mexico and its integral place in ¡Sostenga!’s mission.

A decade of Garlic Festivals

One of ¡Sostenga!’s most beloved events was the yearly Garlic Festival, which ran from 2008 through 2018. The festival was a community celebration in which teams competed to harvest garlic and everyone enjoyed music, home-cooked food and activities like garlic braiding and a garlic recipe contest.

Ortiz y Muniz, Bosiljevac and Dr. X are discussing bringing the Garlic Festival back in 2025. It would join another annual community event, the Festival of San Ysidro Labrador and Santa Inez del Campo, which revolves around a traditional blessing of the fields.

Going forward

With the new infusions of funding and infrastructure, ¡Sostenga! is moving beyond being a pilot program into a development/foundation phase, from a productive farm to a full-scale demonstration farm. After that will come a strategic planning process for designing a for-credit, farmer training certificate program that could evolve into an associate’s and perhaps a bachelor’s degree in agribusiness. There is also a potential for production experimentation.

Bosiljevac is working to develop a volunteer program for the summer months and is hoping to offer work study positions during the fall semester.

Senator Ben Ray Luján approved an $90,000 request for ¡Sostenga!’s Northern New Mexico’s Food Security for Students and Families initiative. If the request makes it through the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate, the farm will be able double the college's yield of fresh fruits and vegetables, which is given to students and their families free of charge. Northern’s 25 percent match includes a new solar array funded with a $14,500 grant from Remy's Good Day Fund, a community demonstration area, a new skin for the Sostenga greenhouse and prepared foods for students and families housed in the freezers.

The solar array will power the greenhouse and demonstration area, expanding to a 12-month growing season with free community classes in planting, growing, harvesting and cooking traditional Hispanic and Native American recipes. The project also will launch a new community kitchen and community garden with a water catchment system on its El Rito campus.

Additional grant applications are currently in the early stages.

The garden grows

The garden is also expanding. An herb garden with traditional medicinal herbs and a pollinator pathway along the arroyo are currently being planned. Ortiz y Muniz and Bosiljevac have applied for a grant from the Con Alma Foundation for the herb garden and one from The Xerces Society for the pollinator pathway.

Ortiz y Muniz is also restoring water to an area of the garden that has not been irrigated for at least 30 years.

“Our vision is to have an orchard/pasture area back there, that will hopefully be a foundation for teaching traditional animal husbandry, teaching people how to grow their own meat, not on a large economic scale but more from a subsistence perspective,” Ortiz y Muniz said. “We can teach all the skills and tips and tricks that come along with that, things that you might not learn in an agricultural academic setting.”

As ¡Sostenga! continues to expand and grow, it will remain an integral part of the Northern New Mexico community and center for preserving our farming heritage.