By Kassidy Arena, Nebraska Public Media News
David City,NE-Sandro Lopes walks through his farm with his 11-year-old daughter, Maria, on a windy day in David City.
Maria points out the different vegetables and flowers. She often begins sentences with “A fun fact about…” as she details the intricacies of the farm. She names off each of her goats.
“My dad thought Chico would really fit the name for this one, which does,” she said, pointing at a black goat and then to another in a different pen. “And we got Kendrick over here.”
Lopes is teaching his daughter how to sustain a farm while also honoring her Brazilian roots.
“I call it little Amazon because you have the system that we’re not trying to imitate, but to replicate,” Lopes said. “I want the kids to have the memory and they can pass the legacy of what the kaa’boc used to do in Brazil.”
Lopes learned a lot about farming and goats from a free program with the Center for Rural Affairs that was offered to Latino farmers in Nebraska and Iowa. Lucia Schulz, a community organizing associate with the Center, led the program.
She said that often, resources for South American farmers focus solely on South American climates.
“There’s nothing wrong with it, but our climate is so different from South America climates,” she said. “It’s important to have that language accessibility for Latino farmers in Nebraska.”
Schulz added the Center noticed an increased need for this class after one of its YouTube videos received an unexpectedly high number of views. And then Schulz started getting more and more messages over WhatsApp—a popular messaging app.
That led to the Center offering an eight-month program in Spanish as well as English that included perspectives with cultural relevance.
“We want to promote reliability, trustworthiness in that safe space. It’s very important for us that equity and inclusivity piece, so we want everybody to know that they’re always welcome,” Schulz said.
Lopes said these classes, along with a conservation fellowship for sustainable production through the Center, taught him valuable lessons in how to sustain his own farm while honoring his cultural roots. And for him, that means making sure Maria can stay in touch with her Brazilian heritage by learning what he has picked up along the way. Lopes applied the knowledge he gained through the program to the ways his mother grew food in her community.
He explained in the Tupi Guarani language, his mother was a counselor, or spiritual leader.
“So basically, the knowledge that was passed from grandpa, great-grandpa, is through her, and I’m learning it a bit from her, because I didn’t grow up in the rain forest like her,” he said. “So Maria is going to be very important to continue. And then she’s going to show the next generation how the kaa’boc community grows food.”
Kaa’boc, a Tupi Guarani word, is related to people with dark skin and mixed Indigenous and European roots and a rich connection to the Amazon.
This connection between food production and identity isn’t something just important to the Lopes family. Studies show food is a way for people to feel connected to their heritage. Katherine Wright has a PhD in public health. She focuses her research on cultural food security.
“Really it’s the food ways, which is the preparing, sharing and consuming of cultural food, we found were the key connectors between cultural food security and identity,” she said. “And so these practices were essential for cultural transmission, social connection and a sense of belonging, which helped preserve and enhance cultural identities.”
Lopes said preservation of their heritage comes with a few challenges, though. More than 90% of David City is white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Lopes is proud that Maria is the first and only Latina in her school’s 4-H club.
“My ducks, the one that won second place got two awards, a purple badge and a light purple badge for second place,” Maria said while holding up a duck. “Then the Cayuga got two.”
“From my childhood, I remember a lot [of ducks and other animals] so I’m trying to give Maria the same feeling,” Lopes added.
Along with teaching Maria, Lopes also shares his knowledge with the people around David City. He likes to share the extra foods his farm produces with neighbors and the food bank. He donates 70% of his surplus. He talked about what makes his farm different from others’ in the region by exemplifying the different systems, often with Tupi names, in his family’s Native practices.
“One we call ‘roca.’ Roca means local food system…Another system we have reaches under the trees, they call the rainforest system…Then, we have the ‘muvuca’ system. Muvuca in Tupi means a party, or a reunion of a lot of species in the same area.”
A pollinator garden is connected to the muvuca system and one last section of the garden consists of the “hospital” section.
Lopes studied his land and made sure each section of the garden was positioned correctly to thrive. With some of the dead plants, he also composts.
“Syntropic agriculture is agriculture of process. So everything that we grow here, what we have goes back to the soil,” he explained.
Her father’s cultural farming technique has had such an impact on Maria, she started her own TikTok account to share how her family cultivates food on social media.
She pulled out her phone to remind her dad of his favorite TikTok showing the ducks escaping their pen to a silly soundtrack.
Lopes said he enjoys seeing Maria emulate the spiritual practices his mother taught him by building deeper relationships with nature, something that he knows will play a part as she grows up. Maria is one of his four children, but she’s one most interested in learning about the connection between humans and the outdoors.
“She can be a better human in the future, showing respect for the animals and for the land or for the trees,” he said. “That’s the important thing that for me and for our people, is like, how can we be better humans? So there is a word for that, ‘nhembojera.’ It’s being together, learning together.”
Next year, Lopes said he wants Maria to be the face of their small farm business, Naterra Farms, and teach other people how the kaa’boc way of life thrives, even in rural Nebraska.
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