CAMPO

CAMPO is a working farm and school focused directly on conservation through agriculture and social justice in farming. CAMPO’s Model Cooperative Farm and Agroecology School exists to provide long term employment opportunities in healthy and regenerative agriculture while utilizing hands on, popular education to teach and promote agroecology. Through conversations with local Latin American farmworkers and direct involvement of this population, CAMPO has learned that the primary barriers to a more just agricultural landscape in our region are land access and economic limitations. Soil health and biodiversity in agricultural spaces are a major priority for our region's resilience in this time of climate uncertainty. We’re building a working model of a successful no-till, cooperative farm and school with hopes to inspire a larger transition towards these methods of socially and environmentally just agriculture models in the region. We're located in the Western suburban/exurban, semi-rural region of Hillsboro, Oregon. Agriculture in the region currently and historically disproportionately targets the Latin American farmworker community for grueling and extremely low wage labor. This population, along with the large low income population of the area, lacks access to healthy food despite their jobs as food producers. CAMPO's cooperative members are the primary users of this project as a livelihood, a source of food, health and pride. Through its internship and cooperative model CAMPO is bringing this population into leadership roles in the development of a new social model in which workers collectively own their farm businesses and have long term access to land. Our first example of this model is in its second year of formation on Stoneboat Farm, a 30 acre vegetable farm of which 2 acres have been transitioned to no-till agroecological methods managed by CAMPO's first campesino collective. After 3 years of working together, this group will legally form as a cooperative entity and formally become the operator of a larger, 5-10 acre portion of the farm and business. The land the cooperative operates on will be put into an agricultural trust and maintained in perpetuity to be available for the agricultural activities of the cooperative. CAMPO's educational programs offer more hands on workshops, community gatherings, documentary screening and presentations on social movements towards land and food justice. The participants in these bilingual events are another target audience whose increased consciousness of agroecology and just food systems grows the movement and CAMPO.