In my area it already does. My Indian colleagues informed me that grocery stores that cater to their culture typically have exclusive agreements with local Indian farmers, which results in significantly reduced prices. I thought that was wonderful--I'm a fan of frugality. I'm curious if this is common in the US in other immigrant communities.

My dad's friend is an Indian farmer in Valdosta, GA. He has 10k acres of land, has his own private plane and flies Indian groceries to Houston once a week.

He immigrated to the US back in the 60's. I had a chance to meet him and he had an extraordinary character. He had no formalities and greeted us at his farm house without a shirt on. He was old but fit and you can tell what he has gone through in his life to make a living.

He spoke fluent spanish and everyone loved him in Valdosta. We spent 3 days there and went to restaurants in the evening. Everyone greeted him as if he was some kind of a hero in the town. It was really an amazing experience to have met him and his family - just shows how immigrants assimilate in the most remote places in the US, especially in a hostile place such as south Georgia in the 60's.

Edit: This story is from 2002.

Wow, cool story. I wonder under what visa or work permit scheme he went there. I had two uncles and an aunt who went to the US and stayed there, but they all went via the traditional grad student then H1-B then green card then citizen route, and were all white collar workers (an engineer turned entrepreneur and two academics), not farmers. Didn't know there were schemes for farmers and such, then or now, for the US, although I think there might be for Canada.

At least in the late 70's - early 80's, if you could find an employer to "sponsor" you (basically agree to give you a job for a certain amount of time), then you could immigrate with a green card immediately. There was no specific "scheme" for particular occupations: many of the people who did this were low-wage workers doing housekeeping, janitorial work, construction, etc.

I'd assume something similar was already in place during the 60's.

Interesting, thanks.

>then H1-B

Sorry, that should be H-1B.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa

> I'm curious if this is common in the US in other immigrant communities.

Yes absolutely. As an Indian American, I'm familiar with the Indian grocery store model. However, I grew up in a majority vietnamese area of Southern California, and most of my friends growing up were vietnamese. They had a few interesting hustles going on:

1. A few families were involved in growing produce in their backyards, and grocery stores would source these fruits. Many of the fruits (certainly not all) popular in Vietnam would grow in the heat of SoCal, but they were not farmed commercially.

2. My mom's friend told her that many vietnamese restaurants sourced their egg rolls from various aunties scattered around the community. The egg roll they made was very standardized, and they would sell many trays a day to the restaurants for cents on the dollar.

Assuming these fruits were not native to SoCal, how did they get the plants/seedlings there? Under the table? I think it would be very difficult to bring Vietnamese flora into the USA through legitimate channels.

The fruit I was talking about is dragon fruit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitaya

Which, while popular and does incredibly well in Asia, is also apparently native to the Americas up to Mexico, so it wouldn't be a far leap to grow it in SoCal

But I mean, as someone whose family is from Asia, it is not particularly difficult to sneak things in to the United States.

No. Hotels work because they require capital and low overhead — they also have a limited scope of competition. farming is a business in the middle of a consolidation wave. Small farmers are being starved out and losing access to capital as small banks go away.

I don’t thing that the gujarati model works for fringe agriculture. The big players in the agriculture business are global now, and a farmer in Ohio or New York will have a hard time making money, as the big companies just need to outbid you for one harvest season, and make up the difference with their weekly harvests in California, Chile, etc.

There are players (people serving Chinese restaurants and the Amish) doing well, but those markets are limited.

The model doesn't work in commodity ag, but no model really works for that in the long term. It always takes more capital. Farms have been failing (or "consolidating", if you prefer) for 150 years. The bogeyman didn't shutter those banks. The nonviability of buying a bigger combine and renting more land every couple of years shuttered those banks. Such a bank could have stayed open if at least once every few years its county was the only one in the Great Plains to get rain. That would have been a lucky bank...

I'm not sure what will disrupt commodity ag, but it sucks, and the sooner it transforms into something else the better. The most successful farmers I know now are raising goats for halal butchers. I'm going to start crossing my cattle with "wagyu" bulls. Don't sell commodities.

Could you elaborate on your question? I don’t understand what you are asking.