In the humid heat of the Crownpoint greenhouse, Latasha Chiquito made her rounds for the day, measuring the water conditions in each of the tanks and logging her findings in a notebook before making adjustments. Later, with her 18-year-old daughter tagging along, she made the short trip across the Navajo Technical University campus to the biology lab to check on the broccoli and swiss chard seedlings.
It’s been a little over a year since Chiquito (Diné) happened to see a flyer for the university’s hydroponics program, funded by a $650,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She found out there’s a second…