We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Zachariah Ben. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Zachariah below.

Zachariah, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Co-Founders Zachariah and Mary Ben experienced food insecurity during their childhoods, with long distances to access fresh food, dependency on SNAP/WIC and use of processed foods to stretch meals and fill stomachs. When becoming parents during the height of the pandemic, Zach and Mary felt an urgency and responsibility to expand the capacity of their small 4-acre farm in both crop variety and overall production. During their first year of family farming in 2021, they set a goal to harvest and preserve the majority of their crops to feed their firstborn child during his first year of life. Community members saw their efforts and urged them to scale up and share these baby foods with the community.
At the time, Navajo Nation was experiencing the highest rates of Covid-19 mortality in the US. Significant supply chain issues impacted the entire country, but especially burdened rural and tribal communities who experienced formula and baby food shortages for months, forcing Navajo families to commute 50-70 miles in one direction to access food for young children. Additionally, about 30% of Navajo Nation residents do not have access to electricity, so preserving food via refrigeration is not possible for many. Zach and Mary knew firsthand that access to locally grown and traditional foods during early childhood was extremely needed across Navajo Nation and rural New Mexico, and that these foods would need to be processed in a way that could maximize shelf life for families without electricity. They got to work in 2021 establishing their LLC domestically on the reservation, expanding their farm plot and searching for financial resources to scale up production.
Zach and Mary quickly realized that access to capital was going to be a challenge. Bidii Baby Foods LLC farm operates on Federal Trust (reservation) land, that requires a lot of infrastructural investment. The land is leased to the Navajo Nation from the US Government, and is then assigned to tribal members with a Certificate of Indian Blood (CIB). Banks often do not recognize this land as an asset even if it is leased in your name. Therefore, farms operating on tribal land cannot leverage the land for loans, lines of credit or grant matching requirements. After the 2021 season, Zach and Mary determined that they were not going to be able to access loans or federal grants as a tribal farm, and were advised to obtain a fiscal sponsor. In 2022 Zach and Mary established a nonprofit entity, The BEN Initiative, to act as a fiscal sponsor to Bidii Baby Foods, as well as other independent farmers and grassroots organizations working to improve Birth, Environment and Nutrition (BEN) outcomes across Navajo Nation and northwest New Mexico. During the 2022 and 2023 seasons, Bidii Baby Foods LLC leveraged grant funding through The BEN Initiative to purchase heavy equipment and install irrigation infrastructure to scale up to 16 acres and implement a “Farmer-in-REZidence” farmer incubator pilot for under 35, beginner Indigenous farmers.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Zachariah Ben. I was born into the largest farming community on the Navajo reservation located in Shiprock, New Mexico. I am a sixth generation Navajo farmer and one of the only remaining traditional Navajo sand painters of my generation. I am of “The Giant People” clan, born for “The Red Running into Water” clan. My maternal grandfather’s clan is “The Red House People” clan, my paternal grandfather’s clan is “The Salt People” clan. Growing up I had the honor of learning the teachings of nature’s aesthetics from my father. By blending traditional teachings and modern day business practices, I have successfully developed the first Agricultural Cooperative and Indigenous Baby Food Brand on the Navajo Nation, and nationwide. I am passionate about sustaining Indigenous knowledge of agriculture and art by using my platform and business to share with my family and community.
As a father of two young children living and farming on the Navajo Nation, it was important to me that I use the traditional knowledge I have to achieve food sovereignty for my family and community. Becoming a parent motivated me to create Bidii Baby Foods, a family farm and agricultural cooperative that is domestically incorporated on the Navajo Nation. Bidii Baby Foods grows crops from Indigenous heritage seeds and uses traditional agricultural practices to produce traditional Indigenous food products for young children. Since creating Bidii Baby Foods, I have seen the impact in my own children, whose foods during the first year of their lives were breastmilk and traditional foods grown on our farm. My children are healthy and are spiritually connected to their foods and the Earth. Because they were exposed to these foods early and often, they crave and incorporate traditional foods into their regular diets. Seeing this has given me hope for our community and tribal nation; that if we can use our farm to increase access to these foods in early childhood, we can foster sustained and longterm healing for the generations to come.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Bidii Baby Foods was cofounded by Zachariah and Mary Ben. The two met on farming in 2018, where Mary came to volunteer one random spring day. The two farmed together for two years before moving in together in 2020. Shortly after the pandemic hit, the two found out that they were pregnant with their first child. This motivated them to diversify their crops and expand their own plot. Zach and Mary knew that they wanted to cultivate crops that could be dehydrated and presevered throughout the pandemic, to be able to feed their child all organic, locally grown traditional foods during his first year of life. This lead to the realization that shelf stable Indigenous baby foods were in high demand in the local community, which motivated Zach and Mary to co-found Bidii Baby Foods LLC in 2021. Since their establishment, the company has gained local, regional and nationwide interest and demand. Zach and Mary have remained cofounders and sole owners of the business. While starting a business with your spouse can be challenging in many ways, they feel that this experience has helped them grow as a couple and as parents. There are times that feel overwhelming–especially during the harvest season–but they feel that overall their socially driven mission drives them to continue growing the business. Zach and Mary often refer to their children as the original co-founders. Their son, Yabiito (Navajo translation: “Water from the Sky”) and Nadaalstuii (Navajo translation: “Yellow Corn Girl”) drove them to establish this business and are the taste testers of all Bidii Baby Foods products.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Shiprock, NM is the largest agricultural community on the Navajo Nation, with over 14,000 acres of designated farmland along the San Juan River, and over 16,000 operating farms and ranches. However, the vast majority of Navajo farmers earn less than $5,000 annually. Indigenous farmers face numerous systems-level barriers to operating and scaling up their farm operations. First, Federal Trust Land (i.e. reservation land) cannot be leveraged as collateral by Indigenous farmers to access capital (i.e. loans, lines of credit, etc.) because the US government owns the land, not the individual farmer. When Zach & Mary started Bidii Baby Foods LLC during the pandemic, they quickly realized that they would not be able to access capital the typical way that farmers on privately owned land could. This motivated them to create a two-arm hybrid (for profit/nonprofit) business model. Then incorporated the BEN Initiative, a 501c3 organization, with the state of NM in 2022. Over the last two years they have been able to leverage grants from the state, federal government and private foundations to build out irrigation infrastructure and purchase heavy equipment. They have also been able to create a farmer incubator program specifically designed for young Indigenous farmers called the “Farmer-in-REZidence”(TM) program. The program is uniquely designed to support other Indigenous farmers navigate the complexities of farming on tribal land, and provides them with guaranteed fiscal sponsorship upon completion of the program; it addresses the structural barriers of farming that most farmer incubators neglect to consider–participants leave the program with access to tribal farmland with water access, fiscal sponsorship and administrative support to access capital, and the technical skills to regeneratively cultivate traditional Indigenous crops.

Contact Info:

• Website: [email protected]
• Instagram: @bidiibabyfoods
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bidii-baby-foods-llc/posts/?feedView=all
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BidiiBabyFoods

Image Credits

The one photo with Zach standing in the field alone can be credited to Mari Amor.
All others were taken by us or released to us.