Grabbing heritage by the roots: Hatch native excels in chile industry

HATCH — One-year-old Merced Alvarez will grow up in the chile fields.

That’s what her mother Andrea Alvarez, owner of La Reina Chile Company, said as she fondly looked over the little girl standing among 40 acres of green chiles. Merced’s future is her own, Alvarez said, but she’ll know how to face adversity from watching her parents start and expand a chile company.

“From the looks of it, she really enjoys being out here,” Alvarez said, laughing.

About a month into harvest season, Alvarez said things are looking good , and it’s not as hot as it was last year. Summer of 2023 was the hottest summer in the Northern Hemisphere in 2,000 years, and chile crops in New Mexico suffered as a result.

In fact, chile production has steadily declined over the past three decades.

Scott Adams, a grower with Adams Produce Inc. (API) who works with La Reina, said Hatch saw more than 30 days with weather in the triple digits last year.

But the weather has been fairly nice to the chiles so far this summer, despite the current heat wave. There also haven’t been major rain or hailstorms, farmers in Hatch said, which can damage the crops.

“The crops are nice this year,” Adams said. “I mean, we’ve got a long ways to go through the season.”

Unsurprisingly, he said one of the big challenges in the chile industry this year — and it’s not a new one — is a lack of water.

Alvarez said a lot of her farms have wells because it’s difficult to depend on the Elephant Butte Irrigation District for water. She said she knows the district board members are lobbying in Washington to represent farmers, “but there are so many issues that come before agriculture” in politics.

“We need to change that, because if we don’t have any food to sustain and nurture our bodies, what’s it all for?” she said.

People have become very distanced from agriculture and traditional ways of life, Alvarez said, and people living in the cities seem not to truly understand where their food comes from and the risks farmers take on every year.

“As the years progress, people are getting further and further away from how things used to be,” she said.

‘Born in it’

Adams looked across the street, next to the API onion shed, at the house he grew up in. His family heritage includes farming, he said, and he’s lived in Hatch nearly his entire life.

“I was born in it,” he said.

Alvarez shares a similar story. She always knew she wanted to be a farmer.

Her ancestors have been farming since before New Mexico was part of the United States, Alvarez said, and her grandparents owned a farm where she was raised not far from the chile field where her daughter was standing.

After her grandparents died, the farm got divided up, she explained. As a woman in a very traditional Mexican household, she said she didn’t inherit any of her family’s land.

“I would have loved to have farmed my family’s farm. I would have loved to do that. But that’s just not how it worked out,” she said. “But that hasn’t stopped me from doing what I love.”

Her grandfather guided her to Adams, and she said working with the grower “has really allowed me to live out my dream.” Her husband and daughter now also join in the work, and the company’s production has grown significantly since its inception in 2018.

“I feel like I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing,” Alvarez said. “I think everybody is born with a passion. They have a fire inside of them, right? And mine just happens to be this.”

She hopes maybe one day, she will be able to farm on her grandparent’s land.

“If you saw where I grew up, we had nothing,” Alvarez said, tears forming in her eyes. “But we had everything.”