Tomatoes, corn, and peaches are the staples of New Jersey agriculture. But at Morris Gbolo’s farm in the state’s southern tip, crimson-hued amaranths and plump Liberian bitter ball are the prized crops… The Gbolos are believed to be New Jersey’s only African-born farm owners. They devote nearly 80 percent of their acreage to specialty crops like nightshade, jute leaves, roselle, Ghanaian pea eggplant (a berry-size vegetable, which Gbolo calls “kittley”), okra, habanero peppers, and a Liberian variety of bitter ball (a type of eggplant)… “Ethnic farms like Morris’s cater to recent immigrants who cannot find the fresh specialty produce [of] their homelands,” said Richard VanVranken, an agricultural agent at Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Atlantic County who has studied New Jersey’s ethnic food industry since the 1980s… VanVranken hired Gbolo to work in his extension program in 2006 and soon realized it was an opportunity to study African crops and learn from Gbolo, who had been a farmer and agriculture educator in Liberia.
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