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102our people are taken care of. Maria made it evident thatwe need agricultural sovereignty.”Sylvia De Marco, a collaborator of Rodríguez Beso-sa’s and co-owner of a San Juan boutique hotel called theDreamcatcher—in whose Goddess Suite I’m spending theweek—agrees. “After the hurricane, even people who didn’tcare about food started to care. It really opened people’s eyes:that we have to depend on our soil, not shipping containers.”Enter Rodríguez Besosa, an artist turned farmer who stud-ied architecture at New York’s Pratt Institute and helped runa gallery in Red Hook,Brooklyn. A decadeago, missing home, shemoved back to PuertoRico. She helped out onher mother’s tiny organ-ic farm to make moneywhile she opened a cul-tishly popular, illegal,and not at all lucrativebar in San Juan. Shequickly detected a prob-lem. “There was onefarmers’ market everytwo weeks, and you hadto be up at 9:00 a.m. toget anything. I was run-ning a bar. I wasn’t waking up at nine.” Some small vegetableand meat farms, like her mother’s, existed around the island,but farmers and consumers had few ways of getting together.Rodríguez Besosa, a natural entrepreneur, decided to fixthe problem. She accepted $10,000 in seed money from afriend, rented a warehouse, named it El Departamento dela Comida (“the department of food”) and started drivingaround selling boxes of local vegetables. “The vegetables Ibought had to be not just local but sustainable—agroeco-logical, biodynamic,” she says. Her quick conversion to thedogma of sustainability may be genetic. Her mother was amodel and fashion retailer turned farmer; her sister studiedbiology before taking over the family farm in 2011. “My pointwas we could not afford to go on farming unsustainably inPuerto Rico,” she says.The response was enthusiastic. María Grubb, a Puer-to Rican who spent about seven years cooking at NewYork’s Pastis, the Modern, and Maialino before returningto open Gallo Negro in San Juan’s bohemian Santurceneighborhood, says that when her restaurant opened, ElDepartamento de la Comida was the only place she couldfind fresh local vegetables. Juan José Cuevas, former chef atBlue Hill in New York City, who moved here in 2012 to takeover the kitchen at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel, agrees:“Tara was doing this when no one was.”“We detonated something really interesting,” RodríguezBesosa tells me over a delightful lunch at Huerto Semillaof rice and beans, roasted eggplant, and local lettuces withorange vinaigrette. “We were all over the newspapers. Thewhole thing erupted. I was like, I have no idea what this is,but, holy shit, it is amazing.”Her next step was to transform El Departamento de laComida into a restaurant. She bought an $80 stove, installedit in the warehouse, and let friends and visitors make simple``````dishes like pumpkin soup and pesto. “We had two to threepeople in the kitchen. Maybe it was an artist who cookedoutside, or maybe it was someone who liked to cook, like PaxxCaraballo Moll”—a Puerto Rican chef getting accolades forthe new restaurant–in–a–tiki bar Jungle Bao Bao. Furnishedwith folding tables and chairs, serving a changing vegetarianmenu of whatever local farms harvested, the restaurant quick-ly became beloved, akin to Brooklyn’s Roberta’s—shabby, alittle uncomfortable, delicious.“Then the hurricane hits us, and bang, we’re gone,” Rodrí-guez Besosa says. The restaurant flooded, then was repeat-edly looted. Stranded in New York for an event while thestorm raged, Rodríguez Besosa gathered friends to createher Resilience Fund and pitched in with the ad-hoc QueerKitchen Brigade, which canned food to send to the island.Rodríguez Besosa brought some of the cans and jars backherself, along with seeds and farming tools—by joining adelegation aboard a Greenpeace ship.Since November, Rodríguez Besosa has sent farmingbrigades, in her brightly painted Guagua Solidaria (“sol-idarity van”), to more than 30 gardens and farms all overthe island, distributing seeds, building rainwater collectionsystems, donating tools, cooking meals, giving acupuncturetreatments, and providing general spiritual uplift. She plansto help 200 farms before the campaign ends. “And if you’regrowing food in your backyard, you’re included,” she tellsme. “If you sell at farmers’ markets, you’re included. If wewant to create autonomy in Puerto Rico, it will have to bein different ways. We have to do urban agriculture; we haveto do school farms, community farms, backyard gardens.”Mayor Yulín tells me that Rodríguez Besosa’s role in theisland’s future is unique. “Tara is giving agriculture a newface,” she says. “She’s found a way to convey the importanceof a new local agriculture at a primal level, with the technol-ogy and vision to ensure it’s done in a socially responsibleand fair and ethical way. She’s taking something old andmaking it exciting.”Rodríguez Besosa isn’t alone; others on the island haverallied to support local agriculture too. The Dreamcatcher’sDe Marco offered guests the opportunity to volunteer at afarm called Estancia Verde Luz in nearby Ciales last spring.She tells me, “Our menu is all local, and Estancia Verde Luzwas the main farm who sold to us. It was completely trashedin the hurricane. So we had guests help with cleanup. Peoplefelt really good to be supporting the economy, and at the sametime helping a farm rebuild.” In May, De Marco launched amonthly dinner series called Nuestra Mesa (“our table”) incollaboration with Rodríguez Besosa: four courses of localvegetables, served in the Dreamcatcher’s airy kitchen andpatio, attended by hotel guests, locals, and farmers.``````An hour and a half east of San Juan, I pay a visit to anAyurvedic biodynamic farm named Finca Pajuil thatRodríguez Besosa has told me is a model of resilience,replete with rotation planting, rainwater collection, aqua-ponics—the kinds of things Mayor Yulín says must be partof Puerto Rico’s agriculture.An unfortunate misunderstanding with my phone’s GPSsystem leads me to a distinctly un-Ayurvedic pizzeria (Irecommend the calzones), but eventually I arrive at my des-tination, and the bright-eyed head farmer, Jey Ma Tulasi,``````“After the hurricane,even people whodidn’t care aboutfood started to care.It rea lly openedpeople’s eyes: thatwe have to dependon our soil, notshipping containers”