Editor’s Note: Among the 30 new faculty and staff hired by University of Idaho Extension, 4-H, and the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences in the past two years are men and women born in other  nations. We welcome the connections and perspectives they can share with  our students. Meet three of them from Argentina, South Korea, and Russia.

by Marlene Fritz

When Mario de Haro Marti sends photos to family and friends in                 Argentina, it’s to show them that southern Idaho is “just like home.”

De Haro Marti, new UI Extension educator for dairy/livestock environmental  education in Gooding County, calls the similarities between his Argentinean homeland and the Magic Valley striking. Both Twin Falls and his northern Patagonian hometown of Neuquen, for example, were founded in 190  after pioneers settled their desert valleys.

Like those settlers, de Haro Marti came to the U.S. in pursuit of opportunity. In Argentina, he had earned his bachelor’s degree in environmental studies at  Comahue National University, taught in a middle technical school, and worked      as an industrial safety, health, and environmental consultant. He had also flown airplanes professionally and had hoped to pursue an aviation career in Florida.

But, like those settlers, he was adaptable. When the aviation industry took a post-9/11 economic nosedive a week after his immigration, and a friend in Twin Falls told him that Idaho was still prospering, he relocated to the Magic Valley. There, he enrolled first in English classes at the College of Southern Idaho, then landed a CALS assistantship and entered a UI master’s program in environmental sciences.

De Haro Marti, a student of UI waste management engineer Ron Sheffield, chose the environmental impacts of dairies as his thesis topic because of that industry’s significance in the Magic Valley.

Connecting with Idaho’s Hispanic dairy workers

When de Haro Marti meets Hispanic dairy laborers and Anglo Idahoans, he doesn’t see differences—he sees similarities. “I think people need to see more of the points they have in common and take down the barriers between both         cultures,” he says. “Americans need to understand more about Hispanic culture—the reasons why Hispanic come here—and Hispanics need to make an effort to understand American culture.”

De Haro Marti appreciates the gifts of his Argentinean background. “We have to be more inventive and use our limited resources to go the extra mile,” he says. “Sometimes we can’t buy the perfect package to solve problems, and we need to build our own solutions. That opens your mind in different ways.”

“Everywhere, diversity brings good things,” he says.

As a graduate student, de Haro Marti helped develop a program called Vaca Verde (“Green Cow”), in which Hispanic participants learn to take crucial soil and   manure samples before land-applying dairy manures.

He values most the opportunity to “translate pure science to the people and help them understand how science impacts their lives and brings solutions. For me, that’s amazing—to have the possibility of offering that to the people.”

Contact Mario de Haro Maarti.

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