Written By Josh Stuyvesant

Upon first glance, Joseph Alfaro and Lisa Abeyta wouldn’t appear to have a whole lot in common. Joseph is from the South Valley of Albuquerque. He’s often a little dusty, with a healthy tan and work-worn hands from the early morning maintenance of his farm. Lisa, on the other hand, wears a business suit and when not out building bridges across sectors and communities via technology, she sits behind a laptop in a conference room in the Northeast Heights. Though unalike in some ways, Lisa and Joseph share some very stunning characteristics.

When Joseph Alfaro first arrived at the South Valley lot that would become his main farm in the vast patchwork of farmland he has cultivated, he found it ugly and ridden with the seeds of neglect: needles, pipes, unwearable clothing, broken furniture. It was an eyesore on 5 Points Road, a gaping chink in the armor of the community, a hole that Joseph proudly filled with the cultivation of turnips, spinach, squash, carrots, and sunflowers in the fall.

Joseph is the head farmer of Valle Encantado, a local farm that is part of the Agri-Cultura Network. When I visited his 5 Points lot, three giant, cold frames were keeping batches of salad greens warm. Most of Joseph’s greens harvest goes to Albuquerque Public Schools to enrich school lunches.

“We have a contract [with APS] through the Agri-Cultura Network, and we provide 144-244 lbs. of salad greens every week for the school season. We’ve been able to be real consistent. Think about if you were just one individual farmer, how challenging it would be to get your permits and all the different licenses. It’s challenging, but through the network, we’re able to do it all together. We are a team. We are stronger together,” said Joseph.

I followed Joseph and his nephew, Andrew Valverde, to another small plot of land where blackberry vines were turning a cabernet color with the recent warm weather. Here, Joseph and Andrew would work for a few hours—clearing out the old, woody vines to let the thriving ones breathe—before continuing to locations across the Valley that now make up a matrix of healthy farm plots. Joseph and Andrew have successfully been filling holes that needed filling, literally turning and transforming the soil in places so ripe for it, yet often disregarded.

And as we talk about places so often disregarded, I understand that it’s quite the leap to take you to the Heights. But on the exact opposite corner of Albuquerque, as far as you can go northeasterly and still expect to find business fronts, there exists another business that is filling holes in Albuquerque from a completely opposite point of practice: technologies.

Lisa Abeyta is the CEO and founder of APPCityLife, a company smartly positioned to ride the wave of the open data movement that Albuquerque adopted rather early on. In doing so, Lisa and APPCityLife are addressing many of the overlooked aspects of how a citizen connects with her city via mobile technology.

Lisa began our interview by describing one of their more recent tech endeavors, focused on streamlining a clunky bureaucratic system in Bernalillo County. “The number one reason people call Bernalillo County on a Monday morning is to figure out if a loved one has been arrested,” said Lisa. “Finding that information is extremely difficult, even though it is public. Having an app that can be opened at 2am to see current arrest records changes the experience of these loved ones with the correctional system because they’re also given direct instructions as to what needs to be done next. It reduces the fear and anxiety. It also reduces costs for the county because those calls don’t come in.”

APPCityLife, through all kinds of similar yet distinctive apps, is constantly finding efficient ways to get information into people’s hands. Information that is largely considered menial, like bus arrival times, is being rerouted out of the city’s clogged veins and into a digital space. Lisa says of the transit systems, “Nobody has ever been able to figure out how to track when a person gets off a bus.” Through their platform, and with devices such as iBeacon, APPCityLife is able to measure the length of stays on public transit and which stops are the busiest for drop-offs and at what times.

While I was scraping my jaw off the ground at this nexus of innovation and technology as high into the Heights as you can get, I kept thinking about Joseph at Valle Encantado. As drastically different as they are, I couldn’t escape the unlikely parallels between the two businesses. While Joseph is transforming ignored pieces of land into nourishing plots that enrich the community on a local level, Lisa is transporting disregarded systems of communication through real-time open data servers and connecting the community on the civic level. They both cultivate solutions to critical challenges faced in our communities.

Joseph consistently works with farmers in other regions of New Mexico. In fact, that was one of the meetings he jetted off to after our interview; a farmer from Las Cruces was seeking some insight into Joseph’s system. He said, “What we do in our community is reflected in other communities. People are really drawn to the movement we’re creating.” The Agri-Cultura Network has become a statewide example in how to transform land that wouldn’t otherwise be considered farmland. “Guerilla gardening,” Andrew calls it. Similarly, APPCityLife is “creating a platform where people can log in, or cities can license to let citizens be able to go up and build apps for their own city and their own community whether they’re part of a nonprofit or a youth group.”

There is a beautiful “teach a man to fish” mindset being adopted by both businesses. It is their tribute and contribution to sustainability for this city and this state. These are two of the great hole fillers of our city, and they are located only 14 miles apart, as the Mazda drives.

When I asked Joseph what he wanted most, if he had one wish he could ask of Albuquerque infrastructure, he responded, “A tractor.” And while it’s not necessarily a modest ask, to give Joseph a tool by which he can do more for his community is to give him a million bucks.

Lisa astutely commented, “Money is a tool. Money isn’t intelligence, it isn’t happiness, it isn’t love, it isn’t relationships. It is a tool.” The greatest similarity between these two entrepreneurs is their allegiance to that axiom.

The last and most heartening comparison I’d like to make between these two entrepreneurial leaders is that they’re unlikely heroes. On opposite sides of this city, they are two people who don’t resemble what I typically think of when I consider their respective careers—and who don’t resemble each other in the least. Yet they stake themselves in the refinement of our city, and dedicate themselves to fixing our myriad voids, giving me hope for us yet.

I can’t wait for folks like these—the divergent but parallel, the unlikely heroes—to meet in the middle. There are opportunities in those collisions, I can feel it.