Black Farmers

The Farmers Who Can’t Afford Farms

August 14, 2024 Joseph Bullington, In These Times. Educate! Black America, Black Farmers, Food and Agriculture, Student Debt, Worker Rights and Jobs

Running a small farm is complicated enough. For Tessa Parks — who raises cattle and hay with her spouse, Wyatt, on the gentle, farmed-over hills outside Northfield, Minn. — the challenges include bottle-feeding calves, braving bad weather to check on the herd at pasture and dealing with customers at the farmers market. Climate change doesn’t make it easier, as it lends intensity to droughts and storms and increases livestock disease risks. But for Parks, a 28-year-old beginning farmer, the complexities don’t end there. Farming, for her, also means juggling relationships with five different landowners the couple rents a patchwork of hayfields and pasture from.

The Revelations Of ‘Black Earth Wisdom’

May 3, 2023 David Bollier. Create! Black Farmers, Book Review, Capitalism, Food Sovereignty

The book showcases the history of African-American farming, including struggles for land tenure in the face of land theft, and the distinctive wisdom of Black agricultural science, spiritual traditions, folk practices, art, and culture. The overarching point is that our spiritual lives and the fate of the earth are intertwined. Sections of the book deal with our "ecological crisis as a spiritual plight"; the relationship between Black people and open space; the importance of and tenure and agrarianism; the pain of environmental racism and capitalism's assault on our land and waters; and the role of artists, writers and storytellers in bringing ecological truth to light.

African American Resistance In The Rural South

February 24, 2023 Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black Farmers, Great Depression, History, Solidarity, World War II

As Wall Street collapsed the United States was faced with the threat of yet another social and political crisis which could have prompted a national uprising against capitalism. During October 1929, the United States economic system was plunged into an unprecedented depression where tens of millions were thrown out of work and their homes. In the South, the African American people living in major cities, small towns and rural areas were impacted more than any other demographic inside the country. The Great Depression began under the leadership of Republican President Herbert Hoover who refused to initiate any major policy reforms to seriously mitigate the rising tide of joblessness, foreclosures, evictions and food deficits.

Jumping Fences

January 23, 2023 Land In Our Names. Educate! Agroecology, Black Farmers, Food and Agriculture, United Kingdom (UK)

We are very excited about a new collaboration with Ecological Land Cooperative and the Landworkers Alliance. The purpose of the project is to identify the barriers that BPOC face when considering a land based livelihood in Britain, to map existing and prospective BPOC led land-based businesses and organisations and to discover what challenges they face and how they seek to overcome them. Building off the initial research we completed for Rootz Into Food Growing, but expanding to the wider country to collect stories from across Britain. The research findings will be discussed with a wide range of organisations in the agroecology sector to identify ways to support BPOC new entrants to farming. The final intention of the collective effort is to strengthen LION’s capacity to become a community land trust, so that we can provide practical solutions for BPOC land stewards including access to land.

Konda Mason On Land, Race, Money, And Spirit

September 5, 2022 David Bollier. Create! Black Farmers, Cooperatives, Food and Agriculture, Land trusts, The Commons

For African-American farmers -- afflicted by the legacy of slavery, racism, and land theft -- the struggle for emancipation has not been easy. I was therefore excited to learn about Jubilee Justice, a fledgling project that is trying to reclaim farmland for BIPOC farmers and secure their economic livelihoods. Besides embracing cooperatives and community land trusts, Jubilee Justice is dedicated to an open-source, climate-friendly type of rice farming and to courageous "transformational learning journeys" for racial healing. You can learn more about these experiments in commoning in my interview with Konda Mason on the latest episode of my podcast Frontiers of Commoning models of restorative economics and finance.

As Mississippi Loses Black Farmers Fast, This Couple Sows Solidarity

August 4, 2022 Erica Hensley and Teresa Ervin-springs, Scalawag Magazine. Create! Black Farmers, Food and Agriculture, Mississippi, Racial Discrimination

Louisville, Mississippi - Until five years ago, Teresa Springs was always in heels and perfectly manicured. As a child growing up in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, she'd never even walked barefoot in the grass. Today, Teresa goes shoeless in rows of crops on her farm, grounding with the Mississippi earth as a part of her daily healing, connecting to the land at sundown before heading back with soil-covered hands and feet to her husband, Kevin, and their old farm house. Now five years into stewarding their farm—dubbed TKO Farming, an acronym for Teresa and Kevin's Oasis—they're still just as awe-struck by what they've built by hand. As self-described city folks who met in July 2013 while working on criminal-justice reform in Miami, the couple never envisioned living on, much less operating, a farm.

The Health Crisis Afflicting Black Farmers

May 14, 2022 Safiya Charles, In These Times. Educate! Black Farmers, Food and Agriculture, Health Care, Racism

At 43 and 45 years old, husband and wife farmers Angie and Wenceslaus Provost, Jr., hope they live to see age 70. They don’t fear terminal illness or a farm accident that could consign them to an early grave. Instead, they fear stress could do them in. Years of trying to protect family land from encroaching banks and government agencies have worn on them, despite their love of farming. After years of mounting debt with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and a bank, the New Iberia, La. sugar cane farmers filed a September 2018 lawsuit against a USDA-approved lender. The suit alleges that Wenceslaus, known as “June,” was all but run out of the profession in 2015 after the bank reduced his crop loans over successive years, effectively underfunding his farm operation.

A New Law Promised Debt Relief For Black Farmers

March 4, 2022 April Simpson , In These Times. Educate! Black Farmers, Farmers, Finance and the Economy, USDA

After amassing more than $100,000 in debt over more than two decades of farming, a Georgia-based farmer named Denver got welcome news last year from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Farmers like him would be eligible for a new debt relief program. USDA would pay off certain loans and give him a little extra for tax liabilities. Denver did not receive a payment. But almost a year later, he received another letter: A notice that USDA intends to take legal action to collect the money he owes the agency. Denver asked the Center for Public Integrity not to use his last name out of fear of retaliation. “We know that institutional discrimination is systemic within USDA,” said Tracy Lloyd McCurty, executive director of the Black Belt Justice Center.

Conservationists See Rare Nature Sanctuaries

November 15, 2021 Tony Briscoe, Pro Publica. Educate! Black Farmers, Conservation, Land Rights, Racism

The loss of Black-owned land in this community exposes a cruel irony. Pembroke has been one of the few places Black landowners could gain a foothold in Illinois, in part because this land was passed over by white settlers who presumed its sandy soils were worthless. And now, after generations without large-scale development or landscape-destroying corporate farming, this land has become sought after by outside conservationists because Pembroke’s savannas remain largely untouched.

When Conservation Means Fencing Out Black Farmers

November 7, 2021 Tony Briscoe, In These Times. Educate! Black Farmers, Conservation, Environment, Land grabs

The Sweet Fern Savanna Land and Water Reserve, in the heart of Pembroke Township, Illinois, offers a glimpse into what much of the area looked like before European settlers drained swamps and cleared forests to grow corn and soybeans. At least 18 threatened or endangered plant and animal species, including the ornate box turtle and regal fritillary butterfly, have been sighted here. Mature oaks tower over verdant fields of clustered sedge and Carolina whipgrass. Warbling songbirds and buzzing cicadas add a mellow soundtrack to the tranquil scene. Sixty miles south of Chicago, this wildlife reserve is among nearly 2,900 acres owned by private individuals and environmental groups — most prominently, The Nature Conservancy — trying to establish a network of nature sanctuaries in Kankakee County.

Portraits Of Houston’s Black Urban Farmers

April 18, 2021 Leonard Smith, Jr., Scalawag Magazine. Educate! Black Farmers, Food and Agriculture, Food Security, Texas

Texas is home to more Black farmers than any state. The USDA's Census of Agriculture estimated in 2017 that of the 3.4 million farmers in the United States, roughly 48,000 are Black, and nearly a quarter of them are located in the Lone Star State. The number of Black folks sinking their hands into Texas soil, however, used to be much larger. The early 1900s witnessed the terrors of Jim Crow, which ran Black families in Texas off of their own land. The societal and business practices of the 1950s didn't allow Black farmers access to the fields and credit necessary to keep their farms afloat, and by the 1980s, an estimated 170 farms a week were being forced into foreclosure, most of them Black-owned.

Black Farmers Are Embracing Climate-Resilient Farming

January 26, 2020 Leah Penniman, Civil Eats. Create! Black Farmers, Food and Agriculture, New Economy

Chief Zogli looked weary as he scratched a notch in his doorpost to record the weather. “Still no rain,” he says with resignation. The chickens pecked lazily in the dust and the goats foraged for the last of the dropped grains beneath the emptying corn crib. In this rural community outside of Odumase-Krobo, Ghana, the farmers depend on rainfall as their only source of agricultural water. Zogli explains that the rainy season has been arriving later each year and ending sooner—and the thirsty crops struggle to mature. From the African continent to the Americas and across the Caribbean, communities of color are on the front lines of and disproportionately harmed by climate change. Record heat waves have caused injury and death among Latinx farmworkers and devastating hurricanes have become regular annual visitors in the Caribbean islands and coastal areas of the U.S.

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