horticulture is therapy to so many of us and yet there is ecology and politics behind develop food that limits that opportunity for far too many multitude . Leah Penniman , co - father ofSoul Fire Farmand generator of the just released bookFarming While Black : Soul Fire Farm ’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Landis working to change that . Soul Fire Farm is an organization project to lift up and empower Fannie Merritt Farmer of color through hard-nosed acquisition and foster a connexion to the earth .
We have been fans of Soul Fire Farm on social media where they partake in snippets of stories , politics , and culture likethis videoabout the Afro - Indigenous roots of many plebeian vegetables that we ordinarily think of as accept European origins . WhenFarming While Blackwas announced , we immediately approach them to ask for an interview . Just a brief conversation with Leah Penniman embrace a destiny of complex government issue let in slipstream , an tyrannical food system , and the piece of writing outgrowth .
Farming While Blackis the first comprehensive “ how to ” guide for aim African - heritage growers to domesticise their lordliness as grower and for all farmers to understand the distinct , technical contributions of African - heritage people to sustainable factory farm . But you will quickly see that it is also so much more . A practical farming guide , a memoir , and history book intertwined on the pages , Farming While Blackis a must say for everyone who have sex plants and the healing benefits of working in the soil .
Photo Credit: Jamel Mosely Mel
In Conversation with Leah Penniman
Garden Therapy : First , for our readers who do n’t know , can you distinguish me a little about Soul Fire Farm and its mission ?
Leah Penniman : Soul Fire Farm is a people - of - color - led community of interests farm in Grafton , New York . We are committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system and we do that in three way .
The first is by stewarding 73 acres of land using Afro - autochthonic farming and forestry practices . We develop vegetables , domestic fowl , ball , herbaceous plant , and flowers on that land and distribute the nutrient through a farm - percentage program ; that ’s a subscription servicing that lend bracing , healthy , nourishing , alimental nutrient right to the doorsteps of multitude living preponderantly under food apartheid . That ’s the first and most important foundational task of Soul Fire .
The second is our training programs for sodbuster , activists , and constructor . We are training up that next generation of blackened and brown solid ground stewards through apprenticeships , immersions , workshops , and other educational initiatives .
The third thing we ’re make on is fixing and repatriation – the returning of domain and resources back to those from whom it was stolen . So , we ’re doing regional organizing with theNortheast Farmers of Color , alliance national organizing withHeal Food Alliance , Freedom Food Alliance , and theNational Black Food & Justice Allianceand so we are operate on changing the policy and practice that have precede to our folks not deliver admittance to food , not having access to land , not have the same protection under the law as farm and solid food worker .
GT : You say in the script that the ms come together in just five month . That ’s tight ! Can you tell me a little about the writing process and how that survive for you ?
LP : The Quran did come together in five months ! ‘ Cause that ’s all the time that I had , you know , being a parent of two teens and working two jobs ( in add-on to being the program coordinator here at Soul Fire , I also learn mellow schoolhouse environmental skill ) , it ’s a hustle and so the time that was available was the winter calendar month .
The year before ( writing the book ) , I worked with a enquiry assistant and some volunteers to start to collect the selective information for the record and then every Tuesday and Wednesday when I was off from teaching in the wintertime I would just sit down and , you know , bust out a chapter a week . That was the end and that was what I was able to accomplish . It finish up being really good to write it that fast because the whole record was in my workings memory the whole prison term , so I did n’t have to do a lot of back and forth and rewrite because I ’d bury what I already said .
GT : What made you decide to write a book about farming specifically for a grim interview ?
LP : Actually , Farming While Blackis for everyone , not just for a black audience . Certainly , it pore the experience of the rejoin generation of black farmers because there are n’t any books for us that are n’t from an anthropological view .
This is the book that I necessitate when I was a young person coming into agriculture and saw table and tables full of books at land conferences by and for a white audience . And so , this is really about a hard-nosed pathfinder to living on Edwin Herbert Land , about reclaiming a office of self-worth and of agency on the estate and reach back across the time period of oppressiveness on land and enslavement and share cropping and tenant farming , back to thousands of old age of imposing agricultural history .
But it ’s for livid folks too and for everyone because so many of the pattern that we ’ve been taught are ahistorical or European really have Afro - Indigenous roots and so it ’s very of import to tell those news report and lift up those ascendant who gave us a lot of the applied science that we take for granted in organic farming today , like terrace and raised seam and intercropping .
GT : The book blab a pile about the story of dark gardening and land , and is dedicate to your women ancestors who braided seeds into their hair so long ago . How does chronicle sham the way you farm or the path you recollect about grow ?
LP : This book is give to our ancestral grandmothers who braided seed in their fuzz before room transatlantic hard worker ships and facing an uncertain and terrifying hereafter . This story affects the direction I think about farming because what we ’re seek to do is really thought-provoking — we face a lot of institutional racism and even interpersonal racial discrimination right in our neighborhood , living in rural , predominantly white , upstate New York , and so when I think about the seeds that my antecedent lace into their hair , to me that was them believing in me against odds . And so , if they did n’t give up on their descendent , who are we to then give up on those who will come after us ? It ’s really what gives me the fortitude to continue on in the work .
GT : How does race affect land and gardening today ?
LP : Well , the food system is not broken . The food organisation was designed to exploit the slip land and steal labour of black and brownish the great unwashed , and that proceed today across all beat . If you look at who has access to food and who is disproportionally touch on by diet - related illnesses like diabetes , heart disease , fleshiness , and some cancers , those are bleak and brown communities and that ’s because of a history of redline and of policies that make it very difficult to access food in those community .
If you appear at who have the land , calculate on what census , well over 95 % ( some measures say 98 % ) of rural land is owned by white folks . And that ’s because of the history of USDA discrimination and racist vigilante violence against smuggled and brown property owner , not to mention the dispossession of the total continent by settlers from Indigenous mass .
If you look at the labor laws , we have a whole different set of labor laws for farm doer and solid food workers than for everyone else for every other sphere and that trace back to the thirties with the New Deal legislation coming through and bloodless senator in the South not concur to vote for it unless black and brown people were excluded from some of the good provisions like societal security and the forty - hour work workweek and so on .
So , it touch all face of farming and gardening and we ’ve been told sentence and again by folks that black folks that are interested in depart into farming encounter a lot of barriers , that they ca n’t afford to cultivate for complimentary as an apprentice and that ’s oftentimes the only job that ’s offer , or they are deny access to an incubator program , and so on . And so it ’s very important for us at Soul Fire Farm to provide a culturally relevant and welcoming and uplifting outer space for black and chocolate-brown folks to learn how to grow .
husbandry While Black : Soul Fire Farm ’s Practical Guide to Liberation and the Landis available now throughSoul Fire Farmand onAmazon . All author proceeds from this Holy Scripture will be donate to a fund provide land and training for Black husbandman .
For more information on Soul Fire Farm , delay out their websitehere .
About Leah Penniman
Leah Penniman is a Black Kreyol farmer who has been tending the soil for twenty age and organizing for an anti - antiblack food for thought organisation for fifteen age . She began with the Food Project in Boston , Massachusetts , and went on to exercise at Farm School in Athol , Massachusetts , and Many Hands Organic Farm in Barre , Massachusetts . She co - plant Youth arise urban farm in Worcester , Massachusetts . She presently serve as constitute co - executive director of Soul Fire Farm in Grafton , New York , a people - of - colouring material lead project that works to dismantle racism in the food organization through a scurvy - toll fresh nutrient delivery table service for people living under solid food apartheid , training programs for Black , Latinx , and Indigenous draw a bead on Fannie Farmer - activists , Uprooting Racism training for nutrient justice leaders , and regional - national - international coalition building between farmers of colouring urge for policy shifts and amends .
She has dedicated her life ’s work to racial justice in the food system and has been recognize by the Soros Equality Fellowship , NYSHealth Emerging Innovator Awards , The Andrew Goodman Foundation Hidden Heroes Award , Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Program , New Tech web National Teaching Award , Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching ( New York finalist ) , among others . She has contributed to two bring out volumes , authored numerous online articles , and pass dozens of public talks on the subject .
