Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Jason Tartt, a farmer in West Virginia, says the Mountain State is fertile territory for honey production and maple and fruit orchards in the flood plains. Tartt, who is Black, sees his role as both developing economic opportunity through farming and supporting other Black farmers in West Virginia.
Many of us have forgotten that our cultural heritage as Black people includes ecological humility, the idea that humans are kin to, not masters of, nature.
We are very pleased with and excited about the outcomes of the Justice for Black Farmers Act as it stands today and are asking our members, comrades and supporters to sign on to this piece of legislation so that it has no choice but to pass.
Twin brothers Irucka Ajani and Obiora Embry approach farming in an unconventional way. Instead of relying on the usual row crop methods or the use of pesticides to give plants a leg up, they instead look to ancient history and a loving, symbiotic relationship with the land that has been long forgotten in many parts of the world.
A small group of new farmers have seeded a movement to change the local food industry. Will COVID-19’s impact on the local economy set them back? Or will it — and the growing push for social justice — help?
For more than 150 years, from the rural South to northern cities, Black people have used farming to build self-determined communities and resist oppressive structures that tear them down.
When the Center for Humans and Nature set out to shape a question on farming, we asked Karen Washington and Leah Penniman if they would be willing to have a conversation about their work.
The truth is that for thousands of years Black people have had a sacred relationship with soil that far surpasses our 246 years of enslavement and 75 years of sharecropping in the United States.
