Episode Two - Black Farming
Episode Description:
The number of Black-owned farms has drastically declined since the 1920s, and now make up less than two percent of total U.S. farmland. In this episode, we'll talk with one of the organizers of the Black Farming Conference Beyond 40 acres and a Mule, learn how three childhood friends created an urban farm out of an abandoned dumping ground, and hear about the joys of eating food that you've poured your essence into from a first-time grower.
Photo Credit: Gretchen Rives
Podcast Script:
DAZJUAN BRITTMAN: I’m from the city, born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. Always lived in the city, never really been in the country, but always loved nature.
But, once I came to Central State, I was kind of lost for a minute and confused on what I wanted to do. Actually, the ag ed department sent me to a conference, and I saw those opportunities and I said, ‘wow’.
I can take these, I can change the world, change my community, and change myself all in one. And it was just a beautiful cycle.
(THEME MUSIC)
HOST INTRO: That was Dazjuan Brittman - a Senior at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio - studying agricultural education with a minor in sustainability. Central State is a Historic Black College that received Land Grant status in 2014. That status allowed them to expand the college's programming to include agricultural and ag-related studies. The University was also one of the presenters at the Black farming conference in Ohio last fall that we’ll talk about later in this episode.
You’re listening to Grounded Hope - I’m the host Renee Wilde - and in this episode, we’ll take a look at three friends who turned a dumpsite in a Cleveland neighborhood into an urban farm, where they teach others how to be food activists in their own communities. We’ll learn some key history from the Ohio Black Farming conference last fall, and hear about the joy of eating homegrown food from a first time Black farmer.
On the way, we’ll explore the issues and opportunities facing Black Farmers including land access, USDA support, and community growth.
From the Highways to the Hedgerows, we bring you grounded hope.
(MUSIC FADE)
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RENEE WILDE: Black farmers played an important role in developing agriculture.
George Washington Carver was a pioneer in the regenerative agriculture movement - advocating for amending the soil with locally available compost materials, rather than chemicals, and planting diversified crops, both as ecological insurance and as a food source.
Carver found that years of growing cotton and tobacco had depleted nutrients from the soil. But he discovered that by growing nitrogen-fixing plants, like peanuts, as part of a crop rotation, it can restore the soil health.
In 2001 Ohio held the states first conference for Black farmers. The goal was to give the Black farming population an opportunity to network, and discuss ideas specific to their needs.
The last Ohio census had listed only 135 Black-owned farms. This decline was part of a Nationwide trend that saw Black farm ownership dramatically decline from 14% to 1.4%. The conference organizers warned that if strategies weren’t implemented to address this declining trend, Black farmers would become extinct.
But, despite the dire warnings, when organizers held a Black farming conference last year, the number of Black farmers in Ohio had risen by only 62 over the last two decades.
ARIELLA BROWN: We really wanted to make sure we were celebrating the historical contributions of Black Farming in America, as well as celebrate what we can accomplish today.
WILDE: Ariella Brown, was a lead organizer of that second conference, held virtually last fall at Agraria. It was called, Black Farming: Beyond 40 Acres and a Mule.
BROWN: Our keynote speaker was Anna-Lisa Cox. She wrote the book The Bone and the Sinew of the Land. It focuses on America's Black pioneers who essentially settled here and cultivated this land before this region was even a state. So this was pre-civil war.
WILDE: The Bone and the Sinew of the Land tells the story of the Grier’s - one of the first Black settlers who started occupying frontier land for agriculture in 1818.
The Grier’s were part of what Anna-Lisa Cox calls the lost history of the nation’s first Great Migration - Black pioneers who were building hundreds of settlements in the Northwest Territory, which are now the present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin.
Longtown, Ohio is another example of this first migration. The town, which sits along the Indiana border, was founded in 1818 by a Black man named James Clemens. The James and Shopia Clemens farmstead is now the oldest and last remaining agricultural resource of one of Ohio’s earliest Black settlements.
BROWN: So, she really talked about just how well these Black pioneers were able to be self-sustaining, and create a livelihood for themselves that people just didn’t know about. So it was really empowering to just hear that message.
It’s important to have these conversations because historically Black people are left out of the conversation, and history tells a different story.
WILDE: Historically government and other agencies have been accused of discrimination against Black farmers and in 1999 a class action lawsuit was brought against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Pigford v Glickman case alleged racial discrimination against African-American farmers for farm loans and assistance during the 80’s and 90’s.
BROWN: When you think of agriculture you think of the typical white, rural, family farm. But they're so many Black people who do farm, and I would just say it’s naturally just in our blood.
WILDE: Ariella's interest in farming was sparked by her time serving as an agricultural staffer for Congresswoman Marcia Fudge in Cleveland.
BROWN: She would say, ‘people often wonder why someone who represents a mostly urban district would sit on the agricultural committee when most of the funds go to rural agriculture’. But, she recognized that living in a food-insecure district, (she) could really support her community.
WILDE: A food desert is an area, or community, that lacks access to healthy, nutritious food. In Ohio, hundreds of thousands of people lack accessibility to healthy food, primarily in underserved rural and urban communities as grocery stores continue an exodus from areas with low income and low population density.
Black farmers have been leaders in developing strategies to grow food in small community spaces as an important part of addressing this food insecurity.
BROWN: We really had the opportunity to build something unique in an urban district. She had a vision that she wanted to build one hundred seasonal high tunnels throughout her district, and I was really the person to lead that effort.
One of our first high tunnel recipients was a gentleman who owned a church, but he just loved farming - he was from the South. He gave all his harvest to his church members. Most people who were applying for these high tunnels were doing it for their community.
I think, just, we, as an American society, are so removed from our food. We don’t really understand where food comes from, and we need to get back to that, as a community, as a society.
And so one of the goals that we really want to accomplish by hosting this conference is to really provide resources and to spark the next generation of farmers.
WILDE: Mark the date for the next Black Farming conference hosted at Agraria which will be held virtually, and in person, this coming fall on September 10th and 11th.
(MUSIC TRANSITIONS TO RID-ALL CLASS)
KENNY MOSBY: My name is Kenny Mosby
AMBER JENKINS: Amber Jenkins
WILDE: What are you doing here?
MOSBY: Trying to gain knowledge, trying to better myself, and pass it down to the next generation.
JENKINS: I personally wanted to get more knowledge on how to grow my own food at home, how to maximize, and some more of the details of it, so it’s pretty exciting.
In my vision, everyone would have a community garden in their backyard.
WILDE: It’s the first day of class at the Rid-ALL Green Partnership Urban Farm in the Kinsman neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio.
Over the next five months, the people in this class will be provided with practical, hands-on training in different types of urban farming practices, combined with education on the social impacts of urban agriculture.
This urban farm is the dream of three childhood friends who grew up in Cleveland - Keymah Durden, Randy McShepard and Damien Forshe, who is now deceased.
Along with co-founders Marc White and David Hester - they call themselves the Soil Brothers.
DR. GREENHAND: So, my name is David Hester. I’m called Dr. Greenhand.
WILDE: Dr. Greenhand is a Master Gardener. He teaches farming practices like aquaponics, composting, and how to create an agri-business.
DR. GREENHAND: I’ve been here since day one, since the inception. My cousin, Damien Forshe, we actually had this idea about 15 years ago. It went from a dream of talking about it, to actually putting it into action.
So the very first day that we actually had the property, to actually do it on, was probably my biggest achievement. ‘Cause we had gone all around the city looking for land, and we wasn’t able to get it until we went to the Land Bank and got an acre and a third of land.
WILDE: The Cuyahoga Land Bank acquires abandoned or foreclosed land, and returns them to productive use through sales to private owners. The land can be used for rehabilitation, economic development, and creative uses such as gardening.
The Land Bank is representative of a larger national conversation around land access and reparations that is exploring strategies to provide opportunities for growers.
The brothers call this piece of land this farm is on the forgotten green triangle. When the group first got this property in 2011, it had been a dumping ground. Today the property has two green houses, four hoop houses, a composting facility, and a 40,000 square foot aquaponics fishery.
(FISH TANK NOISE)
MARC WHITE: So this is our main greenhouse. We have three,1,500 gallon tanks where we can grow one fish per gallon, up to a pound and a half.
WILDE: That’s Marc White
WHITE: They’re very lucrative. So I can take a fingerling, and grow them out to a full pound and a half inside of 5 to 6 months, and sell that fish for about $10 a piece from an initial purchase of maybe 30 or 40 cents.
WILDE: He says that by teaching these types of cottage industries that don’t require a lot of space, they are giving people the skills to become entrepreneurs in their own communities without the need for big investments inland.
Land access is a challenge for all farmers, but for Black farmers, in particular, the ability to put down roots can help to heal discrimination and disconnection.
WHITE: That’s the foundation of what we do here - teaching people how to grow relationships between themselves and the natural environment.
And you actually provide a very good thing for your community. There are so many things in the community now that are robbing us life, and cheating the people, something that's going to bring life, and add financial substances should be welcomed.
WILDE: The farm counts over 37 revenue streams. The foundation of the operation stems from composting - using discarded produce from the Cleveland food bank, leftover hops from area breweries, coffee grounds, and wood chips from the city’s forestry department.
WHITE: We spent our first year, literally, growing soil. Black gold soil that’s beaming with life. It’s a nonpasturized medium that we produce here. Everything here is produced from the soil we produce.
WILDE: The organization was recently tapped to take over operations of a 60 year old farmer’s market in Maple Heights that closed last May due to the pandemic.
WHITE: And people had grown quite dependent on it. So we are able to take things we grow here and sell there, as well as make connections with local growers and other farmer’s markets, and bring produce to that area.
And so, for us, that’s a very, very powerful feather in our cap ‘cause that’s part of our goal. Our goal was to provide these connections to help alleviate food insecurity and to bring an understanding of nature back to people
(MUSIC TRANSITION)
KENISHA ROBINSON: When I was growing up I always thought, why is Daddy out there all day? ‘Cause he would get up early in the morning, he would come out here, then he would come back in for lunch, and come back out, and then he wouldn’t be back in till dinner.
I’m like, what is he doing!
Well, now I understand. It’s a lot to maintain this property, you know, that's what he was doing. So now I’m trying to revitalize it and get it back to its beauty. The way it was before.
WILDE: That’s Kenisha Robinson. She moved from Chicago back to the Dayton area to help take care of her father who had developed Alzheimer’s.
When Kenisha was growing up her father raised hogs and grew vegetables on this family farm.
ROBINSON: I remember my dad used to grow a lot of things. Different kinds of beans, and squashes, and all types of things. You know, he really used this land to feed our family.
I knew that things grew here before, but the property hadn’t been used in nearly 20 years.
WILDE: Kenisha explains how her new partner got her interested in growing.
ROBINSON -This actually all came about because of her. She posted something on social media about wanting to buy a farm, and wanting to grow vegetables, and raise animals, and things like that. And she was talking about how hard it was for her to find the right property.
I said, we have all this land here, it's not being used. Like, just come and use it.
WILDE: Kenisha and her partner broke ground for their first garden in 2020.
ROBINSON: So our goal this first year was just to see what would grow, cause neither one of us knew anything about what we were going to do, and this was completely covered in grass.
We’re like, oh, we’re going to grow fruits and vegetables this year, and we’re going to have a garden! But we would look at it, and it’s like, how are we going to do this?
WILDE: A friend hooked Kenisha up with someone that had a tractor that came out to the farm and plowed up the garden area. Kenisha and her partner mounded the tilled soil into raised rows where they grew vegetables - in the same soil her dad used to farm.
ROBINSON: The summer garden went extremely well. We grew okra, zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, and cucumber. What else? Oh, cantaloupe, peppers, greens, some herbs, green beans.
And then we said, ‘Ok, we want to try our hand at fall items’. We did some radishes and arugula. They came up. The cabbage got eaten, but everything else really didn’t produce anything.
So we decided this year we’re not going to do a fall planting. We’re just going to focus on spring and summer.
WILDE: Kenisha and her partner are quickly learning what works for them and adjusting to fit their needs.
ROBINSON: Well, we had this idea - because there are so many areas here in the Dayton area considered food deserts - we wanted to set up a little stand and be able to sell the produce.
But since this was our first year, we had a lot of learning to do. We discovered that we probably needed to plant more, so we could have the volume to be able to sell.
So what we did was, we gave it away to family and friends.
WILDE: Kenisha admits that she had to overcome her squeamishness of things like spiders and snakes, when she first started.
ROBINSON: And once we started, it just renewed, regenerated, rejuvenated, something within me, and I love it.
Like I absolutely love it.
I love getting my hands dirty. I love touching the dirt. I sometimes would have friends come out, and they’d be like, ‘you’re not wearing gloves!’ I’m like ‘no! I want to feel.’
I want to feel the earth. I want to feel the dirt. And when you’re planting the seeds - it gave me a rush. It actually gave me such a rush.
WILDE: Kenisha and her partner would like to eventually expand the farm to include sheep, honey bees, fruit trees, medicinal herbs, and pollinating flowers - creating an Agri-business.
Small diversified operations like RID-ALL and Kinesah farm are a wave of the future, creating opportunities close to home.
ROBINSON: We want to eventually sell our produce and honey to the community. I mean, that’s the whole purpose of us wanting to revitalize this property.
Eventually, I would love to get into teaching people how to do this for themselves. I just want to encourage people of color to start growing food.
There’s something that is so rewarding and satisfying about planting a seed, nurturing that, watching it grow, and then being able to eat that.
Your energy, your essence is in that food.
This is a wonderful thing I’ve learned - that anybody can grow. You don’t have to have to have all this land. If you live in an apartment, you can still plant food. You can get a plastic bin from the dollar store, buy you some soil, you can plant in that.
There’s so many ways you can grow your own food. I think people really need to get back to that.
(MUSIC TRANSITION)
WILDE: Kenisha Robinson attended the Black Farming conference last Fall at Agraria and will be part of a Black, Indigenous and People of Color training in regenerative agriculture at Agraria this summer.
Any research on Black farming will inevitably bring you to Soul Fire Farm in Grafton New York; an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm committed to uprooting racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system.
We end this episode with a quote from the book, Farming While Black, by Soul Fire Farm co-founder Leah Pennimen.
“Our great, great grandmothers in Dahomey, West Africa, witnessed the kidnapping and disappearance of members of their community and experienced a rising unease about their own safety. As insurance for an uncertain future, they began the practice of braiding rice, okra, and millet seeds into their hair. While there were no “report backs” from the otherside of the transAtlantic slave trade and rumors abounded that white people were capturing Africans to eat us, they still had the audacity of hope to imagine a future on soil. Once sequestered in the bowels of the slave ships, they continued the practice of seed smuggling, picking up grains from the threshing floor and hiding the precious kernels in their braids...”
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For more information on Black farming go to our website at Grounded Hope.org, where you’ll find educational materials, book recommendations and even recipes to try that complement these podcasts. That’s all the work of our two humanities scholars who guide this podcast - Beth Bridgman, an associate professor at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, and Rick Livingston, an Associate Director of the Humanities Institute at the Ohio State University, in Columbus. They team up with our webmaster Rachel Isaacson, an Americorp Vista at Agraria,
You can join the Black Farming Network and listserv that grew out of last year’s conference by writing to blackfarmingconferenceoh@gmail.com
This podcast is made possible by the people at Community Solution’s Agraria Center for Regenerative practices, and by a grant from the Ohio Humanities.
I’m Renee Wilde, and you’ve been listening to Grounded Hope.
Agraria Farm at Sunset