Farming While Black

by Leah Penniman

  Find the Right Land

  Regardless of whether you decide to buy, lease, work with a land trust, join an incubator, or squat on abandoned land, it is important to make sure that the land you select is a good match for your goals. My partner and I half joke that we have three children, Neshima, Emet, and this Land. Your land becomes a family member and a daily obligation. It is a relationship to enter into after detailed research and with care. Here are some characteristics of suitable land:

  It is geographically accessible to a community where I feel a sense of belonging.

  Zoning and building codes will permit the type of infrastructure I want to create.

  Soil has a favorable “perc test,” which means a low-cost septic system can be installed.

  There is direct access to a road and utility lines, without traversing a neighbor’s property.

  There are no boundary disputes, back taxes owed, or undesirable easements on the property.

  The deed is clean, meaning that there are no claims on the property and ownership is clear.

  The school district is a good match for my children or the children of my future collaborators.

  Town services such as garbage disposal, plowing, emergency and fire response, and access to cable and Internet meet my needs.

  There are cleared areas, relatively free of rocks, with favorable soil tests for agriculture.

  There is clean drinking water on the property, or I can drill a well at a reasonable cost.

  There is a local or regional market where I can sell my agricultural products.

  Slopes are south-facing for maximum solar gain, benefiting both crops and solar energy projects.

  I have a financial plan for paying for the land, infrastructure, taxes, and insurance.

  UPLIFT

  New Communities Land Trust and the Pigford Case

  Shirley and Charles Sherrod founded New Communities in 1969, a farm collective owned in common by Black farmers and the first community land trust in the United States. According to food justice activist and organizer Dara Cooper, New Communities was “born out of violent attacks against Black people who were working to build power and register Black people to vote during the civil rights movement.”2 As Black activists were dispossessed of their homes, a planning committee of civil rights organizations throughout the South, including SNCC and the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, worked with the Sherrods to create a plan for collective landownership and cooperative farming leases. They fund-raised in their own communities and across the nation to raise capital to purchase land in Albany, Georgia.

  At 5,700 acres New Communities became the largest Black-owned property to date in this country. They raised hogs, grapes, sugarcane, melons, peanuts, and other crops on their land in southwest Georgia. The residents of New Communities continued to face white-led violence and discrimination. According to Mrs. Sherrod, “Once white people realized we had the land, they started shooting at our buildings. I mean, we went through so much during our time up there. We even caught a white couple stealing our hogs!” During the severe droughts of 1981–82, New Communities requested emergency assistance from the USDA for irrigation. They were denied while white farmers received relief.

  By 1985, after repeated droughts and active discrimination on the part of the USDA Farmers Home Administration, New Communities faced foreclosure and lost their land. They became plaintiffs in the landmark class-action lawsuit against the federal government, Pigford v. Glickman. The chief arbitrator of the case, Michael Lewis, opined that the USDA’s treatment of New Communities “smacked of nothing more than a feudal baron demanding additional crops from his serfs.” The case was settled out of court in 1999 for $1.2 billion, the largest civil rights settlement in US history.

  While the average payout was $50,000, New Communities won $13 million and used part of the settlement money to reestablish itself on a 1,600-acre former plantation that they have named Resora.3

  Southern-facing slopes are conducive to solar technology. Soul Fire Farm uses reclaimed solar panels to heat water.

  Land Trusts: A Values-Positive Option for Accessing Land

  A land trust is an organization that holds land or conservation easements to protect properties for a public or environmental purpose. The boards that manage land trusts can place certain restrictions on how the land can be used or sold. Land trusts can be urban or rural and have stewardship goals ranging from the creation of affordable housing to the maintenance of ecosystems. Land trusts are an excellent starting place in your search for affordable farmland.

  The Black Family Land Trust (BFLT) in Durham, North Carolina, is the only land trust in the nation dedicated to preserving Black farmland. They facilitate the purchase of perpetual agricultural conservation easements, whereby the farmer sells development rights to their property, thus generating income and ensuring that the land will forever be dedicated to agriculture. Joe Thompson, a tobacco farmer who sold an easement through BFLT, stated, “When my time comes and I die, I can lay my dead bones down in peace knowing that my land will always be used to feed people.”4 BFLT also works with farmers on intergenerational financial management and estate planning, and can help match aging farmers with the next generation.

  A growing number of land trusts exist with the explicit goal of preserving farmland. These land trusts seek farmers to lease land, often at low cost, and keep it in agricultural production. The National Young Farmers Coalition has published an excellent guide called Finding Farmland: A Farmer’s Guide to Working with Land Trusts5 to help you access land that is under a conservation easement. The American Farmland Trust and the Land Trust Alliance each provide lists of land trusts by geographic area. The national organization Equity Trust has a special project to help CSA farmers and provide loans for growers. Note that leasing land is different from purchasing it, in that you may have limited ability to build equity or make independent decisions about long-term management. Still, a long-term lease with the right provisions can be an affordable way to access land while challenging the very concept of private landownership. Since the European enclosure movement of the 1400s we have been struggling to find ways to reclaim the commons, land trusts are at the forefront of that movement.

  For several years our family was part of an urban collective house that sat on property owned by a community land trust in Albany, New York. While the three families in the collective purchased our home together at low cost, we leased the land under the home for a modest fee. Further, we were restricted in resale of the home to make sure that the housing stayed affordable and would not go to absentee landlords or speculators. Urban land trusts are growing and can support community members in finding affordable housing and garden space. The National Community Land Trust Network can connect you with your local urban land trust.

  Currently, Soul Fire Farm is working with other members of the Northeast Farmers of Color Network and local Indigenous communities to form a regional land trust dedicated to increasing the amount of farmland stewarded by Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian growers.

  UPLIFT

  Combahee River Colony

  During the Civil War several hundred African American women living in the Gullah/Geechee communities of South Carolina and the Georgia Sea Islands founded the Combahee River Community. These women courageously refused to work for white people while their husbands went off to join the Union army. They found and occupied abandoned farmland, grew crops, and took care of one another. The sale of their cotton and handicrafts sustained them. The Combahee River Colony became known as an example of Black women’s independence, perseverance, and collective spirit, and operated free from white oversight.6

  In 1974 Barbara Smith founded the Combahee River Collective, a Black lesbian feminist organization. The collective highlighted the ways that the white feminist movement was not addressing the particular needs of Black women. The name of the collective was inspired by both the Combahee River military campaign, planned and led by Harriet Tubman on June
2, 1863, which freed 750 enslaved people, and the Combahee River Colony.

  Squatting and Temporary Land Tenure

  When our family first moved to the South End of Albany, we had no land access. Soil contact was essential to my soul craft, and earth-pulled vegetables were a non-negotiable part of our parenting philosophy, so we had to act. After the requisite amount of asking around for resources and permission, and coming up dry, we decided to squat an abandoned corner lot. Together with neighbors, we cleaned up the trash, planted fruit trees, established garden beds, and built an earthen bread oven for community potlucks. We kindled fires for the oven using a giant bow drill operated by a dozen people pulling the rope back and forth until friction-induced smoke curled up from the hearth. Then we loaded the oven with the harvest of our modest lot—root vegetables, corn bread, and herbed fish—and shared the bounty with one another over stories and laughter.

  At the time we did not know about adverse possession law, which allows “trespassers” to actually become owners of the land after a certain number of years of open, exclusive, and continuous possession including the payment of taxes. The laws vary by state, but in New York we could have filed a claim of adverse possession after 10 years. We encourage you to start documenting your squatting activities now, in the hope of possible future ownership.

  Grow Where You Are, an urban agriculture project of Black farmers Eugene Cooke and JoVonna Johnson based in Atlanta, Georgia, creates lease agreements with churches, schools, and private landowners across the city. While they are not squatters, they look for underutilized land and offer to make that land productive at no cost to the owner. In order to reduce the risk of these temporary arrangements, Grow Where You Are establishes equity partnerships with the landowners, where they hold 10 to 20 percent equity and have right of first refusal in case the owner decides to sell. Landowners have been excited to see land that they had deemed worthless be transformed into beautiful and bountiful community spaces. The organization Equity Trust provides templates for writing solid lease agreements.7

  Eugene Cooke and JoVonna Johnson, farmers at Grow Where You Are, Atlanta, Georgia, welcome the author for a visit.

  Land Link: Keeping Black Land in the Family

  The average age of a farmer today is 58, and the average age of a Black farmer is 62.8 We are an endangered species, and risk losing both land and intergenerational wisdom if we fail to act. Unfortunately, I was infected with the “frontier mentality” when it came to finding land and imagined that the only course of action was to start a new project entirely from scratch. It would have been wiser to connect with a retiring farmer and infuse new life into an existing project.

  There are a number of resources to support beginning farmers in finding existing farmland. Every region has several “Land Link” projects that provide matchmaking between sellers and seekers of land; the National Young Farmers Coalition website offers a directory. Some of these programs, like California FarmLink, additionally provide flexible financing with the aim of building a more racially diverse farming community. Farmland Access provides a comprehensive legal tool kit to support growers in making land transfer agreements on its website.9 You can find contact information for these farmland access organizations in the Resources section on page 321.

  Farm Incubators: Supported Start-Up

  Farm incubator programs are designed for new farmers with plenty of field experience, but little or no management experience. The farm incubator provides the new farmer with land, access to farm infrastructure, marketing support, and mentoring for a modest fee. The farmer leases these resources for a limited amount of time, from one to several years, and then graduates the business to its own land. The National Incubator Farm Training Initiative maintains a database of incubator programs in North America and tips for applying.10 While not led by people of color—which, as the next section discusses, can lead to problematic arrangements—the most reputable farm incubator programs in the nation include:

  Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA), California

  The Intervale Center, Vermont

  Minnesota Food Association

  New Entry Sustainable Farm Project, Massachusetts

  The Seed Farm, Pennsylvania

  Farm Skills Training

  An attendee at a recent Black Latinx Farmers Immersion at our farm shared a story of their experience as a volunteer farmer through the WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) program. They lived in their own camping tent, worked for no pay without much tutelage, and ate the meager rations provided to them in exchange for their labor. The arrangement was all too reminiscent of the exploitation of their ancestors, and they decided to leave.

  Many aspiring Black farmers find that opportunities for agricultural training range from culturally irrelevant to blatantly racist. Small-farm training in the US often demands that learners give up their bodies and labor for free or cheap to a landowner who provides instruction, under the title of an apprenticeship or work exchange. For many Black people, women in particular, the generational trauma of this arrangement is unbearable, and they choose alternative career paths.

  While I deeply appreciate the mentorship and kindness of the farmers with whom I trained as a young person, I, too, endured rural isolation, racial microaggressions, unlivable wages, and cultural loneliness during my time on the land. Tragically, there are very few rural farm training programs in the US led by people of color. Those of which we are aware are shared in a sidebar, as are university programs and farm apprenticeships that may be white-led but have an explicit racial justice commitment. Search your region for other people-of-color-led projects on Natasha Bowens’s Color of Food Map.

  Additionally, screen farm job descriptions that are posted on Good Food Jobs, ATTRA, and the Growing Food and Justice Listserve. Contact information for these organizations can be found in the resources section, page 321.

  Black Latinx Farmers Immersion at Soul Fire Farm is led by and for Black and Brown farmers. Participants in the 2014 BLFI harvest cilantro together. Photo by Capers Rumph.

  Scholarship Opportunities to Pursue Agricultural Studies

  National Black Farmers Association Scholarship Program. NBFA provides scholarships from $2,500 to $5,000 for African American students pursuing agriculture-related studies.

  USDA 1890 National Scholars Program. This program offers full tuition, room and board, and employment to US citizens to attend one of the eighteen 1890 Historically Black Land-Grant Institutions and Tuskegee University to study agriculture, food, or natural resource sciences and related majors.

  Farm Training Programs Led by People of Color

  Barbara Norman’s Blueberry Patch, Covert, Michigan

  Black Dirt Farm Collective, Preston, Maryland

  The Black Oaks Center for Sustainable and Renewable Living, Pembroke, Illinois

  Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, Detroit, Michigan

  D-Town Farm, Detroit, Michigan

  Earthseed Land Cooperative, Durham, North Carolina

  East New York Farms!, Brooklyn, New York

  Family. Agriculture. Resource. Management. Services. (F.A.R.M.S.), Southeast USA

  Farm School NYC

  Farms to Grow, Inc., Oakland, California

  Federation of Southern Cooperatives Rural Training & Research Center

  Foot Print Farms, Jackson, Mississippi

  Grow Where You Are, Atlanta, Georgia

  Mayflor Farms, Stockbridge, Georgia

  MESA, Berkeley, California

  Movement Ground Farm, East Taunton, Massachusetts

  Mudbone Farm, Portland, Oregon

  National Black Farmers Association’s Let’s Get Growing Program, Baskerville, Virginia

  National Hmong American Farmers, Fresno County, California

  RID-ALL Green Partnership, Cleveland, Ohio

  Rocky Acres Community Farm, Freeville, New York

  Small Farmer Leadership Training Institute, Baton Rouge, Louisiana />
  Soilful City, Washington, DC

  Soul Fire Farm, Grafton, New York

  Soul Flower Farm, El Sobrante, California

  Southeastern African American Farmers’ Organic Network (SAAFON), Decatur, Georgia

  Three Part Harmony Farm, Washington, DC

  Truly Living Well, Atlanta, Georgia

  Tuzini Farms, Lusaka, Zambia

  Urban Farm Institute, Boston, Massachusetts

  Urban Growers Collective, Chicago, Illinois

  The Yisrael Family Urban Farm, Sacramento, California

  Soul Fire Farmers originally learned chicken processing through YouTube videos and, after years of practice, passed these skills on to learners in our programs. Photo by Neshima-Vitale Penniman.

  Farm Training Programs with Stated Racial Justice Commitment, Not Necessarily Led by People of Color

  ALBA (Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association) Farm Incubator, Salinas, California

  Flats Mentor Farm, Lancaster, Massachusetts

  The Food Project, Boston, Massachusetts

  Groundswell Center for Local Food & Farming—Incubator Program, Ithaca, New York

  Hudson Valley Farm Hub ProFarmer Training Program, Hurley, New York

  Land Stewardship Project, Minneapolis, Minnesota

  Minnesota Food Association Big River Farms Farmer Education Program, St. Paul, Minnesota