There is no question that for decades the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) failed to serve millions of farmers who needed assistance accessing federal programs, loans and other resources to help keep their farm operations afloat. The USDA denied service to many of these farmers, mostly Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC),  who lost their farms as a result. There have been many class action lawsuits including Pigford v. Glickman that present documented evidence of USDA’s pattern of racial discrimination. The USDA has admitted to this long history of racism, settled these cases, and began its long road to right its wrongs.

In January 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order (E.O 13985) to advance racial equity throughout the federal government which led to the establishment of USDA’s Equity Commission in March 2021. The Commission’s task: to ensure that equity was made integral in USDA’s service and programming. After public input, review of USDA’s programs, historical reports and audits, and engagement with USDA leadership, the Equity Commission published its final report on February 22, 2024. The report puts forward 66 recommendations, all unanimously approved by the Commission, that focus on core areas of USDA’s work.

Source: USDA Equity Report

Recommendations for Systemic Changes

The Equity Commission made 66 recommendations touching the breadth of service and programming by USDA. The Equity Commission made recommendations with the goal of supporting low income communities, farmworkers, and feeding communities in need. According to Secretary Vilsack, the USDA is being tasked with understanding that each farmer, producer, and constituent in need has a point of view and life story and requires those at the agency to understand. This means that USDA leadership, career staff, and field officers must be equipped, culturally competent, and responsive to Black farmers’ mistrust of USDA but are in desperate need of financial assistance. It means that USDA must remedy Hmong farmers who may have had their applications delayed due to language barriers and that USDA acknowledges that tribal communities connected to forests already have traditional methods to treat and manage a healthy forest. USDA has a duty to serve all these communities and must hold itself accountable for meeting each need equitably.

 To achieve this, the recommendations include: 

• institutionalizing equity, accountability, and improving staff diversity at the USDA;
• equitable funding for community-led land access and transition projects, technical assistance and translation services to help applicants submit applications for programs;
• support for farmworkers and their families; and 
• improved access to nutrition for disadvantaged and low-income communities. 

Additionally, the report asks USDA to make changes to specific programs like conservation and procurement services by increasing set-asides for what they term minority farmers and minority-owned businesses to participate in and partner with the agency.

Equitable Climate Justice

The report also calls for USDA to support smaller, non-traditional farmers in accessing Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) funding and other environmental programs. USDA must also ensure Indigenous practices are integrated into the Natural Resources Conservation Services’ (NRCS) sustainable agriculture programs so that these farmers are fairly compensated. Specifically, to remedy historic exclusion of tribal communities, their traditional practices, and agricultural education from the federal network of extension services, the report also asks USDA to include Tribal Ecological Knowledge (TEK) as part of climate-smart agriculture definitions and practices.  

Moving Forward

In response to the activities of the Equity Commission over the last couple of years, the USDA has begun to enact some of the top recommendations. In its recent progress report, USDA identifies action taken to ensure financial and technical assistance are more broadly accessible while creating new and better market opportunities for producers. In 2022, USDA announced its new grant and cooperative agreement program, Increasing Land, Capital and Market Access Program, making available $300 million to assist producers in accessing land, capital, and markets, to support producers who have been historically left behind in securing resources, technical assistance and other federal programs. The program funded 50 projects nationally, and demand for the program exceeded the program’s capability. In 2022, NRCS invested $50 million and in 2023 invested $70 million in partnerships to improve equity and access to conservation programs through Equity Conservation Cooperative Agreements.  

To provide relief to distressed borrowers, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provided authority for the agency to provide relief for distressed borrowers who have at-risk farming operations with outstanding FSA loans. The FSA has provided approximately $2.2 billion in assistance to more than 39,500 distressed direct and guaranteed loan borrowers. Similarly, the legislation also directed USDA to provide financial relief to those who experienced discrimination while trying to access USDA’s lending program. Third-party organizations have been spearheading the administration of relief funds. Tens of thousands of applications were accepted during the application period which ended in January 2024, and are currently being reviewed.

To support farmworkers, USDA established the Farm and Food Worker Relief (FFWR) Program to provide $600 relief payments for farm and food workers who responded to and worked during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Shortcomings of the Report

We at the HEAL Food Alliance wholeheartedly support the Equity Commission’s tireless work and recommendations, many of which are reflected in our Platform for Real Food and Farm Bill Policy Recommendations, and include protecting farmworkers from heat stress, expanding financial and technical assistance to BIPOC farmers to access land and resources to begin or expand their operations, and ensuring that food insecure communities have access to nutritious food without arbitrary barriers limiting access.

Photo by Jam Rose & Rion Moon

While we encourage USDA to work quickly to prioritize the implementation of these recommendations and improve equitable access and resource allocation to its programs and services, there is still much work to be done to account for the 21.5 million people working in the food and agriculture system who are not adequately protected or equitably served by the USDA and other federal agencies. These workers, responsible for processing, packaging and putting food on our tables, continue to be overlooked and were not accounted for in the report.  While the Equity Commission has put USDA on the path to right past wrongdoing, more is needed to protect all of us serving across the food chain.

Further, as highlighted by the Native Farm Bill Coalition, the Equity Commission’s report falls short in acknowledging that tribal governments are sovereign governments that have jurisdiction and decision-making authority over tribal lands. In failing this, it continues to overlook the rights and unique challenges tribal nations have in defining how and when they engage with the USDA – another federal entity. More consultation and engagement with sovereign tribal governments is necessary in order to fully comprehend each tribal nation’s unique needs and cultural worldview, so that their needs can be equitably supported. 

Next Steps

The USDA has taken many positive steps to improve how it serves farmer customers. But the work is far from over. According to the 2022 Census of Agriculture, BIPOC farmers continue to receive disproportionately less in federal loans and other resources compared to their white counterparts. Black farmers in particular have lost more farms than any other demographic. To reverse these troubling trends, the Equity Commission’s recommendations put USDA on a path to address these wrongs and institutionalize a new culture at the agency. USDA, from leadership to field officers, must recognize the importance of treating everyone they serve with dignity and respect; and have the cultural competence required to provide high quality, consistent, and equitable service to every person walking through USDA’s doors..

The HEAL Food Alliance is committed to supporting USDA implement the Equity Commission’s recommendations; and where possible, will work with Congress to ensure USDA has long-lasting authority to strengthen the agency’s service and programs so that all producers are supported.

Here is a quick snapshot the Commission puts forward for USDA to enact:

Procurement: Create set-asides for minority, Tribal, and women-owned small agricultural businesses; Provide technical and financial assistance to support  small and BIPOC owned agricultural and food businesses; Incentivize major contractors to form partnerships with these small agricultural businesses.

 Heirs property: Provide multi-year grants and/or cooperative agreements to 501c3 organizations to deliver technical assistance and education that will prevent the creation of heirs’ property and remedy title issues that cause heirs’ property.

 Institutionalizing equity, accountability, and improving staff diversity: Review equity plans and support workforce diversity and cultural competency by enhancing and improving job descriptions and hiring requirements to prioritize demonstrated experience with target populations.

Land access: Ensure equitable funding to community-led land access and transition projects to create land security for farmers; Increase investments in the Heirs’ Property Relending Program; Engage with Indigenous and community-based organizations to ensure that heirship issues also address “fractionization” issues that Tribal communities face.

Language access: Increase funding for technical assistance to be linguistically and culturally appropriate; Invest in local community-serving organizations through cooperative agreements with tribes, acequias, and organizations. 

Conservation: Ensure Indigenous practices are integrated into NRCS’ sustainable agriculture programs and support smaller, non-traditional farmers in accessing conservation programs; Increase incentive payments for climate-resilient practices to ensure limited-resource farmers can participate in cost-share programs; Better integrate, and equitably compensate for the use of Indigenous knowledge and land management practices; Support climate justice solutions that target resources to women and BIPOC farmers and protect farmworkers from hazardous working conditions due to climate change.

Technical assistance and outreach: Allocate funding for third-party organizations to provide technical assistance to help applicants submit competitive applications for programs; Develop and implement innovative, culturally responsive communication platforms and outreach strategies to expand targeted outreach 

Supporting Farmworkers and their families: Establish an Interagency Farmworker Service Council which will help USDA drive accountability, coordination, compliance, and culture change at a systems level to protect farmworkers from continued inequities; Improve language access, technical assistance and distribution programs to ensure farmworkers and their families are able to access nutrition programs available to them; Direct the USDA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to conduct a report or a joint report from USDA and Dept of Labor (DOL) on farmworker living and working conditions that are essential to understanding the needs of farmworker populations; Ensure that funds for employer grants and procurement promotes improved farmworker living and working conditions by requiring that employers throughout the supply chain demonstrate labor law compliance; Ensure funding for farmworker organizations help improve farmworker working and living conditions and access to economic opportunities; Ensure that farmworkers and their families are equally included in programs that address the impact of pandemics, natural disasters, and climate change, etc.

Improving Nutrition Access: Support legislative action to remove eligibility restrictions on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that disproportionately limit access to nutrition supports by BIPOC; Review and update the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) to reflect the needs of today’s consumers; Seek legislative authority to hold states accountable for barriers to access; Identify barriers to vendor and procurement opportunities for disadvantaged and underrepresented communities

Recognizing Immigrants and their families: Support policies that lead to pathways to access citizenship and family reunification

The post Equity Must be Integral to USDA Programs: HEAL’s Takeaways From the USDA Equity Commission’s Final Report appeared first on HEAL Food Alliance.

Producers of color face a farm economy that remains overwhelmingly white and is increasingly dominated by larger, fewer, and more industrialized farms, according to the 2022 Census of Agriculture, released in February 2024. Conducted every five years by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Ag Census is a survey of all of the nation’s farms and the people who run them. It provides a detailed picture of trends within US agriculture, from environmental practices and farmland loss to the demographics of those who grow our food. 

At HEAL Food Alliance, our analysis of the census data supports our demands for the Farm Bill, which include the need for the USDA to improve land and credit access for producers of color and protect small farmers across the country from farmland consolidation.

Here are some of our key takeaways:

1. Producers of color are still dramatically underrepresented in agriculture

The Ag Census shows that people of color continue to be underrepresented in agriculture. Although Black people made up 12.4% of the total US population as of the 2020 Census, they were only 1.24% of its farmers as of 2022. Those identifying as Asian make up 6% of the population but only 0.68% of farmers. And people identifying as more than one race make up 10.2% of the population but only 0.9% of farmers. Meanwhile, white people — who make up only 61.6% of the population — are 95.4% of farmers. What’s more, this pattern has not substantially improved over the past 20 years, even as the country’s population has become more diverse.

Over the five years from 2017 to 2022, the number of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) growers decreased by 0.5%. In particular, Black growers have been pushed out of or left farming at a rate higher than any other racial group, with an 8% decrease since 2017. Depending on the definition used, this rate is nearly twice or quadruple the rate of the next most adversely affected group.* Some racial groups saw modest increases in the number of producers: multiracial growers increased by 14.3% and Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) and Pacific Islander growers increased by 13.2%. But all of the increase in the latter group was in the continental United States (in Hawai’i, numbers have actually decreased). And because the baseline numbers for these populations were so small to begin with, these percentage increases represent a fairly small number of new growers. 

The Ag Census reports Latine / Hispanic / Spanish origin as a separate ethnic category, as people from various racial groups can identify as such. The overall Latine farmer population has decreased slightly since 2017, but nearly all of that decrease is among white Latine farmers and Asian Latine farmers. As a whole, Latine farmers of color have increased by over 1000 people (a 16% increase since 2017).

Between 2017 and 2022, most BIPOC groups recorded modest increases in the acreage under their stewardship. But because the baseline figures were smaller to begin with, the actual acreage they hold remains minimal. For example, the acreage held by Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders increased by only about 240,000 acres and the acreage held by Black growers increased by over 200,000 acres since 2017. Despite these increases and a simultaneous decrease of 22.7 million acres among white producers, white producers still operate 190 times the acreage of Black producers. 

These inequalities in US farm demographics are the result of historical and ongoing processes. Throughout the US and its colonized territories, white settlers and their government seized land through genocide and forced removal of Native tribes and nations. The federal government provided grants to white people to establish farms on Indigenous land, while passing laws that barred or imposed restrictions on land ownership by Black, Indigenous, Asian, and Latine people. And the USDA has a track record of discriminating against BIPOC producers, by refusing loans, using inaccessible procedures, or upholding requirements that don’t adequately consider the realities of BIPOC producers, including the particular status of Native tribes, their land and governance structures, and their unique relationship to the United States government.

These disparities underscore HEAL’s call for a Farm Bill that better supports BIPOC producers, through improved and expanded funding mechanisms, training programs, and set-asides. This is why we support Senator Booker’s Justice for Black Farmers Act (J4BF), which seeks to address the legacy of Black land loss. Although Black land ownership increased in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, over 90 percent of Black landholders had lost their land by 1997, as a result of discriminatory lending by the USDA and private lenders, violence and intimidation by local white people, and a lack of legal recognition for heirs’ property (land inherited without a formal property title or will). J4BF proposes a number of policies and programs to support land access for Black farmers and is a step in the right direction (even if it doesn’t address everything that is needed). 

*Note: The Ag Census provides data on race defined in a more restrictive way (in which all multiracial producers are in a separate category) and in a more expansive way (in which producers are counted in any and all racial categories with which they identify). To avoid tricky issues with double-counting and to enable comparisons, we are relying here on the more restrictive category. This excludes the nearly 5000 Black and multiracial producers who are counted as part of the general multiracial producer population and have increased in number since the last Ag Census. 

2. The vast majority of federal funding goes to white producers

The Ag Census data also highlights a pattern of rampant racial disparities in the distribution of USDA grants and loans. This appears in a few different ways:

As a group, BIPOC producers receive a tiny fraction of federal grants, loans, and other funding.

The 2022 Ag Census breaks down federal funding into three categories: 1) commodity loans through the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC), 2) payments administered through Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) easement programs, and 3) other federal payments, including loans administered by the Farm Service Agency, disaster payments, other conservation programs, and other support. 

In 2022, white producers received 99% of CCC loans and payments for conservation easements and 97.4% of all other federal payments. This distribution has not markedly changed since the last Ag Census, nor since the 2002 Ag Census (though there has been a slight decrease in white producers’ share of other federal payments, from 99% in 2002). This continued skewing of federal support risks upholding and worsening the existing status quo. It shows that USDA has not provided adequate support to those who have historically been discriminated against in lending, contributing to the disproportionate loss of land and assets among BIPOC producers.

In 2022, farms with at least one white producer received $1.38 billion of the $1.4 billion disbursed in CCC loans, $1.59 billion of the $1.6 billion disbursed as easement payments, and $8.6 billion of the $8.83 billion in other federal payments. For comparison, farms with at least one Black producer received $12.34 million in CCC loans, $5.6 million in easement payments, and $59.6 million in other federal payments.

It is expected that white producers would receive the majority of federal funding, since they are the majority of the nation’s farmers. But these figures are disproportionate, even based on the existing producer population. In 2022, 0.4% of all farms with white producers received CCC loans in 2022, compared to 0.3% of farms with Black producers, 0.2% of farms with American Indian or Alaska Native producers, and 0.1% of farms with Asian producers. (Overall, this is an improvement over 2017, however, when there was a much wider disparity between farms with white producers and farms with BIPOC producers.) We see even more extreme disparities in easement payments, with white producers over twice as likely as BIPOC producers to receive these. 

On the whole, farms with Latine producers were the least likely of any group to receive other federal payments, with only 3% of them receiving funds in this category. They also received proportionally less in CCC loans and conservation easement payments. (We used the data on all Latine producers, which includes and is heavily weighted towards white-identifying Latine. A more fine-grained analysis could break down these data further.)

There are many explanations for these differences, including exclusionary barriers to application for USDA programs and discrimination in awarding loans and grants. For example, Black applicants for Farm Service Agency loans in 2022 were rejected at a considerably higher rate than white applicants, according to an NPR study. This is why HEAL is urging the USDA to improve outreach to BIPOC producers, ensure accessibility in program materials, and reduce cumbersome administrative paperwork and restrictive requirements. We’re also supporting the Fair Credit for Farmers Act, developed by HEAL member organization RAFI-USA (along with the National Family Farm Coalition) and introduced by Senator Gillibrand and Representative Adams. The Fair Credit for Farmers Act aims to improve the farm credit system by increasing basic borrower protections, improving institutional oversight, and including flexible lending terms for FSA loans. 

There are, however, some bright spots reflected in the Ag Census data. Most BIPOC groups experienced modest increases in conservation easement payments from 2017 to 2022. And all racial groups received a sizable boost in funding from other federal sources – likely as a result of debt relief for distressed borrowers introduced through the Inflation Reduction Act, which disbursed $800 million for this purpose in October of 2022.

Individual BIPOC producers also get less money per farm.

The overall sums of federal funds noted above could theoretically be distributed among the population of BIPOC farmers in a few different ways: 1) a proportionally smaller number of people getting larger sums that are on par with the overall average payment (i.e. the average across all producers), 2) a larger number of people getting smaller sums, or 3) a smaller number of people who are also receiving less money on average. Our analysis of the data suggests that we are seeing this third pattern.

On average, producers of color tend to receive less money per farm than white producers. For example, in 2022, Black growers received on average $38.1 thousand less than the overall average CCC loan payment, while American Indian and Alaska Native growers received on average $73 thousand less. Similar patterns are also evident in easement program payments and other federal payments.

The differences in average payments across racial groups are complicated by a number of factors. Namely, larger farms that likely receive more money are overwhelmingly operated by white people, and the vast majority of all funding types went to white producers (thereby skewing the average in favor of this profile). Furthermore, some kinds of payments (e.g. for some conservation programs) are scale-dependent or based on acreage; therefore, farms with less acreage would necessarily receive less money.

3. Farmland is increasingly consolidated into fewer and larger farms

Since 2017, the US has lost over 140,000 farms and over 20 million acres of farmland.

We now have just over 880 million acres of farmland – and of this, only around 382 million acres is land that is or could be used for growing crops (the rest is pasture or rangeland, woodlands, and land used for farm buildings and infrastructure).

Since 1997, we have lost 7.8% of farmland, amounting to 74.6 million acres – more land than the entire state of Arizona. And since the 1960s, we’ve lost over 230 million acres of farmland – a decrease of over 20%. For many decades, farmland has been under pressure from suburbanization, urban sprawl, and other kinds of development. Although this process peaked in the 1990s, recent modeling suggests that between 2000 and 2016, approximately 11 million acres of farmland were converted. These models also suggest that business-as-usual scenarios will result in further land loss by 2040 through urban and low-density rural development, as well as sea level rise. 

View American Farmland Trust’s interactive map to see projected land loss based on three different scenarios >>

The number of farms has decreased even more noticeably. Over the past twenty years, the country has lost 228,495 farms – 10.7% of the farms we had in 2002. From 2017 to 2022, the number of farms in the US decreased by 6.9%, with over 142,000 farms lost. Farms reporting at least one Black producer have been hardest hit, with a decrease of between 8% and 13% (depending on the figures used). 

This trend is the culmination of decades of policies promoting industrialization and consolidation. In the 1970s, President Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture pushed policies forcing farmers to “get big or get out.” This emphasis on industrialization resulted in the exodus of heavily-indebted family farmers from agriculture during the Farm Crisis of the 1980s, and it has continued through subsequent farm bill policies highly favorable to Big Ag and to large-scale and white farmers.

Larger farms increasingly dominate land ownership and farm economies.

Farmland remains heavily consolidated in the hands of the largest farms.* In 2022, the largest 4.4% of farms (based on acreage) controlled a whopping 61% of all agricultural land. On some level, this is expected – many of the largest farms are rangeland or pastureland, which are typically larger in area. But around 40% of these farms are classified as cropland. 

Based on USDA’s definition of farm size (which refers to income and sales), we see similar patterns. As of 2023, the largest farms, with over $1 million in sales, are only 6% of farms but own over 35% of farmland.

And if we look at trends over time, it’s clear that farms are getting bigger, and in some cases, more industrial and more controlled by large corporations. Since 2007, the average farm size has increased by 10.8%. In 2022, the average farm was 463 acres – an increase of 5% since 2017, marking the largest increase over any other period between Censuses over the past 25 years.  

The largest farms by area – those over 2000 acres (approximately the size of SeaTac airport) – have continued to grow in number since the early 2000s. 

Caption: SeaTac Airport is 2500 acres. Image source: Wikipedia

Small farms, between one and nine acres, have also increased since the last Ag Census. (One acre is about the size of a standard US football field.)

Image source: Wikipedia

However, medium- to medium-large sized farms have markedly declined over the past two decades. 

This indicates a hollowing out of mid-range farming operations, and an increasing fragmentation of farming between very small farms and very large ones. This trend is concerning both because it reflects a heavily skewed and consolidated land market and because it may make it even harder to compete in the farm sector. Furthermore, it is likely that the demographic and economic profiles of farmers owning and operating these farms are very different. (For example, larger farms are more likely to be operated by corporations, and BIPOC are less likely than white people to operate farms over 500 acres.)

In response to these trends, HEAL supports the Increasing Land Access, Security and Opportunities Act, which increases pathways for funding to reach more young and beginning farmers, especially farmers of color who have been historically underserved. It would make funding available to help growers acquire land or make improvements and to entities supporting underserved farmers’ access to land, capital, and markets. 

We are also pushing Congress and the USDA to implement and enforce the Packers and Stockyards Act and to develop legislative and litigation opportunities to crack down on monopolies and anti-competitive practices. For farm economies to flourish and thrive, young, beginning, small-scale, and BIPOC producers must be able to access land, capital, and market opportunities.

*Note: Here we use “large” and “small” to refer to acreage, in contrast to the USDA’s classifications of farm sizes, which are based on income and sales, as well as ownership structure (i.e. family-owned or non-family-owned). Using this classification, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition has found that large-scale farms with over $1 million in sales have grown by 36% since 2017, while all remaining farms have decreased.

For additional analysis of the Ag Census:

• Food & Water Watch: New USDA Data Show 60% Increase In Factory Farmed Dairy Cows In Oregon Over 20 Years
• National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition: 2022 Census of Agriculture Underscores Need for Policy Shift 
• National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition: Examining the Latest Agricultural Census Data (blog series)
• National Young Farmers Coalition: New Census of Agriculture reveals more young and beginning farmers, but less farmland and fewer small farms 
• Food and Environment Reporting Network: Smallest number of U.S. farms since 1850, says ag census, by Chuck Abbott
• Civil Eats: What the Latest Farm Census Says About the Changing Ag Landscape, by Lisa Held

The post 3 Key Takeaways from the Latest USDA Census of Agriculture appeared first on HEAL Food Alliance.

Below is a statement from Nichelle Harriott, Policy Director at the HEAL Food Alliance, on the report’s recommendations.

“While the HEAL (Health, Environment, Agriculture, Labor) Food Alliance applauds the Commission’s work and urges USDA to quickly implement its recommendations, we strongly suggest the agency and Congress also work to ensure that all people working across the U.S. food system, from farmworkers to warehouse workers and those working in meat and poultry processing plants, are treated equitably, and with dignity and respect in the workplace.

The final report highlights 66 recommendations focused on nine core areas that address the USDA’s historic record of discrimination. For many years, the USDA has failed to adequately serve Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), many of whom were denied service and even lost their farming operations as a result. To right these wrongs, the Equity Commission’s recommendations include institutionalizing equity, accountability, and improving staff diversity at the USDA; equitable funding for community-led land access and transition projects, technical assistance and translation services to help applicants submit applications for programs; support for farmworkers and their families; and improved access to nutrition for disadvantaged and underserved communities. Additionally, the report asks the USDA to make changes to specific programs like conservation and procurement services by increasing set-asides for minority farmers and minority-owned businesses to participate in and partner with the agency. The Commission also highlights the need for the USDA to support climate justice solutions targeting women and BIPOC farmers while protecting farmworkers from hazardous climate-related working conditions.

The HEAL Food Alliance wholeheartedly supports these recommendations, many of which are reflected in our Platform for Real Food and Farm Bill Policy Recommendations. We encourage the USDA to work quickly at prioritizing the implementation of these recommendations to improve equitable access and resource allocation to USDA programs and services. However, there is still much work to be done to account for the 21.5 million people working in the food and agriculture system who are not adequately protected or equitably served by the USDA and other federal agencies. These workers, responsible for processing, packaging and putting food on our tables, continue to be overlooked and left behind. 

The agriculture system doesn’t have to be dangerous or discriminating. There’s a clear pathway forward, with many pragmatic measures before Congress that would also make a major difference for food and farm workers. We urge Congress and the USDA to take action to protect these workers and provide them with safe and dignified working conditions through the upcoming farm bill and other legislative action like the Protecting America’s Meatpacking Workers Act, the Supporting Our Farm and Food System Workforce Act, the The Agricultural Worker Justice Act, and ROC-United’s Restaurant Workers Bill of Rights.” 

The HEAL (Health, Environment, Agriculture, Labor) Food Alliance is a national multi-sector, multi-racial coalition. HEAL is led by its member-organizations, who represent about two million rural and urban farmers, ranchers, fishers, farm and food chain workers, Indigenous groups, scientists, public health advocates, policy experts, and community organizers united in their commitment to transformed food and farm systems. www.healfoodalliance.org 

The post HEAL Statement on USDA Equity Commission’s Final Report appeared first on HEAL Food Alliance.

Plank 9 – Promote Sustainable Farming, Fishing and Ranching

We spoke with Kenya Crumel, Black Land and Power Director at National Black Food and Justice Alliance (NBFJA), a member-based organization fighting for Black food sovereignty, self-determining food economies, and land. NBFJA is also one of the founding members of HEAL Food Alliance!

Kenya spoke to us about how she finds inspiration in the work that NBFJA members are doing to advance and grow Black food sovereignty in their communities.

Watch a clip of our interview with Kenya 

Kenya: On a day-to-day basis, our members inspire me with the work that they’re doing together. I was just at the BUGS Conference, and the folks in Detroit, for example, are just so incredibly organized, purchasing a farm from the Municipal Land Bank and raising funds so that folks who are currently leasing land are able to own their land and don’t constantly have to worry about being literally uprooted.

And at Sankofa Community Orchard down in Richmond, Virginia, Happily Natural Day stewards five acres where aspiring farmers can learn from other more experienced farmers, apply to be a part of the Central VA Agrarian Commons incubator program, and then move on after a few years to have their own land to implement the practices that they learned.

What led to the creation of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance?

Kenya: Dara Cooper, Beatriz Beckford, and Baba Malik Yakini came together and recognized the extractive, exploitative, deeply anti-Black food system that we all live in that values profit over human life and that has disappeared Black foodways. Black people lack access to and control over production, distribution, and consumption of foods that are healthy and grown in ecological, sustainable ways. The National Black Food and Justice Alliance is working to build collective power by reframing narratives and identifying opportunities for coordinated action and collaboration and cooperation. 

We have about 60 member organizations. Our members are farmers and leaders of food co-ops – those are the two big categories. We have a couple of family-based farms that have had land for a hundred years or more, but primarily we’re working with collectives. And we have some individuals who are academics or attorneys and want to provide some knowledge, wisdom, and resources to our work.

Over the course of the 20th century, the number of Black farmers decreased by 98 percent between 1920 and 1997. Through massive land theft, white farmers and developers usurped at least $326 billion worth of land and assets from Black farmers. In this context, can you tell us more about the land justice work that you’re doing?

Kenya: We’re working toward purchasing land (or accepting donated land!) that can be removed from the speculative market. Ideally we’ll transfer the title to a community land trust, whether we have to develop one or if there’s an existing land trust that we partner with. Black-led community land trusts or other groups of folks can work together to steward the land, share the work, share the profit, and decide how the land will be best utilized to support Black food systems and eradicate food apartheid.

And the land will not be for sale after we gain title to it. Nobody could come in and purchase it. It’s not about individuals owning the land, but it’s about land that’ll be in trust so that it will remain in Black hands. 

Hear from Kenya, Dara Cooper, and Mama Savi Horne on the history of Black land loss in NBFJA’s Practical Guide to Black Food Movement Terms…

The Resource Commons is another way NBFJA has been working to secure land for Black farmers and keep existing Black farmers on their land. Could you tell us about how the Resource Commons came about and some of the successes that it’s had?

Kenya: The Resource Commons is an initiative born after years of conversations with our members, which I have helped shift from ideation into implementation. Recognizing the trauma that traditional banking and the USDA have caused and continue to cause amongst Black farmers, NBFJA members decided to create a non-extractive loan fund with a simplified application process. We’re able to do this because these are not transactions. This is not a transactional relationship. These are relationships with people that we know. 

After doing a good deal of research, we focus on funding for land purchase (whether it’s urban or rural), investments in farm equipment, and investments in infrastructure and building out regional food systems. These are all things that our members stated that they needed. 

We just piloted the first round of funding earlier in 2023 and are really happy that we could provide a little over $400,000 in this pilot round. We’re looking to increase that year over year. Right now it is exclusively for our members, but it will ultimately open up across the country for other Black farmers. 

We talked about the Resource Commons being non-extractive. Our relationship with the land also needs to be non-extractive. So we encourage and support members of the alliance engaging in practices that do no harm to the earth, like no tilling or capturing carbon. But in addition to that, there’s a lot of healing just amongst our people. There’s working well with the land, but we also have to work well with each other. We have a lot of examples of beautiful relationships. We’re really focused on holistic well-being at all aspects – financially, our practices with the land, and then the practices with one another.

You’ve previously mentioned that NBFJA aims to ultimately recover up to 15 million acres of land for Black farmers. Could you tell us about the impact that that would have in terms of creating thriving and resilient Black farming communities?

Kenya: Our vision is that by acquiring the land, training farmers and providing them the resources to steward that land – and also defending land – we can create our own food systems. That’s the larger goal. 

My colleague Dr. Jasmine Jackson works on the self-determined food economy side, our food co-ops and such. I’m on the other end of that spectrum with the land, building the ramp to get to the foodways and the cooperatives. We want to be able to grow the food – and even before that, secure seeds and lands to grow the food – so that we can package it, distribute it, put it into retail markets so that it’s affordable for Black people all over the country, and do it in a way that is hopefully regionally based so that we don’t need to fly food all over the country or the world and aren’t contributing to those issues from a climate justice perspective. 

We’re also developing a program right now to battle land loss due to heirs’ property – and other folks are doing this too, like the Federation for Southern Cooperatives and Land Loss Prevention Project. It’s still a rampant issue, so we just want to lend our support as best as we can. It doesn’t make sense for us to go out and purchase land or accept land donations and put that in a trust while folks are struggling to keep land that they’ve had in their families or in their organizations for some time. And we know there’s a variety of reasons that land comes under threat, including heirs’ property and back taxes, things that could be easily resolved but folks just don’t have the resources.

Ultimately, we want to ensure that food apartheid is eradicated and that folks are less dependent on larger corporate systems and can sustain their farming operations.

How does restoring and preserving Black-owned land advance climate justice goals?

Kenya: If we are less reliant (or not reliant at all) on large corporations in our food systems, if we’re able to protect our land from GMO seeds, and if we’re working collectively to steward land and distribute food regionally, then we can lessen the impact of some major causes that are exacerbating climate change. We don’t need planes flying our food across the country if we are working locally and supporting one another. If we’re working collectively and stewarding the land and bartering and exchanging, we have what we need. So we don’t need to call on corporate America to get food where we need it, to educate us, to get us the supplies, if we can just organize regionally to supply the food, supply our farmers with what they need, and then create that food chain. 

And there’s a lot of education that has to happen. A lot of people just have never seen broccoli growing out of the ground. They don’t know that they can grow their own string beans or peppers. You just need a pot. You don’t have to have a yard. You could do this on your windowsill with the soil and just save your seeds from the pepper that you just cut up and cooked. A lot of people just think, “Oh, I can’t do that.” But you can. We all can. 

Are there particular policies that you are working for at the moment? 

Kenya: We are working on the Farm Bill, to ensure that it’s easier for Black farmers to access funds. A lot of folks are so frustrated with the USDA that they don’t want to have anything to do with it. But we need to simplify grant applications and funding processes. And loan forgiveness has been talked about but not enacted, and non-Black folks are fighting back against it. That’s such a huge obstacle, just getting past the debt. If debt forgiveness could be accomplished, I think that would be really significant for our folks who would no longer have to worry about that burden hanging over their heads.

How can people support your work or take collective action? 

Kenya: If folks know people who have land that’s just sitting idle or are interested in providing zero interest capital for the Resource Commons fund – or even flat out donations – that would be wonderful. There’s a donate button on our website at blackfoodjustice.org. And if you want to have a conversation about land donation, reach out to me directly at kenya [at] blackfoodjustice [dot] org.

The post Recovering Black land for food and climate justice appeared first on HEAL Food Alliance.

Everywhere we look this winter, we see beautiful acts of resistance, community building and care. At HEAL we recognize that our sovereignty and liberation is interconnected. It will take all of us to change systems that were never designed to work for us.

We hope that you can find joy and grounding in all the ways our communities are showing up for each other, mobilizing, and sowing seeds for sovereign food futures and the liberation of us all!

ICYMI— did you notice the cinnamon?

Each HEAL newsletter will feature a medicinal plant as part of our Alliance’s ‘recipe’ for resistance and healing!

HEAL Statement in Opposition to Genocide

“We call on all U.S.-based food and farm justice organizations to join us in solidarity with those attacked; to be active and vocal in opposing this genocide and the United States’ role in funding it.” Read our full statement» 

Stop Gaza genocide and demand a ceasefire now!

Seeding Regenerative Futures

Last year, HEAL members, climate advocates, growers, and policymakers came together to build collective power for our movement for regenerative agriculture. ICYMI: watch the recording of the workshop and check out our toolkit!

Humans of the Food System

Humans of the Food System brings you stories from folks in communities across the country sharing how they’ve been impacted by our food and farm systems – and what they are doing to transform them for the better!

Together We Thrive! 

We are celebrating our 7 year anniversary this month! The HEAL Food Alliance was born out of the knowledge that no single individual, organization, or sector can transform systems in isolation. True transformation requires all of us organizing together for real change. Catch up on all things that have happened at HEAL in our 2023 Year in Review! 

• • • Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands | AP News
    • 80+ Groups Descend on DC Demanding Gaza Cease-Fire, Migrant Rights | Common Dreams 
    • Crisis in Sudan: What is happening and how to help | International Rescue Committee
    • The Global Exploitation of Congo Must End | Jacobin 
    • Dysfunctional Congress Left American Farmworkers in Limbo | Originally published in The Messenger
    • Farmworker-Led Groups Push For Next Farm Bill to Include Worker Rights  and Protections | Modern Farmer
    • Movement to return land taken from Black and Indigenous people in the US gains momentum | PBS
    • The Winnemem Wintu won land back for their tribe. Here’s what’s next. | Vox
    • HEAL Statement on House Democratic Principles for the Next Farm Bill

• • • Nourish with Zaitoun: Recipes from the Palestinian Kitchen from Yasmin Khan
    • Listen to Radical Nourishment, a podcast from Food Culture Collective & HEAL featuring stories of food communities across the US reclaiming sovereignty and self determination  
    • Catch up on all things Farm Bill from The Farm Report podcast episode, featuring HEAL organizer Celize Christy
    • Watch FisherStories: Training the Next Generation of Black Fishers
    • Dive into Re-Seeding, stewarding stories from new generations of Indigenous People
    • Learn how farmer Mai Ngyugen is growing foundations of land justice in our member dispatch series

Trinidad Sweet Bread

For Nichelle Harriott, HEAL’s Policy Director, Trinidad Sweet Bread was a treat growing up, either as breakfast, snack, or dinner. It is made with coconut and dried fruit that adds a bit of sweetness to your morning coffee or tea on a cool morning or evening. It’s easy to make and remains a staple in the homes of Trinibagonians– as the people of Trinidad and Tobago call themselves. Toast it, add some butter, and this sweet bread melts in your mouth.

Check out the recipe for this tasty treat »

Farmworker / Farmer Resources for a Free Palestine: A resource created by Not Our Farm with actions and info in support of a Free Palestine

• • • Boycott these AG companies based in Israel
    • Union Solidarity with Palestine (Workers’ World)

Food Justice in Baltimore: Baltimore organizations in the movement for food security and justice to support!  

(Learn about Baltimore’s Black Food Sovereignty Movement)

• • • Black Yield Institute
    • Bmore Community Food
    • Farm Alliance of Baltimore
    • Food Rescue Baltimore
    • Youth Food Security

• • • Agri-Cultura Network: Kitchen Crew Members
    • Chicago Food Policy Action Council: Illinois Coordinator, Senior Development Manager
    • Cultivate Charlottesville: Co-Executive Director
    • FarmSTAND: Legal Administrative Assistant, Senior Attorney,Senior Organizer, Labor and Environment, Staff Attorney
    • Farmworker Association of Florida: Climate Justice Organizer,  Grant Writer,  Finance Officer, Social Media Assistant (Part Time), Social Service Coordinator
    • National Farm to School Network: Program Associate, Farm to Early Care and Education
    • La Semilla: Call for Local Creative (Paso del Norte)
    • RAFI-USA: ​​Challenging Corporate Power Project Coordinator
    • Rock Steady Farm: Farm Education Coordinator
    • San Diego Food System Alliance: Finance & Admin Director
    • Soul Fire Farm: FIRE  Immersion Guest Facilitator & Application Readers 
    • Union of Concerned Scientists (Food & Environment Team): Economist, Outreach Coordinator
    • Urban Tilth: Accounts Payable Specialist, CSA Coordinator, Orchard For All! Gleaners Coordinator

The post Sovereignty & Resilience: HEAL’s Winter Update appeared first on HEAL Food Alliance.

In response to the memo the HEAL Food Alliance issued the following statement:

The HEAL (Health, Environment, Agriculture, Labor) Food Alliance is glad to see the House Democrats affirm their commitment to passing a strong and effective farm bill.  We’re glad to see a principled commitment to investing in sustainable agriculture, reducing hunger, and improving equity. However, in many ways, the farm bill is again shaping up to be business as usual. Since its inception, the farm bill has excluded people who work in our food and farm system from consideration in policy making. Without their inclusion, the 2024 farm bill risks once again benefitting a handful of powerful agriculture corporations who are using their power to roll back labor regulations at the expense of working people. 

Recent polling showed that majorities as large as 87% in Michigan and Pennsylvania and 80% nationally expressed support for more and better workplace protections for essential workers in the farming and food industries. That support holds regardless of whether respondents were Republicans (83%) or Democrats (91%), rural (87%), urban (85%), or suburban (85%). We urge the House Agriculture Committee to listen to voters, acknowledge working people as part of our agriculture system in the next farm bill, and to do what is within their power and to work with other agencies (DOL, EPA, etc) to ensure safe and dignified working conditions for farmworkers, meatpacking workers, warehouse workers, and working people across the food chain. 

As referenced in the memo, this farm bill must also be a climate bill that moves away from harmful industrial agriculture practices and towards regenerative practices that use traditional ecological knowledge. Polling shows that voters support investments that help farmers protect water quality and keep more carbon and nutrients in their soil. GA (86%), MI (88%), PA (88%), CO (86%). Majorities of voters in each state – as many as 68% in Michigan – and 66% of voters with a farmer in the house said water pollution caused by agricultural runoff is a threat to their state.

Moving forward, the Farm Bill must dedicate funding support for proven climate solutions, including regenerative agriculture, agroecology, and Indigenous food production methods. These approaches help restore soil, water, air, and biodiversity, as well as increasing carbon sequestration. At the same time, it must provide climate and other protections for working people who are vulnerable to heat stress, wildfires, flooding, and the whims of their employers.

The post HEAL Statement on House Democratic Principles for the Next Farm Bill appeared first on HEAL Food Alliance.

Plank 9 – Promote Sustainable Farming, Fishing and Ranching

We spoke with Roberto Nutlouis, founder and Executive Director of HEAL member Nihikeya, which builds a regenerative ecological footprint through restorative farming practices and Indigenous Diné knowledge systems. Roberto is Diné (Navajo) and is of the Todichinii (Bitter Water) clan, born for To’ Tsoni (Big Water) clan. 

He shared his experience drawing on Diné knowledge to develop agroecological farming systems and build community.

Watch a clip of our interview with Roberto

Roberto: I’m not trying to make capitalism work. Of course it’s not going to work. It continues to do what it does, what it’s supposed to do, what it was built to do. 

My work isn’t trying to solve the world’s problems. Everybody has a responsibility to solve their world. Creator put me here in the community among Diné, so the work I do is more specific to my community and the knowledge that we have. The solutions we come up with may not necessarily solve the world’s problems, but this is what allowed our people to survive and thrive in ever-changing landscapes throughout eons. 

For me, it’s about building what works for us, especially as Indigenous people, as Diné, coming from a community that’s still rooted in these lifeways and time-tested ancestral wisdom. We’re very fortunate and blessed to have narratives of our evolution as Diné people on this land. Our ancestors have gone through social and ecological calamities since time immemorial, and we still have those in our narratives. 

My success and the work that I’ve done is tapping back into that knowledge and looking at our own ways of relating to the life forces that we coexist with and that enable us to live on these landscapes.

And is there a particular teaching or historical moment among the Diné that you draw inspiration from in the work you do?

Roberto: The late Dr. Herbert Benally identified a model called Hózhóogo liná, based on the relationship between the earth and the cosmos and how it manifests itself on a daily 24-hour cycle of dawn, blue twilight, yellow twilight, and darkness. Dawn represents the cultural teachings and spiritual values of our people. Blue twilight represents self-sufficiency, because our physical body is the instrument we are gifted to sustain ourselves. Yellow twilight embodies kinship and our important roles in the wellbeing of our community. And darkness reminds us to have reverence for our ecology, our sacred homeland, that is also our home — not just the physical home that we come to, but the overall larger place we call Diné Bikéyah. 

Using these four pillars of Diné knowledge in our work, we try to get a sense of how this connects to climate change, social justice, and food sovereignty. I work with a team of people on community engagement around land stewardship, and we incorporate our cultural knowledge and traditional practices to facilitate dialogue with our communities. This is appreciated by our elders, because now they understand and can give feedback, instead of us just coming in all scientific and economic. 

Read more about the four pillars of knowledge, as laid out by Dr. Herbert Benally…

You were previously with Black Mesa Water Coalition. How did you get from that work to Nihikeya?

Roberto: I helped co-found Black Mesa Water Coalition back in 2001. It was a student organization around environmental justice work, because of the use of our sole source of drinking water in the Navajo aquifer for mining purposes and transportation.

Right before the pandemic, the organization succeeded in its main goal – to put an end to the mining and the use of the groundwater. The board decided to decommission the organization, since it had done what it was created to do. We had already started restorative economy work under the model of just transition, and that work continued. But when the pandemic happened, everything halted. After the pandemic, we reorganized and launched Nihikeya to continue that work.

Nihikeya is a Diné word, which means our ecological footprint, where we call home. We chose the word Nihikeya because we want to rebuild a regenerative, ecological footprint on our landscapes so that future generations can call it home, and we want to rebuild a lot of our food systems that have been destroyed over time.

We have the capacity, our people have done it. The Indigenous people of the Western hemisphere have been managing ecologies on continental scales and made them very abundant. Now is the time to use our ancestral wisdom to rebuild systems that are resilient to these incoming changes that we’re already experiencing.

With Nihikeya, you’ve been working to establish an agroecological community farm that incorporates rainwater harvesting and edible landscapes. Can you tell us how the community farm project came into being?

Roberto: I was always fascinated with farming, because both sides of my family farmed. When I went to college, my main focus was on traditional ecological knowledge and traditional dryland farming. 

I also did research around the different farming methods on the Navajo Nation, as our ecology is very varied, from low-lying river valleys all the way to high alpine mountain country. I looked at different farming strategies of Diné people in the different ecologies. And that’s where I came across alluvial farming. This is a very common farming practice and technique, not only by the Diné people, but also by other pueblos in the region. They set up their farmland strategically around the alluvial fan where the annual flood and all of the organic debris get to water and re-fertilize these fields. I wanted to replicate that system.

Sliding Rock Farm has become a community space to organize and host workshops.  We call it Sliding Rock Farm, because there’s a rock outcrop right next to the farm that we call Tse Adahnidilwoo’í, sliding rock. Kids have played there for generations, sliding down the rock (you can see the grooves still in the rock). This area was farmed by my grandmother’s father, so it goes a couple of generations back.

We do a lot of traditional food building, edible landscaping, and native plant identification, trying to look at the traditional Diné food systems and educate the community and bring in knowledge holders.

And it has inspired people to do their own thing in their own areas and their own landscapes. So it’s achieving what it was intended to do, to inspire our communities to take action and to be self-sufficient and self-directed.

Workshop organized by Nihikeya

You’ve spoken before about combining ancestral knowledge with contemporary innovations to address the ways that climate change and legacies of extractivism have modified the landscape. Could you tell us about a time when you’ve encountered a need for both of these forms of knowledge to coexist?

Roberto: Our farm is a really good example. We developed a rainwater catchment that comes down from the surrounding landscapes. The rainwater catchment restores the watershed and slows the floodwater as it comes into our fields. 

As we rehabilitated certain areas, we incorporated different types of water catchment systems. We learned these techniques from folks in a community called Big Mountain that have been working on these conservation practices since the ’80s. Their community resisted the Peabody Coal Mine when it first started. And they resisted relocation during the so-called Navajo-Hopi land dispute. They really pushed for the importance of self-determination and food sovereignty, even before it was a thing. We brought some of those young people over to our area and they showed us different techniques of how you put the rocks together and use some wires and fencing or whatever you find around to wrap what’s called a rock apron. We also cement the rocks together to make a rock retaining wall. 

Last year we experienced a 50 or 100 year flood. Our system withstood it pretty well, but the main dirt roads got washed out. Climate change and extreme weather impact our homeland, and the infrastructures we build now have to be able to withstand some of these extreme effects. 

We’re ready to be able to export some of these techniques to other communities that want some assistance. And we’re always open to other techniques people are using or developing.

Read more about how US policies created and exacerbated the Navajo-Hopi land dispute… 

And how do you employ agroecology on your farm?

Roberto: I like the term agroecology because the work isn’t just the farm itself; it’s tied into the larger ecology. In a lot of peasant farms in the Third World majority, they have systems that are built in sync with local ecological processes, and all of the seeds they grow are designed to fit into that ecology. 

In the social movement space around agroecology, they uplift farmers and land users who have a wealth of knowledge but don’t necessarily have diplomas or scholarly status. A lot of our work is around uplifting local knowledge that’s often overlooked. Especially in this country, it’s been demonized. Part of our work is to heal ourselves and believe in ourselves again. 

Our communities have been put into this impoverished state intentionally. Poverty is not who we are. It’s not part of our culture. But this system has put us and keeps us in poverty. We were forced to forfeit billions –  if not trillions – of dollars that could have been invested in social development for our community, so that these towns and cities could have cheap electricity and cheap energy. That’s how we still find ourselves in poverty, even though they’ve been mining our lands. That’s what capitalism is. But it’s our responsibility to build a new system, and that’s our work.

And it’s through agroecology that we are going to find a solution to create landscapes in these changing ecologies and make the landscape lush and thriving again. We have the ability. If you go to our cornfield, you see that we’re reversing the impact of climate change. We’ve captured moisture and put it back into the soil. The land is so lush. Imagine doing that through the whole watershed. We could reverse the aridification that’s happening.

We have the capacity, our people have done it. The Indigenous people of the Western hemisphere have been managing ecologies on continental scales and made them very abundant. Now is the time to use our ancestral wisdom to rebuild systems that are resilient to these incoming changes that we’re already experiencing.

In your view, why are land access and Land Back important for climate justice?

Roberto: In our community and our region, we’ve been impacted by how the United States government asserted control over our homelands. We were deemed incompetent in the early years of this country, and that made its way into policy. All of those policies still have a strong say over what can and cannot happen on these landscapes. 

Right now, you have to have a permit from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to produce agricultural products. In our region, all the agricultural permits were invalidated because of the so-called Navajo-Hopi land dispute in the ‘70s. To this day, nobody has permits in our region. I don’t have a permit, but I got permission from my clan mothers. Our activities are probably deemed illegal under federal laws. And that’s what continues to hinder a lot of our people from accessing resources and  entering into working with the land. 

So part of our Land Back, at least in our own way, is beginning to bring the clan mothers back into this conversation, because we’re a matriarchal society. Land Back is really important for us to use our own knowledge on the landscape. Those of us that still have the knowledge and still practice cultural lifeways have the responsibility to do what we need to do. So we’re not trying to push BIA to recognize or give us the approval – we’re going to go and do it. 

The government has fragmented land status across the Navajo Nation, so it makes it very difficult to do food system restoration at the Navajo Nation-wide level because of the different land statuses. We also live in three different states – Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico – that each have their own level of hatred against us. I’ve learned that our traditional food system does not even qualify as a farm under USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) guidelines, which are created by the state. Those were intentionally created so that corporate and industrial farmland could get all of the benefits down south in Arizona. 

Land Back really means giving us the ability to heal the land that we currently live on. We’re going to assert our right to use our land and our knowledge and do what we feel fulfills our obligation to take care of the land. It’s both decolonizing work and re-indigenizing work simultaneously.

And it is expensive. It’s expensive to have livestock. Even though we may be losing money to maintain it, there are deeper values behind our agricultural practices, beyond monetary gain. It’s about our community, it’s about ourselves, it’s about our own healing. It’s about the healing of land and our connection to the life forces.

Additional readings and resources:

Theory and Practice: The Case of the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute

Black Mesa Water Coalition Green Economy Project, Piñon AZ 

Millions lack access to running water. Is the solution hiding in plain sight? (features a quote from Roberto and brief description of Nihikeya’s work) 

An Edible Landscape: Hungry for Food Sovereignty (feature on Roberto)

Diné Roberto Nutlouis — Water, Corn and a Just Transition for Sacred Beings

It’s time to center climate justice and real climate solutions in the Farm Bill! – HEAL Food Alliance (featuring Roberto and Nihikeya)

The post Drawing on Diné knowledge for Sustainable Food Systems appeared first on HEAL Food Alliance.

Dysfunctional Congress Left American Farm Workers in Limbo

By Jose Oliva and Sophie Ackoff

Although Congress was able to make a deal this weekend and avoid a government shutdown, the 21.5 million people working in the food and agriculture system are still stuck in limbo. Congress quietly missed its deadline for the 2023 farm bill amid its dysfunction. While Congress spends the bulk of its time fighting over the basic function of funding our government, reauthorizing the next farm bill is pushed further and further back. Working people have been fighting for a safe and fair farm bill for years, and can’t afford gridlock any longer. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, a handful of industrial agriculture corporations have consolidated control over the food system and are using their outsized influence to see that labor protections never make it into the farm bill. It’s time for Congress to challenge these corporate lobbyists, put aside partisan politics and put constituents first.

As longtime worker advocates, we speak each day with the people growing, harvesting, processing and shipping the food that our communities rely on. We hear the stories of folks working without protection from extreme temperatures– whether it’s scorching heat in Florida fields, Arkansas meatpacking plants, or Illinois warehouse docks. We hear from workers forced to toil at breakneck speeds for hours on end, without time to even get water or go to the bathroom.

This cruelty isn’t an oversight – it’s the lasting legacy of enslavement and exploitation in America’s food and food system. The hallmark labor laws of the New Deal era, the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act, both excluded agricultural workers. And each of the 18 farm bills since 1933 have also failed to address their needs.  

Over the years, working people have steadily built power and mobilized for better conditions and fair pay. Now, farm and food workers are demanding a farm bill that finally recognizes their contributions and respects these essential workers. Recently, Mirella Estrada, a member of the Farmworker Association of Florida, shared her testimony with nearly 100 Congressional staffers, recounting long days in the field, sometimes from 4am to 11pm with just 15 minute lunch breaks and limited water. She remembered one day when a coworker wandered away to try to find shade under a tree to cope with the heat. “By the time we got there his life was near ending,” she said. “We tried to provide CPR and dialed 911 but by the time they came he had passed.”

Mirella’s story is one of many. Food and farm workers in Arizona, California, Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee have already died on the job this year. Between 2017 and 2022, 121 workers died from heat, not including deaths blamed on other workplace accidents or underlying health conditions exacerbated by heat. Farm workers are now 35 times more likely to die of heat exposure than other workers according to the National Institutes of Health.

Extreme heat is also making toxic pesticides more harmful as the chemicals evaporate into the air more rapidly, filling the lungs of farm workers and drifting into nearby homes. 

The agriculture system doesn’t have to be this dangerous. There’s a clear pathway forward, with many pragmatic measures before Congress that would make a major difference for food and farm workers. We support Senator Padilla’s bills to ensure workers have a voice at USDA where decisions affecting them are made; Senator Booker and Representative Khanna’s bill to create safer conditions for processing meat and poultry, one of the most dangerous jobs in agriculture; Senator Booker’s bill to protect farmworkers that bear the burden of pesticide exposure; and Senator Welch and Representative Casar’s bill to ensure that USDA purchases food from companies that pay their employees a living wage.

These kinds of bills are backed by voters across the country who understand the value of protecting food and farm workers. Nationally, 80% of voters across party lines support more and better protections for food and farm workers. And in a poll of voters in key agricultural states of Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Colorado, 61% of voters identified the risk of illness and injury to food and farm workers as a threat to their own community. 

Congress has the opportunity to do right by millions of workers and the majority of Americans who support a fair and safe food system. This year’s farm bill must reimagine, remake and reinvigorate our food and farm system into one that works better for workers, farmers, ranchers, and eaters alike.

Sophie Ackoff is formerly the Farm Bill Campaign Director for the Food & Environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Jose Oliva is the Campaigns Director of the HEAL (Health, Environment, Agriculture & Labor) Food Alliance.

The post Dysfunctional Congress Left American Farm Workers in Limbo appeared first on HEAL Food Alliance.

Plank 9 – Promote Sustainable Farming, Fishing and Ranching

We spoke with Mai Nguyen, a farmer and co-founder of HEAL member Minnow, which works to secure land tenure for farmers of color in California.

Trained as a geographer, Mai began their career studying soil and the atmosphere as a climate scientist. After working in labs and on climate models, they grew tired of documenting how we’re destroying the planet and made a shift to actively working on climate mitigation through farming, advocacy, and organizing California’s first worker cooperative farms. They shared with us their experiences farming with hope amid the climate crisis, and the success they’ve had nourishing their community while building ecological food systems.

Watch a clip of our interview with Mai

Mai Nguyen: As a farmer, I’ve experienced floods as well as successive seasons of wildfires, trying to harvest in thick, toxic smoke, trying to get my grains to the grain cleaner in the smoke, only to have a giant fire start by the grain cleaners and have my crops rot in the warehouse as they deal with closures because of epic, unprecedented fires.

What gives me hope is that I know that it is a long game. I’ve seen how my work has come to fruition on the farm. Over the past 10 years, I’ve been trialing different heirloom varieties of wheat, rye, and barley, these rare seeds that aren’t available through our corporate-dominated and propertied seed system, and adapting them to California’s climate. Rather than pumping from our already depleted water sources, I rely only on rainfall. I build soil nutrients through rotations with sheep for grazing and  intercropping with legumes to build the nutrients on site, rather than importing synthetic fertilizers, or even organic fertilizers that can seep into our waterways and create toxic imbalances for our riparian systems.

These varieties are six feet tall, compared to commodity grain, which is only about a foot tall. That means they capture six times more carbon than commodity grain. That grain stock is all carbon from the atmosphere being captured. Additionally, they send down deeper roots into the soil, such that we can hold more water in the soil, while capturing more carbon and building more soil organic matter.

When we experienced these periods of extreme drought in 2021, I was one of the few grain farmers in the entire western United States who had a crop. I had the same yields and the same quality, while other producers who were using conventional systems had to totally cut down their crops.

I am really proud to be able to provide food during our multiple overlapping crises, both of climate change and of the pandemic, when there were shortages and lack of distribution of flour into our grocery stores. I was able to get my flour out to communities via my flour share and the small-scale mills and businesses that I work with. It’s examples like that that help me feel optimistic in this time of climate doom. 

Read more about Mai’s farming work… 

Photo courtesy of Minnow

What are some of the unique challenges in growing and processing these heirloom wheat varieties, while also competing in a cereals market dominated by large commodity corporations?

Mai Nguyen: One challenge of growing grain for our foodshed is the lack of a robust regional supply chain. After I harvest my grain, I need it to be cleaned. When I started farming, there were five seed cleaners in the state that could take grain. In the past 10 years, we’ve been reduced down to just one. That is because of the corporate consolidation of seeds and not allowing farmers to save seed. For the one cleaner, it takes six hours round trip to get there and get the product back. And there are so many people relying on that place, that they have a backlog. Even when I received stuff back, I’ve had to get things cleaned twice, because they’re not built for grain cleaning. 

We have two mills functioning in the state that can service coastal California, and only one of them produces whole grain. And there’s only one mill in the whole state that will produce whole grain flour, and it’s in Los Angeles. 

Even just to get the grain to customers, or to bakeries that might have their own small mill for their own in-house production, it’s so challenging to get a thousand pounds or 5,000 pounds of grain somewhere, because corporate consolidation has destroyed all the smaller-scale distribution mechanisms. If you’re small, just trying to get those volumes somewhere efficiently and economically is really challenging.

At this point, I’m trying to create my own vertically integrated system on the farm. What I really need in order to do that is land. I have been leasing for the entire time that I’ve been farming, but at this stage I need to have secure land tenure that enables me to continue trialing the 70 varieties of seed that I have. I also need the space to have a facility that’s rodent-proof and weatherproof, to clean the grain, store the grain, and mill the grain, and to modify those facilities to be appropriate for those operations.

It’s clear to me what I need, and for me to get there seems like a great gulf that we are trying to address through Minnow, People’s Land Fund, and with our partners. 

You’re a co-founder of Minnow. Can you share how that came about? 

Mai Nguyen: Minnow started as a land justice organization that I co-founded with Neil Thapar. I came from a journey of farming and having my own land insecurity issues, as well as developing immigrant-owned agricultural cooperatives. I found that the successful farms in those cooperatives were ones that owned land. The ones that faced the greatest business challenges were the ones with land insecurity, though they were greatly helped by being in a cooperative. They had all this experience farming, but without land and land security, it was challenging for them to use their agricultural practices for the benefit of the land or to make long-term decisions. It also affected them and their families and their family planning, because of not knowing if they would be able to stay in that land, or even in that community.

We have so many of the answers to our societal issues, climate change, and social inequality, but we, especially farmers of color, need to be a part of our political infrastructure in ways that give us place and power to influence these issues. 

Building that power is really key for us to transform our conditions. Through interacting with farmers and doing co-op development work, what I was hearing again and again is that people needed land.

As the child of refugees, displacement and resettlement and making a home in a new place have been long standing questions for me. In these forums that I was in, representing farmers and democratic communities, I was constantly hearing people say, “Yes, we know that people need land, and it’s so challenging, and I don’t know how we’re going to do racial equity and also address Indigenous sovereignty,” and people would just step away. I was like, “We keep saying that we see the same problem, and we can no longer ignore it.” That’s how Minnow came to be. We wanted to address this challenge head on and no longer be afraid of it, and to try to forge a way forward where we all have place, we all have food, and we all belong.

Photo courtesy of Minnow

What policies have you and your partners and Minnow been working on around land tenure, supporting farmers of color, and promoting regenerative farming?

Mai Nguyen: First and foremost is this recognition that this land has been stolen, and that the original inhabitants are still here. We are working on land rematriation. One of our projects, Kai Poma, was focused on engaging with the state of California, in particular with Caltrans, the transportation authority for California, to return land that they were managing back to Indigenous tribes.

Minnow played a part in that, thanks to the support of First Nations Development Institute and the California Tribal Fund who invited us in to provide legal support to write legislation. That is the first time the state of California is returning land to tribes. That sets a historical precedent for our state to continue this process of land return. 

In terms of work with farmers of color, the California Farmer Justice Collaborative passed the Farmer Equity Act in 2017, which created a state definition for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers. This was the first time the state recognized these groups of people as distinct. By creating that policy, it’s now possible for other policies to create set asides and programs for farmers of color. That policy work is a precursor to Minnow, and it has been essential for being able to even have any policies that specifically benefit farmers of color.

The Farmer Equity Act has also been influential in getting other states to try to adopt that language, especially as federal policies that we relied on for those definitions have been politically contentious and threatened. It’s really important for the state level to also have this definition. We use that in trying to advance policies and support different government advising entities that have been formed, such as the Farmer Equity Advisory Committee to the California Department of Food and Agriculture 

You also support farmers directly with land access. Can you tell us about that?

Recognizing that policy comes after grassroots action, our work has been more focused on trying to get people land however we can. With the People’s Land Fund, we   purchased over a hundred acres in Watsonville for a group of farmers. 

The People’s Land Fund is a collaboration of six organizations that proactively fundraises to help farmers purchase land. We initially came together at the beginning of the pandemic to create the California BIPOC Farmer and Land Steward Relief Fund – which redistributed short term, emergency relief funds to farmers of color. 

I had talked to over 130 farmers in that immediate shutdown time. Everyone was freaking out about loss of markets, loss of labor, and loss of money – but we knew that this relief work was temporary and what we really needed to do was to support farmers in their long term stability – and long-term stability requires land. 

We know that farmers are not going to be able to throw down a down payment for a $2 million property the way that a venture capitalist can. How can we leverage our connections and resources to enable farmers to have that competitive advantage? That’s how the Land Fund came about. We had this opportunity in Watsonville, thanks to connections that HEAL Member Kitchen Table Advisors, one of the members of People’s Land Fund had, to purchase land off-market, and for us to then hold the land and connect with the farmers to be on it.

And the transaction itself was made possible through funding from the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Fund, which lowered the purchase price, and using a portfolio of capital from grants and loans allowed a group of farmers, who were previously farm workers, to own that land together.

We’re trying to leverage our collective power and our privilege of being connected to philanthropic and investing organizations to build that financial power for farmers. For racial equity, which means a redistribution and activation of power, there is a financial piece and an ownership piece, and it’s linked to policy and sociopolitical power that we need to build.

For folks who are in California, or are farmers and specifically farmers of colors, what action or collective action can they take in support of your work and land justice?

Mai Nguyen: We talk about the foundations of land justice being about land return. First and foremost, we need to give back land that has been stolen from Indigenous peoples. That is dependent on our government interacting with tribal governments.

In addition to the learning and unlearning process that we need to do to support Indigenous sovereignty, we need to hold our government accountable and vote for the people who will support land back and introduce policies that advance land back and Indigenous sovereignty. 

Find out whose land you’re living on. There are 109 federally-recognized tribes In California, as well as many other tribes that have not been federally recognized or had their federal recognition terminated through the California Rancheria Termination Acts of the 1950s and 1960s. Some Native tribes and nations accept donations or outside support (including land donations and land taxes).

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The post Growing the Foundations of Land Justice appeared first on HEAL Food Alliance.

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Everywhere we look, we see beautiful acts of resistance. Hundreds and thousands of people upending their own lives. Saying no genocide, yes to land back.

We see poetry and prayer. Protests and possibility. People making meals for each other, giving each other car rides, creating art – patches, posters, banners, murals, and more. Journalists risking arrest – or their lives – to tell the truth. Community members offering family care, pet care, and after care to those who are on the frontlines.

This is solidarity. Understanding that our humanity, our individual liberation absolutely depends on collective liberation.

At HEAL, we often say that it takes all of us – the diverse skills, resources, relationships, and expertise that each of us brings – to change everything. Five hundred years after the fact, we are transforming a food system that was founded on genocide, displacement and land theft – the very things folks are fighting against today. And we’re doing it in solidarity with each other, across race and place, sector and skillset.

This year, HEAL members came together to turn our values into policy priorities and got to work on the Farm Bill. Our 43 member organizations agreed that workers’ rights, BIPOC producers, climate change, families being fed, and community control all needed to be central to this omnibus legislation that for its almost 100 year existence, has excluded working people, enabled discrimination, and prioritized profit over people and our planet.

HEAL members painted signs and marched, burned sage on Capitol Hill, created t-shirts and postcards, and paid visits to our Congress members and staff on agricultural committees. We made phone calls, wrote letters, and published Op-Eds. We hosted the first congressional briefing on making labor part of the Farm Bill, where working people from three states and sectors testified. 150 organizations from all over signed on in support of our priorities.

This work isn’t over – we know it will go well into 2024. I’m so proud of our team and our members. Six years into our collective journey, HEAL is building momentum for real change even within systems that were never designed to work for us. We are deep in solidarity with each other, and those calling for change around the world.

As you take time to look through our end of year report, please know that we thank you for being part of our collective journey!

The post Together We Thrive! HEAL’s 2023 Year in Review appeared first on HEAL Food Alliance.