In our final list, read about about culture, community, agrarian identity and inclusivity in the food movement. Explore the relationship between race, people, land, and place. Watch a film that tackles the subject of reparations, and healing. Listen to a movement leader reflect on what could have been, and could still be.

Book: The Color of Food: Stories of Race, Resilience and Farming – Natasha Bowens

Natasha Bowens is an author, photographer, farmer, and activist whose advocacy focuses on food sovereignty and social issues. The Color of Food is a collection of stories that challenge the status quo of agrarian identity which largely ignores farmers of color. The book makes the point that the preserving culture and community, and acknowledging the work done by those who came before us, is a crucial part of the food movement.

Essay: Positioning People of Color in Our Contemporary Food Movement – Regina A. Bernard, 2015, Food Systems Journal

Dr. Bernard-Carreño grew up in Hell’s Kitchen in the Seventies which is also where her interest in food systems began. She has since has been actively researching and writing about the cultural performance of food, food access and food racism in low income neighborhoods in New York City and abroad. Along with researching and writing, she has been designing scholarly projects and community products based on food access in NYC various neighborhoods. This essay talks about the nature of exclusivity in the current food movement, and discusses a re-evolution of food access with a specific focus on racial inclusivity.

Explore: Black/Land Project

Black/Land Project identifies and amplifies conversations happening inside black communities about the relationship between black people, land, and place in order to share their powerful traditions of resourcefulness, resilience and regeneration. The website is home to a trove of reflections and resources that spark critical dialogue surrounding the relationship between black people (including African-Americans, Caribbean-Americans and African immigrants) and land.

Listen: Food Justice: A Vision Deeper than the Problem– Anim Steel, Executive Director and co-founder of the Real Food Challenge, TEDxManhattan 2015

“Each moment has the potential to make the future profoundly different.”

In this video, Anim explores what might have happened if the people emerging from enslaved bondage had been able to access land, and were able to pass that on to their children.

Watch: Banished, a film by Marco Williams.

Banished follows the story of 2 families – The Browns and the Stricklands who were forced to leave their homes.

From award winning film-director Marco Williams, Banished delves into the legacy of racial cleansing. The film deals in large part with the question of reparations but also considers questions of privilege, responsibility, identity, denial and healing. Williams’ hope for this film was that it would lead to a national discussion ad referendum on reparations or in the very least urge Americans to think of the concepts of reconciliation and reparations. Learn more about the film here and  find out if Banished is available through your local library and watch it here!

For our earlier resource lists click here! 

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Read about about the history of African American cooperative business ownership, as well as collective efforts to regenerate sustainable agriculture and land access. Tune in to a podcast in which Dr. Monica White talks about why it was important to document the history of Black farmers and the civil rights movement.  Listen to how communities are adapting strategies for food sovereignty in Detroit.

Book: Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice – Jessica Gordon Nembhard

Essay: Regeneration –  Leah Penniman and Blain Snipstal (Equal Authorship)

Regeneration is part of  Land Justice: Re-imagining Land, Food, and the Commons, a collection of essays edited by Justine M. Williams and Eric Holt-Giménez. This essay by Leah Penniman, and Blain Snipstal of the Black Dirt Farming Collective, is part of a collectively-authored section on “Black Agrarianism,” which deals with the deep roots of agrarianism in Black communities. It details the long and intentional history of dispossession, as well as the many visionary struggles to resist and regenerate by cooperatively building land access and sustainable farming traditions.    

Listen: #RealFoodReads podcast with Dr. Monica White

We featured Dr. Monica White’s Freedom Farmers in our first resource list. Whether or not you found time to read the book, this #RealFoodReads podcast provides more insight into how the book came about and why it had to be written. In this conversation, Dr. White talks about why it was important to her to document the story of black farmers and the civil rights movement, why agriculture is and has always been a strategy of resistance and how  African-Americans have always used food to create community and move towards freedom and liberation. She also talks about the issues small farmers experience right now, and what we can do about the growing disconnect between producers and consumers of food.

Talk: From ‘Motor City’ to food resilience: How Detroit has risen from the ashes – Malik Yakini, Co-founder and Executive Director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN), 2017

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It’s Black History Month and we’re taking a few moments to learn more about Black History in relation to food, farming and food justice. We’re putting together a weekly list of resources—books, articles, reports, interviews and talks—that cover a range of issues that we need to think about as we move forward.

Read about about the contributions of African-heritage people to sustainable agriculture and the fight for Land Justice. Listen to what Regina Bernard-Carreno has to say about the underlying racism of the American food system. Watch a short NBC documentary about institutional racism that Black farmers face in Louisiana to this day.

Book: Farming While Black – Leah Penniman

Essay: Resistance, Dãnia C. Davy, Savonala Horne, Tracy Lloyd McCurty, and Edward “Jerry” Pennick

It’s impossible to move forward in our fight for a just food system without addressing the history of land dispossession upon which it was built. Resistance is part of  Land Justice: Re-imagining Land, Food, and the Commons, a collection of essays edited by Justine M. Williams and Eric Holt-Giménez. The book includes a collectively-authored section on Black Agrarianism, which details the long history of land dispossession among Black farmers in the southeastern US, as well as the creative acts of resistance they have used to acquire land and collectively farm it.

Reportage: What Happened to All the Black Farmers? NBC Left Field

The number of Black farmers in America has been steadily declining since the 1920s; they make up less than 2% of farmers today, when they once accounted for 14%. This NBC documentary follows fourth-generation sugar cane farmer Wenceslaus ‘June’ Provost Jr. as institutional discrimination across the industry slowly puts his farm out of business. Through his story, we also learn about the history of systemic racism in the sugarcane farming in Louisiana and the 1999 Pigford lawsuit, a class-action lawsuit brought against the USDA for alleged discriminatory practices against Black farmers.

Talk: The underlying racism of America’s food system – Regina Bernard-Carreno, writer and professor of Black and Latino Studies at Baruch College, CUNY,  TEDxManhattan, 2014

Our next list of resources will be published on Friday, February 22nd, 2019. For last week’s list click here. 

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Read about about the history of resilience of Black farmers and their continued fight for food  and justice. Listen to two movement leaders talk about about the continuing struggle for land in the South. Watch a video that addresses race and equity within the movement for Good Food. 

Freedom Farmers by Dr. Monica M. White, the President of the Board of Directors of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, offers a multi-dimensional analysis of the work of Black farmers and their mobilization efforts to respond to race and class-based structural inequities. Monica reframes agriculture as a site of resistance, rather than exploitation. She provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice and food sovereignty movements.

In this 2018 paper for Race Forward, Dara Cooper, National Organizer at the National Black Food and Justice Alliance (NBFJA) and HEAL co-founder, draws from over 70 interviews and conversations with farmers, leaders of co-ops and food hubs and other folks working in food systems and related fields. Reclaiming Food Hubs amplifies a more racially inclusive narrative, history, and roots in this work in hopes of lending to much more racially just imaginations for the future of food systems work.

Conversation: Food Justice Requires Land Justice – A Conversation between Savi Horne and Monica White, Edge Effects, 2017

It’s impossible to move forward in our fight for a just food system without addressing the history of land dispossession upon which it was built. In this podcast from Edge Effects, Savonala ‘Savi’ Horne, a lawyer at the North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers talks about her ongoing work on the Land Loss Prevention Project, the importance of policy in negotiating land for under-resourced, overlooked farmers and the political power of cooperative communities. Listen right here or on the Edge Effects website. 

Video: Black Food Matters: Race and Equity in the Good Food Movement – Devita Davison, Change Food Fest 2016

Devita Davison, Executive Director of the Detroit Food Lab, talks about what her work has taught her about race and equity in the Good Food movement.  FoodLab Detroit helps locals from historically under resourced communities set up viable food businesses, and uses food as a vehicle to build power and resilience for all Detroiters.

Our next list of resources will be published on Friday, February 15th, 2019.

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