For The Wild - LEAH PENNIMAN on Land Based Liberation ⧸72⌠ENCORE⌡

00:00:00.000 Hey, for the wild community, it's Ayanna here speaking to you from Cordova, Alaska, where

00:00:06.400 Madison and I have driven up through some incredible landscapes to meet with Dune Lankard,

00:00:13.580 who was one of our most favorite guests we've had on the podcast.

00:00:18.180 He's an incredible conservationist and fighter for the earth, and it's a real honor and pleasure

00:00:25.600 to be spending this time with him learning about the Copper River, the Chugash Forest, and ways to

00:00:31.540 move forward with conservation. This is the last podcast for our staff pick month, so we're excited

00:00:38.780 for Francesca to share her favorite. Also, we are still looking for land partners for the One Million

00:00:46.420 Redwoods project. As this project grows, we'll be continually looking for more land partners so that

00:00:53.420 we can plant as many trees and understory plants and fungal allies as possible so if you live in

00:01:01.780 the redwood region that's what we're focusing on right now please get a hold of us at engage

00:01:07.020 for the wild dot world but know that we are expanding into different ecosystems and forest

00:01:14.260 nooks so if you live somewhere other than the redwoods keep your ears open and i'm sure we'll

00:01:19.360 be shouting out to your region soon. All right, now onto the show.

00:01:32.580 Hey everyone, it's Francesca here, research collaborator for the wild.

00:01:41.860 I'm speaking to you from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I'm one of the newer members to join this

00:01:46.240 incredible team of people. This week's Encore episode is Leah Penniman on land-based liberation.

00:01:52.280 In this conversation, Ayana and Leah traverse through a myriad of topics ranging from grassroots

00:01:57.100 reparations, alternative economies, stewarding the land, and healing by way of land. I think back to

00:02:04.320 the time I spent researching for this interview, and I remember how I was overcome by the depth of

00:02:08.920 the layered histories of land theft, food apartheid, and systemic racism faced by farm workers. Yet at

00:02:15.280 the same time, I was also in awe at the incredible work Soul Fire Farm is doing in ending racism and

00:02:20.760 injustice, whether it's through reclaiming relationship to the land, working with restorative

00:02:25.900 justice programs, or offering a local sliding scale farm share to their community. Ultimately,

00:02:31.500 Leah Penniman encourages us to believe in the future through the promises and spirits of our

00:02:35.920 ancestors, which is a sentiment I hold dearly. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I do.

00:02:45.280 The Silence

00:03:15.280 Somebody's crying

00:03:16.680 Somebody wishing for something to happen

00:03:29.940 Wishing to tell, wishing to help

00:03:33.380 Someone was listening, someone who cared

00:03:37.200 Never despaired

00:03:39.060 Someone to lean on and someone to trust

00:03:43.700 Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we are speaking with Leah

00:04:05.020 Penniman. Leah is an educator, farmer, writer, and food justice activist from Soul Fire Farm

00:04:11.980 in Grafton, New York. She is committed to dismantling racism and injustice in our food

00:04:17.500 system, reconnecting marginalized communities to land, and upholding our responsibility to

00:04:23.380 steward the land that nourishes us. Leah coordinates a subsidized farm share program

00:04:29.200 that provides life-giving food for families in food apartheid neighborhoods. She also runs

00:04:34.880 training programs for aspiring Black and Latinx activist farmers, uprooting racism trainings for

00:04:41.780 intersectional activist, and international solidarity projects with farmers in Haiti and

00:04:47.480 Puerto Rico. Leah holds an MA in science education and BA in environmental science

00:04:54.440 and international development from Clark University. She has been farming since 1996

00:05:00.740 and teaching since 2002. Leah's work as a farmer and educator has been recognized by the Soros

00:05:08.960 Racial Justice Fellowship, Fulbright Program, Presidential Award for Science Teaching,

00:05:15.780 NYS Health Emerging Innovator Awards, Andrew Goodman Foundation, among others. Leah's passion

00:05:23.060 is to joyfully and reverently connect community to the intricate miracle that is this living planet

00:05:29.860 and to their own power as agents of positive change in the community.

00:05:34.840 well Leah what astonishing work you do and life you lead it is such a gift to have you on the

00:05:43.340 show with us today thank you thank you so much for having me it's really an honor and a pleasure

00:05:49.140 to be here getting to share a little bit of our story with y'all well I want to begin by honoring

00:05:55.360 the immense agricultural heritage of Africa and the resilient courageous people who's held on to

00:06:04.080 their beloved African seeds and spirits despite all that worked to exploit and disfigure them

00:06:10.840 and it's largely obscured story that quote American agriculture both traditional and

00:06:18.520 regenerative actually stemmed from the co-optation and exploitation of ancient African agriculture

00:06:25.640 I've heard you tell of how you flow from a long ancestral line of African earth tenders and

00:06:32.300 I want to ask you if you'd be willing to share with us how your ancestry guides you in your expansive life work and in the world, and also how your ancestry guides you specifically in the regenerative farming practices you are rearing at Soul Fire.

00:06:50.400 Oh, I so appreciate that question, because I would be remiss not to honor ancestors before sharing the story of my current life and current work.

00:07:01.660 And in particular, I want to call in my grandma's grandma's grandma, whose enslaved name is Susie Boyd, and she was one of 12 million African people who were kidnapped from the shores of West Africa and brought to the quote unquote new worlds to work without pay on the agricultural fields of the West.

00:07:23.720 And what she and other women did before boarding transatlantic slave ships was to braid seeds into their hair.

00:07:32.160 They braided okra and rice and millet and other heritage crops that they had bred over generations and perfected because they believed against odds in a future on soil.

00:07:42.320 And I call that in for many reasons, probably foremost in my mind with what we're up against right now in the current political climate is that, you know, sometimes despair sets in and sometimes it's easy to think about giving up or imagining that we won't win.

00:07:57.380 And I have to remember that if Susie Boyd and the others around her had faith and believed in us and didn't give up on us, the future generations, then who are we to then give up on our children?

00:08:10.460 Because they certainly face conditions that are unimaginable for me in my relatively privileged life compared to what my ancestors had to deal with.

00:08:18.940 And that is just one small piece of the legacy.

00:08:21.240 You know, I think we're often fed the myth that organic agriculture, permaculture is like a white people thing.

00:08:28.400 And I certainly believe that and really struggled with that in my early years of farming.

00:08:33.960 And truth be told, I mean, everything from pick your own and the CSA, which were gifted to us by ancestor Booker T.

00:08:41.740 Whatley, to the idea of rotating through leguminous cover crops instead of having a monoculture, which was very much promoted by George Washington Carver. 0.92

00:08:51.240 So the co-ops and pig banks of Fannie Lou Hamer, the rice cultivation techniques of enslaved Africans in the Carolinas.

00:08:59.060 I mean, these are really our people's heritage, the raised beds and the fallow period and the rotation of animals and crops.

00:09:07.220 All of these techniques that we use at Soul Fire, you know, come out of the black indigenous tradition.

00:09:13.640 And it's been really a privilege over the past year to start to write these things down.

00:09:17.160 I'm working on a book that will come out in November called Farming While Black.

00:09:20.040 That's about these Afro-Indigenous ways of knowing and being on land and how we can uplift them and enact them in our farms today.

00:09:28.040 I'm so grateful that you are bringing these untold stories of these heroes to the forefront, because as we know, the history that we've been fed and put into our history books and in our education systems tell a very narrow minded story of the past.

00:09:53.300 And that just perpetuates this system of oppression and lies. So this work that you're doing with your book that I want to speak about later feels so mandatory for us to actually move forward in a regenerative way that a lot of us want to.

00:10:12.020 Yeah, thank you for that.

00:10:13.260 Yeah, of course.

00:10:14.420 And, you know, you'd mentioned Soul Fire Farm and your work in general.

00:10:19.340 It confronts food apartheid and injustice in the food system from so many angles.

00:10:25.120 I'd like to steer the conversation towards who has access to the lands of Turtle Island today.

00:10:31.880 As in the words of Malcolm X, quote,

00:10:34.440 Land is the basis of all independence.

00:10:36.840 land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality, end quote. And I've come across

00:10:44.020 quite a few articles that either you have authored or that reference you bringing visibility to the

00:10:51.040 dispossession of Black landowners in the past century. And I want to make the audience aware

00:10:56.320 of a few statistics. Almost 100% of the land in the U.S. is owned by white people. In 1920,

00:11:03.900 14% of all land-owning U.S. farmers were Black. Today, Black farmers operate less than 1%

00:11:10.600 of the nation's farms, amounting to a loss of over 14 million acres. Black farmers receive

00:11:18.000 50% less government support in terms of loans, conservation programs, subsidies for crop

00:11:24.580 production and disaster insurance, etc. So would you speak about this great dispossession and

00:11:32.440 the violent discrimination and legal trickery that enabled this to happen.

00:11:39.160 Yeah, I mean, I have such a heaviness in my heart, you know, hearing the statistics come

00:11:44.140 out of your mouth that I'm usually saying, you know, just this past weekend, I was in Atlanta,

00:11:47.820 Georgia with 100 black farmers, mostly elders, mostly folks over 70, who were instrumental in

00:11:54.760 suing the US government in the famous Pigford v. Glickman case, which was settled in 1999,

00:12:00.680 in the largest civil rights settlement in the history of the United States for these decades

00:12:05.940 of discrimination. And this court case in many ways was symbolic because the small payouts that

00:12:12.720 the farmers got were too little too late. As you noted, we've already been dispossessed of our land

00:12:17.680 and a $50,000 check does not get you back your hundreds of acres and the whole life that you've

00:12:23.140 built. But still with some vindication nonetheless that this is true, that the USDA was the principal

00:12:29.960 driver of Black people off of our land. And this was not a historical accident. The South very much 0.95

00:12:36.400 relied on sharecropping and tenant farming to maintain a quasi-slavery-like economy. And when

00:12:44.100 Black farmers started to gain land holdings by saving their Sunday money that they had earned

00:12:49.480 on the side and amassed this land, it was seen as a threat to white supremacy. And so the USDA

00:12:56.300 is the arm of the USDA and local communities are what what's called these FSA county committees and

00:13:02.220 local farmers are elected onto the committees and they're the ones who decide who gets what

00:13:06.700 and so white supremacists filled those committees black people did not sit on the committees and

00:13:12.380 they systematically denied aid to black farmers but even more than that they would actively 0.97

00:13:17.700 steal land I mean go in and burn down people's houses lynch people threaten them over 4,000

00:13:25.000 people were lynched in the early 1900s up to the up to the mid 1900s and driven off of their land

00:13:30.840 and and that land was taken so it's not a historical accident you know sometimes we think

00:13:35.660 of the great migration as just this northward seeking of of new opportunity in the factories

00:13:41.960 and so on but there was also a push factor people were fleeing terrorism and violence in the south

00:13:47.020 which is why they left it's devastating i mean the farmers that i was sitting with at the table

00:13:52.400 just this past weekend have been dedicating their entire life to this fight and are aging out and

00:13:59.540 need to pass the mantle to this next generation are really looking to us as to whether we're

00:14:03.920 going to be able to rectify this egregious, egregious act of land theft. You know, and

00:14:10.780 obviously I'm not saying this in any way to minimize the original land theft of Turtle Island

00:14:16.380 from indigenous people. And a lot of folks say, well, how do you, you know, how do we sort of

00:14:21.400 hold both of these things. And if when you look at the fact that 98% of the land right now is

00:14:25.320 controlled by white people, there's a lot of room for land reform before we have to think about 0.59

00:14:31.460 communities of color being in conflict with each other over that land. And I think we can work 0.76

00:14:35.540 together, inspired very much by what's happening in South Africa, where they're just deciding it's

00:14:41.060 time. This land was stolen, and it needs to be given back. And that will be perhaps a disruptive,

00:14:46.200 but also a healing process for the nation.

00:14:50.400 I wonder what the U.S. can learn from South Africa in this time

00:14:55.740 and other areas that are doing this work,

00:15:00.440 are doing this work of reparations.

00:15:03.420 And also I want to mention what we can learn from what you're doing

00:15:08.300 because from what I gather,

00:15:10.380 you and your incredible co-conspirators

00:15:14.700 have created an interactive map to catalyze people-to-people reparations for Black Indigenous

00:15:21.940 farmers. So I'd love if you could first explain the concept of reparations and then expand upon

00:15:28.680 how the grassroots reparations project and map you're working on came to be.

00:15:35.180 So the concept of reparations is a little bit different or really quite different from

00:15:40.500 philanthropy or charity, which comes from the idea that folks with privilege, power, resources

00:15:48.480 have the right to own those resources and can choose to give them away as an act of benevolence

00:15:56.840 from their hearts, for which they're usually rewarded with social status or tax deductions

00:16:01.540 or so on and so forth. The idea with reparations is rooted in a framework that the wealth,

00:16:07.760 the resources, the privilege that people have, by and large, is not come upon honestly.

00:16:14.820 If you look at the research out of the Pew Center, you know, 80% of wealth is inherited,

00:16:20.280 and most of it is traceable back to times of enslavement and land theft.

00:16:25.280 Really sitting with that fact and asking ourselves, you know, those of us in the community who do have

00:16:30.800 wealth, like how much of that either was inherited directly, or in some way our parents or community

00:16:37.040 or family subsidized our life or that we received sort of unearned access to jobs, education.

00:16:45.240 And through that framework, that resource becomes something that is due, due back to

00:16:50.640 the descendants of those from whom it was stolen.

00:16:53.920 And what's really beautiful about this moment in time is that there's a lot of people born

00:16:57.900 into privilege who are recognizing that reparations are due.

00:17:01.220 And while we must, must, must continue to organize for the government to institute large scale reparations, this is not to excuse that. In the meantime, there are individuals in resource generation and other collectives who are excited to get involved and just do it, just do that reparations work.

00:17:20.280 I also want to say that ours is certainly not the only reparations project. This is a tiny initiative and the National Black Food and Justice Alliance is working on a comprehensive initiative and also the Federation of Southern Cooperatives and some of the black farming organizations are thinking about that.

00:17:36.700 So I don't want to take away from that. But I will say that we were chatting at our favorite program that we do, which is the Black Latinx Farmers Immersion. And one of the participants named Viviana Moreno said, you know, we should really get a list together of all the things we need to realize our farm food and land dreams, whether it's land, training, money, connections, advice, whatever it is, and put that out there and just see if the community is willing to

00:18:06.540 meet us and engage with us. And so we did it because we're action folks, put together this

00:18:12.200 map on a really simple Google Maps platform, started with 40 farmers, it's growing slowly.

00:18:17.420 And what's really beautiful is that, you know, three of the people who have been in relationship

00:18:23.820 with Soul Fire have fully funded or fully received their ask for farms. And so if you look at Harmony

00:18:30.400 Farm in New York, Wild Seed Community Farm in New York, and the Harriet Tubman Freedom Farm

00:18:36.800 in North Carolina. These are all Soul Fire fam who've received land and or money from white 0.97

00:18:42.340 folks. And then a lot of people have received smaller donations. And I've heard a buzz about

00:18:46.540 people trying to pool their money to do some of the bigger asks. And so that's really exciting

00:18:51.780 because there is an urgency right now for us to get back on the land. And this is a way that

00:18:57.900 people can engage in the moment and see tangible results immediately. I love hearing these seeds,

00:19:06.820 these dream seeds can blossom. We just need to do it. And I'd love to hear any other celebratory

00:19:14.060 stories that come to mind so that we can, as an audience, begin to really understand how

00:19:23.060 grassroots movements can have a domino effect and keep growing word yeah I appreciate the domino

00:19:32.780 effect metaphor because we've definitely received some pressure not from within our community mostly

00:19:37.840 from the philanthropic community to scale up and to grow and to sort of have what starts to feel

00:19:44.740 like franchising or some kind of empire which we are so not interested in and the model that we

00:19:50.660 think about that really makes sense is like the way that mycelium grow, the way that the forest

00:19:57.020 networks, and we call it translocal organizing. The idea is that we do our work right here rooted

00:20:03.560 in our local and regional community that's very responsive and accountable to that community.

00:20:09.300 That example, that model, those trainings that we offer spawn similar projects that are also

00:20:16.600 locally and regionally accountable and responsive. And so to be tangible, what I mean about that,

00:20:22.760 you know, we have this training program and within the training program, there's an advanced track,

00:20:26.940 a train the trainer track for people who are really ready to take their projects to the next

00:20:31.700 level. Keisha Cameron outside of Atlanta, Georgia at High Hog Farm is one of the people who went

00:20:36.920 through this program and got inspired to create a similar training program called Ubuntu that works

00:20:43.640 on racial justice, food justice, and helps farmers transition to organic and sustainable

00:20:48.800 practices, which she's now operating on her farm in her community.

00:20:53.060 You know, similarly, Finca Consciencia, outside of Chicago, this is a group of folks that

00:21:00.160 Viviana, Hereri, and Jasmin, that came through Train the Trainer and our BLFI, like, next

00:21:06.100 level advanced program, and used the business planning ideas that we had to go ahead and

00:21:12.180 start a worker owns cooperative that's responsive to their local community, which is primarily folks

00:21:16.640 without documents and new Americans. And so we're so excited about that. We don't need to own or 0.95

00:21:22.120 control that, but we need to be in community and learning from each other and really uplifting

00:21:27.360 each other's work. And ultimately, when you think about it, in some ways, our goal should be to make

00:21:32.040 ourselves obsolete because once we win, you know, once we have equity in terms of access to land and

00:21:37.800 food and farming and true leadership we don't necessarily need to be doing the same kind of

00:21:42.040 work and so we always have our eyes on that it's not about like consolidating power or control or

00:21:46.640 in some sort of immortality it's very much about achieving these goals and then making space for

00:21:51.640 whatever needs to come next as far as what the community defines its needs are thank you for

00:21:58.620 saying that it really grounds me to the work that i want to do in the world and the way in which

00:22:05.200 i want to do it and i'm sure for so many people who are listening to this that are also tussling

00:22:10.900 with these questions of how do we do this work in the world especially with the urgency

00:22:17.600 of the anthropocene and climate change and just all the pressure that i think so many of us feel

00:22:24.420 who are connected to what's happening i know for myself i do i i fall threat to the urgency a lot

00:22:31.200 and sometimes i can forget about deep time or forget about yeah harmonious way to move forward

00:22:39.880 my mind can get trapped in that that state of scale up and do now and ah so hearing your words

00:22:47.780 are just like okay exhale there are better ways to do this and we need each other we need to learn

00:22:55.860 from each other we need to stay in community and and really listen to the ones that came before us

00:23:03.420 who understood truth and connection and how we can learn and then apply that to this really strange

00:23:14.320 modern time that we're living in now yes that is beautiful and i love the concept of deep time i

00:23:20.180 hadn't heard of that before I love that yeah I've had to bring myself back to it a lot because like

00:23:27.400 I said you know for so many of us especially for all the people who I'm sure are sitting with this

00:23:32.780 conversation our eyes are open we're awakened to what's happening and it's painful I think it's

00:23:40.760 can be really scary so yeah I just had to keep reminding myself of the deep time that yes this

00:23:47.880 work is important and it's important to do it now but the ways in which we do it are also of

00:23:54.160 utmost importance and um when you were speaking before you had mentioned the people have come

00:24:00.400 through soul fire farms working with undocumented people and it brings up this other topic that i

00:24:07.380 want to speak about because discussions around injustice in the food system just wouldn't be

00:24:14.080 whole without speaking to the exploitation of latinx and migrant farm workers this is a realm

00:24:20.880 you know we've yet to really delve into on the show but one that i intend to explore more deeply

00:24:26.300 in the future on soul fire's website it notes that while 85 of the people working the land in

00:24:33.360 the u.s are latinx migrant workers less than three percent of farms are owned and operated

00:24:40.180 by Latinx or Hispanic folks. So the food system and the backwards policies that shape the system 0.97

00:24:48.800 lack humanity on so many levels. Not only are workers faced with fractional pay and harmful

00:24:56.180 working conditions, but the voices of undocumented migrant workers are increasingly silenced and

00:25:04.040 shadowed in this fearful political climate. So bringing this up, I know we are really

00:25:11.420 barely going to scratch the surface, but I want to ask you to say anything you feel called to

00:25:18.480 regarding these topics and perhaps direct us towards organizations doing good work in this

00:25:24.220 area or policy reforms that we can really rally behind. Absolutely. No, thank you for calling that

00:25:31.160 in. Something that I've had my eyes open to is the fact that our food system has, in the United

00:25:37.600 States, has always been entirely dependent on exploited labor. In no point in our history

00:25:44.160 have we ever paid fair wages or offered fair working conditions to the people who produce

00:25:50.920 our food, which is profound. I mean, we all are very familiar, I hope, with the history of

00:25:56.360 enslavement, maybe sharecropping and tenant farming. A lot of folks don't know that that was

00:26:01.620 followed up with convict leasing, where Black people were criminalized, put in prison, and then

00:26:09.280 sold back to their former masters on plantations and in the mines. But then as the Great Migration 0.84

00:26:17.360 picked up, there was a labor vacuum in the South. And rather than really reassessing the economic

00:26:22.980 model, the United States government decided to figure out import strategies, first preying upon

00:26:29.740 Southeast Asian communities, then on Mexican communities, then on Chinese communities,

00:26:34.760 then on Caribbean communities, and essentially bringing people to this country to do work

00:26:40.960 at wages and under conditions that white Americans were not willing to do.

00:26:46.820 I think a really powerful sort of modern anecdote about that is I have a friend who's a professor

00:26:52.260 in the Midwest at an ag college and polled his students and asked them, what wage would it take

00:26:59.840 for you to work in this town's meatpacking plant? And the unanimous answer of those white students

00:27:07.900 was there is no wage at which I would work in those meatpacking plants because they are so 0.99

00:27:14.380 grueling and so dangerous and so disgusting that there is no amount of money that you could pay me

00:27:19.620 to work there. And to really think about that, and of course, people are making sub-minimum wage

00:27:24.560 in those meatpacking plants who are quote-unquote guest workers under the H-2A program, mostly from

00:27:30.320 Mexico. So the fact we've set up a food system that requires people to work in these horrid 1.00

00:27:36.120 conditions, and that's what feeds us, is something we really, really need to look at.

00:27:41.260 There is an entirely different set of labor laws for farm workers than there are for other

00:27:46.060 professions. The National Labor Relations Act, which was established in 1935, excludes farm

00:27:52.940 workers and domestic workers from key protections. That has not been changed. That has not been

00:27:57.420 updated. So depending on what state you're in, because some states do have more protections,

00:28:02.440 you may not have overtime pay, the right to unionize, child labor protections, protection

00:28:09.040 from sexual harassment and sexual violence, protection from wage theft, health care. And so

00:28:15.660 So this is the reality. And I think that certainly we need to be talking about sovereignty, like certainly we need to be talking about pathways for migrant workers to own land and run their own businesses. But right now, we're not even there yet in the conversation. The conversation is how do folks get paid for their labor and live in buildings that have running water? And how do their children go to school? I mean, that's really the level of the conversation.

00:28:37.600 There was a slavery ring, literally slavery, not even like metaphorical slavery, like people chained and forced to work. That was just broken up in the late 90s by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which sort of transitions to your question about who is leading the struggle.

00:28:51.000 Certainly the Coalition of Immokalee Workers are doing some incredible, incredible organizing.

00:28:56.640 We should also support CATA, which is the Farm Workers Support Committee, Centro Campesino, Dignity and Power Now, Familias Unidas por la Justicia, the Farm Workers Association of Florida and many other organizations.

00:29:13.760 And I'm happy to provide a list or like send you some links later.

00:29:17.220 But organizations that are run by farm workers for farm workers is where we should be putting our trust and our resources right now.

00:29:43.760 I'm based out of California

00:30:10.460 And so much of this state is modern slave labor in the farms, in these huge monocropped industrial farms.

00:30:24.640 And I think so many of us, even just driving the five freeway who pass the, whether it's almonds or cattle and the people that are out there working, literally being sprayed from planes, this poison.

00:30:45.280 it's disgusting how the food system and the bigger system of this country treats

00:30:53.620 anybody humans cows the soil so disposable i think speaking about these other organizations

00:31:03.140 that are farm-led kind of going back to how you were speaking about really working locally in

00:31:09.120 the communities and listening to the people that have been silenced that are the ones that are

00:31:14.780 actually dealing with the conditions of this horrid system and giving power to the people who

00:31:24.680 are actually doing the work. I remember speaking with Bren Smith, who has set up this 3D ocean

00:31:34.100 farming for a lot of the fishing communities who have basically lost a lot of their economic

00:31:42.620 stability because fish are going extinct and how to create jobs and how to really listen to the

00:31:52.480 people that are actually working with the oceans and how he was explaining that the majority of

00:31:58.640 fishing boats, because they've had to become so expensive and high tech just to even find the last

00:32:05.400 fish, the fishermen aren't the ones who own the boats. It's people who are so far removed

00:32:11.460 that may have never even stepped foot on a fishing boat and the same with a lot of these big farms

00:32:18.160 these corporate farms so many of the people in power have no clue what it's actually like

00:32:23.900 to live to work day in day out or just like how you're talking about the college students

00:32:29.840 there was no amount of money that would pay them to do this work so there's just such this huge

00:32:36.920 just to connect and i i appreciate you you bringing this up and the blatant racism and

00:32:44.240 you know racism in farming isn't restricted to land access and equality or the corporate

00:32:51.260 mega farms but it's also quite apparent in the organic and regenerative farming movements

00:32:58.300 with 95 of farm management being white it's no surprise that young black or latinx indigenous

00:33:06.640 farmers, they may find themselves in a work environment that carries legacies of racial

00:33:13.400 trauma. Not to mention how many farm incubation projects and jobs for budding organic farmers

00:33:20.440 either require a college degree or are unpaid work trades, significantly limiting who actually

00:33:28.000 has access to them. So I'd really love if you could illuminate further some of the struggles

00:33:33.980 that Black and Latinx folks who are yearning to farm face

00:33:39.600 and how Soul Fire's Black Latinx Farmer Immersion Program arose in response. 0.98

00:33:47.440 Yeah, that's a beautiful framing and a tragic framing also.

00:33:51.620 I've had folks come to our program and say that they had tried to do the WOOF program,

00:33:57.180 Worldwide Workers on Organic Farms, or do some apprenticeships.

00:34:00.460 And it's not just, you know, subtle legacy of racism stuff. Some of it is really overt. You know, there's this one young man who was picking beans with a white farmer at one of these wolf farms. And the person said, you know, can I ask you, can I ask you an honest question?

00:34:15.600 um i was wondering if you have a sense as to why so many black men abandon their children

00:34:21.720 and it's just like what on so many levels what first of all that's not even true statistically 0.66

00:34:28.500 there was just a big study done to debunk that myth of the absent black father like black fathers

00:34:32.940 are as involved with that more involved than any other race but also just that audacity

00:34:37.820 that racist perspective and then to put that on this person who does not have a car does not have

00:34:42.940 a way of leaving this place and is now stuck in a really uncomfortable, verbally violent environment.

00:34:49.900 So that's what people are confronting. And then, of course, all of the subtle structural stuff that

00:34:53.720 you mentioned. Why do I keep getting denied to this farm incubator program? Or, you know,

00:34:58.280 why is it that I'm on this farm working for free and not really getting the instruction that I

00:35:03.000 thought I signed up for? So that definitely happens in training. And another tragedy that

00:35:07.460 I've only recently become aware of, but it's really significant is there are a number of

00:35:12.380 new Americans from Caribbean countries, especially, who have deep farming backgrounds and are

00:35:20.960 very excited to get into ag in this country and want to attend university, one of the

00:35:25.860 land grant colleges, like the 1890 land grants, which are supposed to be, you know, for these

00:35:30.760 communities. But the geographic location of these universities is so far from the immigrant

00:35:37.420 community's family center that there's no way for them to attend. You know, they need to be living 1.00

00:35:42.940 with their family members in order to afford survival. They need to be taking care of elders.

00:35:48.500 And so it's just not possible. And so people end up choosing different career paths. And that's,

00:35:53.200 you know, folks have been telling me, what if we had satellite sites for these universities

00:35:57.420 in the communities where black and brown people actually live. And we could, you know, pay current

00:36:02.580 black and brown farmers as adjunct faculty at these universities to do these remote programs and

00:36:08.280 really expand the land grant system to provide education right where people are. So that's

00:36:13.600 certainly one barrier is training. But I would say even more significant is access to credit capital

00:36:18.380 and land. Black folks, brown folks, we're not inheriting land and land is hella expensive.

00:36:24.220 Property taxes are so expensive. And how do you surmount that barrier in order to really get 0.63

00:36:30.800 started? Because you know you can't go into some crazy debt because farming isn't going to pay it

00:36:35.080 off. And right now, the credit programs and the grant programs are very limited. And as you

00:36:41.720 mentioned earlier, are still skewed towards supporting white farmers and corporate farmers

00:36:46.120 and large-scale farmers. And there's a lot of barriers to accessing those programs for black

00:36:52.200 of brown folks who are just starting out. It's heartening to remember that economic models that

00:36:58.680 are not purely individualistic or capitalistic do exist, like indigenous gift economies and

00:37:05.720 cooperatives or the Ujame principle that Soul Fire embodies. And I'd like to hear more about

00:37:13.200 some of the alternative ways of economy that have been working for you and your community,

00:37:18.080 and how they can provide a greater network of support

00:37:21.560 for community members in need.

00:37:24.800 Yeah, definitely.

00:37:25.880 So Ujama is the Kwanzaa principle,

00:37:28.460 it's a key Swahili word

00:37:29.400 that loosely means cooperative economics.

00:37:31.620 It's this idea that rather than have

00:37:34.180 an exploitative relationship between producer and consumer

00:37:36.980 where you're both just trying to get as much as you can

00:37:39.280 at the expense of the other,

00:37:41.020 that you think about a cooperative

00:37:42.480 and mutually uplifting relationship.

00:37:45.760 And the way that we've tried to implement this principle in part is through our Ujamaa Farm Share. It is a weekly doorstep delivery of a box of fresh farm grown vegetables between June and November. And we focus on communities under food apartheid, food apartheid being that system of segregation that relegates some people to food opulence and others to food scarcity.

00:38:10.820 So these folks in these neighborhoods, you know, don't have access to farmers markets and grocery stores and Whole Foods or anything like that.

00:38:17.380 And so a lot of times the box of vegetables is really that only the only fresh option for them.

00:38:23.000 And people can pay on a sliding scale, whatever they can afford.

00:38:26.080 They can also use government benefits like EBT or the WIC farmers market program.

00:38:30.780 And the way that we make this still financially viable for us as farmers is some people who have more resources pay higher on the sliding scale, effectively subsidizing the food that their neighbors receive.

00:38:44.640 And additionally, we do some grassroots fundraising for what we call our solidarity share program.

00:38:51.460 And the solidarity shares are specifically for refugees, immigrants and people impacted by incarceration.

00:38:57.220 And these are no cost shares that are paid for entirely by people's neighbors. And it's important to us to do it this way. We certainly could write grants and, you know, try to fundraise in a philanthropic model for the program.

00:39:10.500 But we're trying to show that a farm can be economically viable, relying on its sales and relying on its community, because there it's a struggle, you know, to make it as a small scale farmer.

00:39:24.080 And it would be disingenuous to be training people to go into farming without being able to demonstrate a model of financial sustainability.

00:39:30.920 like you're not going to get rich off of farming, but you can, you know, take care of your family

00:39:35.480 and take care of your basic needs and also be in integrity in terms of sharing what you have

00:39:40.000 with your community and not only catering to these really upscale markets. That is something

00:39:45.140 I have sat with for a long time in question. And I actually want to talk a bit more about it,

00:39:51.320 because, you know, we've spoken a lot together about the challenges of even acquiring land in

00:40:00.000 the first place as a black or brown farmer. And then once you, by whatever means, can acquire the

00:40:08.780 land and farm, that it isn't something that's actually valued in our culture. Real, fresh,

00:40:18.900 organic food, just like so many other things, whether it's, you know, I mean, it's kind of

00:40:25.400 amazing when I think about how many things are not valued that are actually what give us life

00:40:30.740 whether that's food even trees for oxygen but what is valued are these things that are completely

00:40:37.680 unnecessary and actually destructive to the earth and to our connection with each other and this

00:40:44.820 planet and so not to get too down this tornado of existential questioning but I sit with this you

00:40:51.300 How can we feed an economic model that actually does value farmers, does value the food that

00:41:02.440 is produced by farmers without either, like you said, receiving grants from foundations

00:41:08.140 and doing all of the legwork of the philanthropic nonprofit model or just selling to Whole Foods

00:41:17.140 or even creating actual products from the produce that is kind of turned into a fancier product.

00:41:26.780 Right, like value-add.

00:41:27.720 Exactly, value-added because even, I mean, honestly,

00:41:32.380 I'm sure that Whole Foods gouges the organic produce farmers that they sell their kale and so on and so forth.

00:41:39.120 And so there is this, this system is set up to not value the people that are actually creating the life sustaining food and so on and so forth. So yeah, I know you were touching on it, but if there's any other threads you can pull on this topic to show us more of how you're doing it or other models that you really resonate with.

00:42:05.680 And maybe this is a really far out question. But how do you see this being a better way forward, being able to topple over the old system into a way that this could be the new norm? Like you said, like, making some of these, some of the work that you do even obsolete, because it just is the way that life is.

00:42:27.980 right wouldn't that be sweet Wakanda forever um you know I'm not an economist and so I'm probably

00:42:35.660 not the best person to answer this question but I do know that you know in the past there was more

00:42:42.560 support from the federal government for small farmers and the whole big get big get out you

00:42:47.560 know transformation that happened between the 60s and the 80s really shifted the way the subsidies

00:42:51.900 worked. So right now it's not so much that wheat is inherently cheap or corn syrup is inherently

00:42:58.060 cheap. It's just that there's a whole lot of money flowing in for those big commodity crops

00:43:03.540 that artificially depresses the price. Agriculture is not a free market beast in the United States.

00:43:12.000 And so we could really play with that. You know, Costa Rica pays its farmers for providing

00:43:17.660 environmental services, such as protecting pollinator habitats and supporting the recharge

00:43:23.900 of aquifers. And so what if we thought about restructuring the way that huge farm bill works

00:43:29.920 and what it subsidizes? We do have small programs for conservation. We have EQIP and the Conservation

00:43:36.440 Stewardship Program and so on. And so it's not that that doesn't exist, but it's very underfunded.

00:43:41.320 It's a small slice of the pie. And we could completely invert it. You know, we could make

00:43:46.340 those commodity crop subsidies a small piece of the pie and then really expand what farmers get

00:43:52.280 for doing crop rotation, pollinator protection, erosion control, living buffers, you know, all of

00:43:59.120 these practices, if you think about it, really are for public benefit. They're for the public trust

00:44:05.920 and for the future. So why not have our public dollar pay farmers to do those things as their

00:44:11.920 value-added product in addition to selling lettuce. And so I think that part of the ultimate answer

00:44:17.260 really has to do with the way that society is regulating and subsidizing farming. But that's

00:44:23.180 really as far as my limited economic understanding goes. Well, I love being able to flip the

00:44:31.560 subsidies on its head. And instead of subsidizing high fructose corn syrup and things that are

00:44:40.800 really unhealthy for all living creatures but instead subsidize farmers to create these buffer

00:44:49.600 zones to protect pollinators that's brilliant and it is beneficial to everyone to be able to

00:44:58.440 steward land in that way I'm sure it even affects the water that runs through the farms

00:45:04.640 You know, I think. Yeah, it's so it's so funny. Just it's not funny. It's disturbing, honestly, in California, how the state wants to raise Shasta Dam yet again, which would wipe out the salmon, wipe out the Winnem Wintu's cultural sacred sites just to funnel more water through the Delta tunnels to feed the Central Valley.

00:45:33.460 instead of actually looking at the central valley that's been completely wiped out of all of their

00:45:40.000 topsoil laser leveled uh you know the water runoff goes into these cemented quote-unquote rivers or

00:45:48.920 creeks and what if we instead of taking the money to do this massive dam project what if we took the

00:45:55.680 money to pay you know people and well i mean the farmers that's a whole other story because it's

00:46:03.260 probably mostly corporate farms but actually use that money to regenerate this land in a way that

00:46:11.460 was regenerative to people that work on this land and and i think about that all the time like

00:46:17.060 where money goes and how much money is actually being spent in our government on really strange

00:46:22.560 programs instead of actually using the money for ways that we know will protect and clean water

00:46:29.080 and land and is healthier for the people it's just mind-boggling and so I think these other

00:46:35.020 ways of supporting people that you've mentioned it's such a clear way forward and I think if

00:46:42.920 enough of us awaken to these ideas and get on board it's not unsurmountable it just takes

00:46:50.920 organization and i think faith that uh we can band together and and do this so thank you i i even

00:47:00.460 though i know you say you're not an economist it's these ideas are potent and um and i think

00:47:06.720 more and more of us need to understand that there's already programs in place that are regenerative

00:47:14.900 and how we can get behind those that yeah my friends my good friends um taken angle

00:47:21.460 actually had a cool idea for flipping the script like you mentioned because right now you have to

00:47:26.080 get certified right to be organic to use that label but what if you had to get certified to

00:47:32.120 use pesticides and synthetic fertilizers and you had to really justify why that was necessary

00:47:38.300 and submit to that scrutiny and monitoring to make sure that you're not doing and you know

00:47:44.260 undo damage to the environment and have the status quo be that you would have a chemical free farm.

00:47:49.760 And so I think it's one thing I love about that is it really encourages us to think outside the

00:47:53.960 box and question our presuppositions about the way the system works. It doesn't have to keep

00:47:58.340 working like that. I read that Sol Fire Farm has sister farms in Haiti and Puerto Rico. And I was

00:48:07.920 both fascinated and unnerved when listening to your speech at the 2017 Holyoke Food Justice

00:48:14.760 Conference, where you brought up the sector of the Farm Bill regarding food aid and how the U.S.

00:48:21.600 government strategically uses such neocolonial forces to rupture local food economies. So kind

00:48:28.160 of getting back into these systems that need to be taken down, could you explain what ensued in

00:48:35.640 Haiti's rice economy following the 2010 earthquake and what resistance has been transpiring from the

00:48:42.240 Haitian peasant movement? Sure, absolutely. So most of my knowledge of what's going on in Haiti

00:48:49.280 is very personal. Again, I'm not a movement expert, but my mother is from Haiti. And since 2010,

00:48:56.380 I've been going there to Leogon area where the was the epicenter of the earthquake,

00:49:02.560 with a group called Haiti Resurrect, which is mostly Haitian, American, Caribbean, Black folks

00:49:09.280 doing solidarity work with this community. And so what I learned from them is that, you know,

00:49:14.780 after the 2010 earthquake, the U.S. did what it often does now in so-called developing countries,

00:49:21.480 which is it sent food aid. And under the Farm Bill, we have a policy called Tide Aid that says

00:49:27.660 that anytime we give food aid internationally, it has to be grown by U.S. farmers and packaged

00:49:33.240 and shipped by U.S. corporations. And this policy, while it sounds benign, is actually sort of

00:49:39.040 brilliant in its evilness because it makes imperialism look like philanthropy. They timed

00:49:47.400 the donation of the rice to the moment when the harvest was ready in Aitzi. And as you can imagine,

00:49:54.680 And if you flood a community with free rice at the time that farmers are trying to sell their rice, the results are devastating because that economy is then undermined.

00:50:05.600 Farmers go out of business. It forces migration to the urban areas. It forces desperation.

00:50:10.540 People start working more for the U.S. companies like United Fruit and Disney T-shirt factories because there's not reserves, there's not savings.

00:50:18.320 And Monsanto has even tried to wipe out the indigenous seed of Aitzi by, again, giving donations of their hybrid seed to the farmers and along with free chemicals at first.

00:50:30.680 But after a couple of years of that, when the native seed supply is depleted, those farmers then become dependent on Monsanto.

00:50:37.860 So the then president of Haiti, you know, asked for the donations to be turned around.

00:50:43.240 They still came in with the donations. And then the farmers in the Haitian peasant movement actually burned the seed in an act of resistance, saying, we want our seed sovereignty. We want our food sovereignty. We don't want these donations.

00:50:57.240 We would rather have the international support actually go to Haitian farmers to grow food for our own community in these times of need, but not to supplant our local economy.

00:51:07.300 so they are just they're powerful and something I love about working with the farmers in Haiti it's

00:51:12.340 not just demonstrations and chanting and burning stuff I mean they are doing the on the ground

00:51:16.760 organizing they have their own seed keepers exchange they are irrigating one another's

00:51:21.680 farms and setting up compost projects and planting trees on the degraded hillsides like they are

00:51:26.940 doing that hands-on grassroots work and these protests are an outward expression of their

00:51:31.900 political priorities that are very much rooted in knowing their land and knowing their community

00:51:36.280 Oh, we some many of us have so much to learn from these courageous people who are taking their power back and not feeling the smallness that these big corporations try to just cover people up with.

00:52:01.120 And I think when we hear stories about people in Haiti or in countries that are so much less privileged than the United States, I think it can be this really beautiful wake-up call to so many of us here that shows us, look at these incredible people that are dealing with disasters and extreme poverty and lack of access to so many just

00:52:31.120 basic human needs and they are powerful and they're doing it and i think it also um kind of

00:52:41.480 shatters this idea of the united states and the quote aid that's sent all over the world and how

00:52:48.980 we can start to understand how it's disrupting so many countries globally and um it's a wormhole

00:52:57.300 to jump into how the United States continues to force their imperialistic colonial ideals and

00:53:07.860 just so oh my goodness the United States is has not stopped this forceful grip on so many people

00:53:18.840 so anyways but I'm really I want to open up the floor at this point as you've just shared so much

00:53:26.100 in this last hour with us but i would love to hear about your new book farming while black

00:53:33.540 soul fire is definitive guide to liberation on land which is going to be released this fall

00:53:39.860 so please if you would share with us the inspiration for this book your process while

00:53:49.600 working through it and anything else that you'd like us to know about this body of work that

00:53:55.600 you'll be releasing soon. Well, thank you. You know, it really feels like such a labor of love

00:54:01.320 and an important child essentially to bring into the world. So the idea of the book Farming While

00:54:06.520 Black is to take all of this curriculum that we've built over the years for our Black Latinx

00:54:11.400 farmers immersion training, the content of our talks and lectures and research, and as well as 0.98

00:54:17.080 the farming practices that we've honed over the years, and put them into almost an encyclopedic

00:54:23.620 manual for reclaiming our right to dignity and belonging on lands. It's both practical and

00:54:29.800 historical and poetic. It's pretty long. It's got beautiful photographs. But just some examples of

00:54:35.540 the types of things that you can find in the book are ideas for accessing land when you don't have

00:54:40.880 a lot of resources, how you can leverage certain networks and programs to get that resource that

00:54:46.560 you need, setting up your own cooperative credit entities to support one another in initial

00:54:53.380 costs, organizing communal labor work parties, getting in touch with the spirits of the lands

00:54:59.900 and making sure that you have their consent and support so that things go well.

00:55:03.580 So there's that foundational stuff.

00:55:05.120 And then it moves into how have our ancestors tended the land, selected their seed, cared

00:55:13.020 for their crops?

00:55:14.480 How have they turned those harvests into preserved foods and cooked foods?

00:55:19.580 And with every single suggestion that we offer about how to do the thing, we're also uplifting that ancestral root. So when we talk about raised beds, we're talking about the Avambo people in Central Africa. When we talk about terraces, we're talking about fenyaju practices in Kenya, right?

00:55:37.860 In agroforestry, we refer to the Haden-la-Kou of Haiti, which is the Haitian agroforest. So all of these practices are rooted in where they came from, which is so, so important because, you know, in the so-called permaculture movement, a lot of times these very ways of knowing land are divorced from their context, repackaged, rebranded, and really honestly used to profit college-educated white folks in offering these permaculture certifications.

00:56:06.940 And that's just that's just not ethical. And it's also misleading. So this was the book that I needed when I was 16 years old and starting to farm and going to these farming conferences, looking at the tables and seeing that everything was written by Elliot Coleman or the Nearing's, you know, or John Jevons.

00:56:23.620 I really needed to see that my people were reflected in this sustainable agricultural

00:56:29.300 tradition, which we are.

00:56:31.360 And so I hope that this will be a gift to my contemporaries and to future generations

00:56:35.480 to help us reclaim that proud place and the legacy of regenerative farming.

00:56:42.040 I cannot wait for this book to come out and just sit with every page.

00:56:47.820 And thank you so much for debunking the myths of permaculture and all of these well-meaning, perhaps, ways of teaching and how they're not really getting to the root of how to move forward in the way that we need to right now.

00:57:08.680 And I really appreciate all of your tireless work because I can only imagine how much you dedicate your life force and your energy to all the different pieces of this very full pie that you work with from farming and food and intersectionality and ancestry and seed and soil and on and on and on.

00:57:35.400 it's just so inspiring to see and to learn about you and your devotion so I appreciate you I'm so

00:57:47.480 grateful for you coming on the show today I'm sure everybody listening has many many bits and

00:57:54.840 pieces that they want to explore more from this seed of a conversation so I hope that we meet

00:58:02.180 sometime in the future in person and keep the conversation growing.

00:58:08.680 Ashe. Absolutely. And thank you for your really thoughtful questions. It's such a blessing to,

00:58:15.080 you know, be in conversation with someone who clearly has the reverence for earth and for

00:58:19.100 justice that we do here at Soul Fire Farm. So thank you for that commitment.

00:58:32.180 Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast.

00:58:41.760 I'm Ayanna Young.

00:58:43.180 The music you heard today was Hannah Shin with Night Glide.

00:58:47.060 I'd like to thank our incredible team,

00:58:50.040 our producer and editor, Andrew Storrs,

00:58:52.480 our research director, Madison Magulski,

00:58:55.660 and media director, Molly Lebov.

00:58:57.740 head over to the website to check out our entire archive of podcasts and while you're there you

00:59:05.160 can look into our other projects including our one million redwoods project the tongas national

00:59:10.700 forest campaign and our new online education platform launching may one thanks so much and

00:59:19.100 until next time

For The Wild - August 30, 2018

LEAH PENNIMAN on Land Based Liberation ⧸72⌠ENCORE⌡

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