It was the Wolof and Mende people who were rice farmers who were stolen to build the rice industry of the Carolinas, which people are still profiting off of. It is built on the trillions of dollars of unpaid wages to Black folks who didn't just do the labor but actually built the technologies and techniques that we use in farming. The entire food system is built on the theft of land and genocide of indigenous people.
![isoul shares isoul shares](https://assets.onbuy.com/i16/product/a3193eaf7da9418bbbb27bf4196320a4-o161630668/isoul-usb-car-charger-usb-c-cigarette-car-charger-12v24v-5v5a30w-qualcomm-certified-power-delivery-30-and-quick-charge-40-car-adapter-95192208.jpg)
Food and race are intertwined-and people too often ignore that.Ībsolutely. But of course your point is that it’s not a separate issue. I imagine that those people-because of their liberal politics or because they're pursuing a kind pro-social goal, trying to improve the food system, to improve the land-might be uncomfortable and even a little confused when you bring race into the equation. I want to return to you as a young organic farmer attending conferences and noticing that a lot of people in that regenerative agricultural world happened to be white. “We use Afro-indigenous and regenerative practices-fancy words that essentially mean we’re trying to farm using the best advice of our ancestors and we’re trying to farm in a way that actually makes the environment better and not worse,” she says. Today they run Soul Fire Farm, a highly diversified 80-acre nonprofit organic farm in the nearby town of Grafton, New York, which has become an important training center for farmers of color.
![isoul shares isoul shares](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1251/0543/products/IP6_TGSP_IS8_800x800.jpg)
#Isoul shares free#
Penniman explains how the current agricultural system reinforces racial inequality, and she also gives would-be farmers the tools they need to break free from it.Ī former public school teacher, Penniman began farming with her husband Jonah when they could not find fresh vegetables in their Albany neighborhood. Penniman’s book-part agricultural guide, part revolutionary manifesto-is meant to empower Brown and Black farmers to regain what she calls food sovereignty. “Black land matters.” With these words, Leah Penniman begins Farming While Black, an extraordinary book that came out two years ago but feels like it was written for this very moment in American history, when a pandemic has exposed deep vulnerabilities in our food system just as yet another police killing of a Black man has ignited a conversation about systemic racism.