Act: Inspiration

Farming While Black: African Diasporic Wisdom for Farming and Food Justice, Leah Penniman

By Leah Penniman, originally published by Oxford Real Farming Conference

January 31, 2020

Soul Fire Farm

Some of our most cherished sustainable farming practices – from organic agriculture to the farm cooperative – have roots in African wisdom. Yet, Black farmers experience discrimination and marginalisation worldwide. Author, activist, farmer and founder of Soul Fire Farm in New York, Leah Penniman is committed to ending racism and injustice in our food system. Through programmes such as the Black-Indigenous Farmers Immersion, a sliding-scale farmshare delivery programme, and reparations work, Soul Fire Farm is part of an international network of farmers working to increase farmland stewardship by people of colour, restore Afro-indigneous farming practices, and end food apartheid. Watch Leah talk about this growing global movement and how ORFC delegates can contribute and help build a food system based on justice, dignity and abundance for all members of our community.

Leah Penniman

Leah Penniman is a Black Kreyol educator, farmer, author, and food justice activist who has been tending the soil for twenty years and organizing for an anti-racist food system for fifteen years. She currently serves as founding co-executive director of Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York, a people-of-color led project that works to dismantle racism in the food system. She has been recognized by the Soros Equality Fellowship, NYSHealth Emerging Innovator Awards, and Fulbright Distinguished Awards, among others. Her new book is Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land (Chelsea Green Publishing, November 2018). Find out more about Leah’s work at soulfirefarm.org and follow her @soulfirefarm on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Tags: Building resilient food and farming systems, environmental racism, food justice

the deep sea

Bringing the Deep Sea to Seattle

By Ellen Rikhof, The Revelator

Ocean enthusiasts and random passersby alike came together in Seattle this past August to explore and celebrate their connection to the deep sea.

November 13, 2024

New York drought fire

‘Praying for rain’: How New York farmers are dealing with drought — and unexpected brush fires

By Frida Garza, Grist

This year, the especially dry conditions also mean that the Hudson Valley faces a heightened risk of wildfires — something typically unheard of in the area. Parts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut have all seen wildfires in early November, with a massive fire on the New Jersey-New York state border still raging as of Monday.

November 12, 2024

bookcover

The Regenerative Agriculture Solution

By Ronnie Cummins, Resilience.org

The Flores González brothers’ revolutionary innovation has been to turn a heretofore indigestible, but massive and accessible, source of fiber, biomass, water, and protein—the agave leaves or pencas—into a valuable animal feed, utilizing the natural process of anaerobic fermentation to transform the plant leaves’ relatively indigestible saponin compounds into digestible carbohydrates and sugar.

November 11, 2024