As I roll out this newsletter, I am taking stock, reviewing, and remembering past work and research so that I may move forward with intention and direction. The work is sometimes historical, journalistic, photographic or film-driven. This week it is BIPOC US farmers. These vignettes of farmer and chef ideas and voices are more relevant than ever.
I began with an article where I interviewed several Native chefs: How Native Americans Are Rescuing Our Food Culture in 2013. At the same time, I wanted to highlight BIPOC farmers, and their historical exclusion, in particular women farmers across the USA. In Discovering (North) America’s Hidden Treasures, I reviewed the exclusionary farming tactics of a white supremacist systems based on the The Pigford Cases: USDA Settlement of Discrimination Suits by Black Farmers published in 2013. To flip the gaze and view, I created a series of ARC-GIS maps based on US Census data showing the states where Indigenous, Black, LatinX and Asian women farmers predominate. I shared Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Atlantic articles on red-lining and reparations; referenced Carolyn Finney PhD, author of Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African-Americans to the Great Outdoors who will also be an artist in residence at Haystack this summer 2022; and concluded with a reminder, and a data-driven article, on how not-profit institutions excel at perpetuating inequity.
In Female Farmers Are Few, But Deeply Rooted, you meet some dynamic women activists and farmers in the field, including our ancestor Cynthia Hayes, and co-founder of SAAFON, who led me to the Southern Indigenous and Black farmers Janie Dickson and Beverly Hall. In the final three-part series, Farmers Of Color Add Their Voices To Ag Landscape you see and hear snippets of Rashid Nuri, Sandra Simone and Frankie Lee Michael and their stories of farming in the south. The struggle to create an inclusive food secure systems continues…
Click the links to read more. And let me know your thoughts.
Looking forward, always.
Sarah