{"id":10853,"date":"2014-08-15T03:20:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-15T03:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:/wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853///wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853//www.yesmagazine.org/wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853//article/wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853//peace-justice-welcome-to-black-and-latino-farmers-immersion/wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853//"},"modified":"2019-11-26T01:06:27","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T09:06:27","slug":"welcome-to-black-and-latino-farmers-immersion","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:/wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853///wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853//www.yesmagazine.org/wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853//social-justice/wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853//2014/wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853//08/wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853//15/wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853//welcome-to-black-and-latino-farmers-immersion","title":{"rendered":"Tractors, Ritual Baths, and Dismantling Racism: Welcome to Black and Latino Farmers Immersion"},"content":{"rendered":"/wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853/n

Soul Fire Farm is a family farm in Grafton, N.Y., committed to the dismantling of the oppressive structures that misguide our food system. We are a community resource, a vessel for education, and grow our life-giving food without pesticides, fertilizers, or hormones. With deep reverence for the land and the wisdom of our ancestors, we act in solidarity with people marginalized by racial inequalities in access to food. We bring diverse communities together on this healing land to share skills in sustainable agriculture, cooking, and natural building, and contribute to the movements for food sovereignty and community self-determination. The Black and Latino Farmers Immersion program is designed for aspiring and novice farmers to gain basic skills in farming and whole foods preparation in a culturally relevant and supportive environment. The author is farm educator at Soul Fire Farm. /wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853/n

“Land is the only real wealth in this country and if we don’t own any we’ll be out of the picture.”/wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853/n

— Ralph Paige, Federation of Southern Cooperatives/wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853/n

We have been uprooted from our land. As African-Americans, many of our ancestors were stolen from West Africa to be sold into slavery. As Latinos, they were forced out of Mexico by international trade deals like NAFTA. As First Nations people, they were driven to walk the Trail of Tears. Some of our ancestors put down roots in new soils. For more than 400 years they tilled the red earth of the American South, while others joined the ranks of “foreign-born” agricultural workers. Our ancestors built the foundation for this country’s wealth and power./wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853/n

Each person placed incredible trust in the leadership team and the learning process./wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853/n

We knew the land and belonged to the land, but the land did not belong to us. Brutal racism—maiming, lynching, burning, deportation, economic violence, legal violence—ensured that our roots would not spread deeply and securely. In 1910, at the height of black land ownership, 15 million acres of farmland—14 percent of the total—was owned and cultivated in the black community, according to the PBS series “Homecoming.” Now, less than 1 percent of farms are black-owned./wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853/n

Our black ancestors were forced, tricked, and scared off of land until 6.5 million of them migrated to the urban North in hopes of a better future. This was the largest migration in U.S. history, according to The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson./wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853/n

As the playwright August Wilson wrote:/wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853/n

We were a land based agrarian people from Africa. We were uprooted from Africa and we spent 200 years developing our culture as black Americans and then we left the South. We uprooted ourselves and attempted to transplant this culture to the pavements of the industrialized North. It was a transplant that didn’t take. I think if we had stayed in the South we would have been a stronger people and because the connection between the South of the ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s has been broken, it’s very difficult to understand who we are./wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853/n

The Black and Latino Farmers Immersion at Soul Fire Farm is a humble attempt to rewrite part of this story, to reclaim our ancestral right to both belong to the land and have the land belong to us. It is also part of my personal story as a Haitian-American farmer navigating a largely white farming world in search of relevancy and connection./wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853/n

Twenty aspiring growers arrived at Soul Fire Farm from the nearby cities of Albany, New York City, and Boston, as well as from faraway places like California and Florida. Each person placed incredible trust in the leadership team and the learning process, many camping for the first time, eating whole-food versions of traditional black and Latino cuisine, working the earth in hot sun and dreary rain, and engaging in vulnerable personal reflection that allowed healing tears to surface./wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853/n

Our leadership team greeted the participants with warm hugs and a hot meal. Our team included Adaku Utah, a Nigerian-born dancer and herbalist, who took the lead on reflection and movement. Brazilian-born chef Ellie Markovitch coordinated the kitchen and cooking instruction. My sister Naima Penniman, an acclaimed Haitian-American poet, activist, and former farmer, joined to co-facilitate the farm work with resident farmers Jonah Vitale-Wolff and me. Our children, Neshima, 11, and Emet, 9, did their part to share their farm knowledge and encourage play. Additionally, each participant was given the opportunity to lead an activity matched to his or her skills./wp-json/wp/v2/article/10853/n